A dream of Dracula: in search of the living dead

by Leonard Wolf

Book Overview

First edition but 2nd printing (stated) bound in blackcloth & gray boards. Book about Fine, Owners bookplatel on front endpaper & his name is stamped to the bottom edge of the page blocks else fine in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316951188
• ISBN13: 9780316951180
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Length: 327 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Dream of Dracula

I studied with Leonard Wolf, in 1972. In my second semester as a senior in high school, I was allowed to attend one of Wolf's poetry classes at San Francisco State University. After I graduated, I attended SF State, now known as UCSF, in Leonard Wolf's class called 'A Dream of Dracula'. In it, we read the manuscript for this novel and meditation on the history and meaning of the vampire in history, literature, and filmed. We even participated in sharing some of our own ideas in the process. I know I did. [Suicide, He Said?] The book may seem stream of consciousness at times, but that was his style. He wrote like an impressionist painter. I was in a two year BA/MA program in Creative Writing, at eighteen, and my parents asked why I was taking such a class. I said that I thought it was one of the most important books of the decade. It was not just about Dracula or even vampires; it was about an entire cultural phenomenon. Yeah, and we were hippies... does that negate anything? Does that substantiate anything? I do not believe it has any significance, because, in reality, we had people of all ages and backgrounds in that class. Leonard Wolf wrote a beautiful, lyrical study on Dracula. He went on to write the definitive Annotated Bram Stoker's Dracula, in brilliant detail, as well as the Annotated Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He worked as a technical advisor on both films. He has written many books since, not only about horror, but also editions of poetry. As a professor, he was brilliant and kind.

Meditation on "Dracula" by Its Most Devoted Scholar.

"A Dream of Dracula" is a meditation on the novel "Dracula" and its 20th century progeny -literary, cultural, and personal- published on the 75th anniversary of Bram Stoker's novel, in 1972. A few years later, author Leonard Wolf would publish the most elaborately annotated version of "Dracula". Wolf is one of the world's foremost "Dracula" scholars, but the novel has touched him more intimately than other academics. "A Dream of Dracula" is a collection of ruminations on "Dracula", vampires, blood, and death, often is a stream of conscious style, all connected, directly or loosely, to the 19th century gothic novel whose popularity is set to survive longer than even its vampiric villain did. The book's ten chapters weave in and out of the past and present. Chapter 1, "Energy Without Grace", gets off to an odd start with spasmodic descriptions of modern psychological and physical phenomena that are figuratively vampiric. Chapter 2, "Rampant Energy", includes a discussion of the Baron Gilles de Rais, a 15th century contemporary of Vlad "Dracula" Tepes, French war hero, and serial killer, who had a taste for blood. Chapter 3, "Death is the Mother of Beauty", talks about the realities of physical death and the perspectives of dying patients. Chapter 4, "Vampires and the Taste of Blood", explores folk legends of vampires and blood. Chapter 5, "The Gothic Novel and the Sleep of Reason", introduces the reader to gothic novels in whose tradition "Dracula" was composed. Wolf focuses on Matthew G. Lewis' "The Monk" and John Polidori's "The Vampyre: A Tale". Chapter 6, "Dracula: The King Vampire" recounts an interview with actor Christopher Lee, who played Dracula in 5 films, followed by a lengthy commentary on the novel, itself, including a detailed summary. Chapter 7, "Dracula's Grandchildren", is about 20th century literature and plays inspired by "Dracula". Chapter 8, talks about "Dracula"'s ancestry: The heroic but bloodthirsty heritage that Count Dracula boasts in the novel. And the life of its creator, Bram Stoker. Chapter 9, "The Vampire in my Living Room", recount Wolf's sometimes comical efforts to find a real live blood-drinker to interview and his eventual success. Chapter 10, "Dracula in Plato's Cave", is about Dracula movies, specifically 1922's "Nosferatu" and 1931's "Dracula", English version, as well as B-Movie horror flicks. "In Search of the Living Dead" covers a lot of territory and doesn't always make perfect sense. It doesn't try to be an exhaustive study of any of its subjects. The ideas flow together in Leonard Wolf's mind, part of a thread that emanated from his Transylvanian childhood and Bram Stoker's masterpiece of gothic horror, "Dracula", and never seems to stop. In some ways the book is very dated. Leonard Wolf was a college professor at UC Berkeley in the 1970s, surrounded by young hippies. But that's part of the fun. Fans of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" will find this an interesting read.