The Creative Identity

Bram Stoker's Dracula – Part I

My fascination with vampires began as a form of rejection to Little Women. The teacher at school had told my mum that I could not read very well and that I would benefit from practising at home. And so mum, ever zealous when it came to my education, had me read out loud a chapter a day. I didn't like the book. The characters annoyed me. The setting was decrepit and as conceptually irrelevant to my life as it could be. As I was going through it, my mind often wandered to the day when I could read for myself, not 'age-appropriate' stuff, but rather what I really wanted to read. The time came soon enough, when I was eleven, and I finally got my hands on Dracula and Frankenstein. The latter did not impress me much (ironic, considering how much Frankenstein I inserted in my PhD which, really, is about vampire literature and the romanticisation of imagination), but the former changed my life. Much as remembrances of Carmilla still thrill me to this day, it all started with Bram Stoker's seminal novel. From then on, I actively sought information about Dracula in all its incarnations. When Bram Stoker's Dracula by Ford Coppola was released in 1992, I recall being disgusted by the travesty it represented. In it the Prince of Darkness is a romanticised figure we are made to empathise with, not the repulsive beast that Stoker depicted many decades previously. It was only fifteen years later that I... Read more →

Stephanella Meets Caryl Phillips

When I sat down to listen to Caryl Phillips at Manchester Lit Fest last year (listen here), for the first couple of minutes I drifted off, asking myself this: 'Does this unassuming, softly-spoken guy know he is a legend?' Five minutes before he arrived to a lecture theatre heaving with people, I had overheard two girls squealing that they were sooooo excited because 'he's practically already a legend'. Their use of already made me smile: he is one of those rare authors who has been canonised while still living, especially by students. Who wouldn't like that, dear reader? But... does he know? Professor Phillips now teaches at Yale University and often appears around the world to discuss his work, but his beginnings are quite local to me, as he grew up in Leeds and studied at Oxford (evidently, I hope that, if only by remote osmosis, I too may be destined to great literary things). He has published an inordinate number of works, from anthologies to stage plays, screen plays, radio plays and various non-fiction, and has won numerous literary awards and fellowships, but it is because of his novels that we delve into his nuanced work on identity and belonging. His latest is In The Falling Snow, about identity, for sure, but also dislocation, missed opportunities, a lingering inability to move on with life and to express one's own emptiness and desires. It is a novel that had me wondering where exactly Keith was going, if anywhere at all,... Read more →

World Book Night Give-Away

When I heard of World Book Night I thought it was a fab idea. Get sent a stack of books and hand them out to strangers. Great. Then I heard of something else that I thought made even more sense, as I did wonder what was in it for authors, publishers and bookshops (no money, that's what). Hence, when I read that, hey, why don't we go out and buy a book from a local bookshop and give it away, as suggested by the completely fab Nicola Morgan, bells of recognition trilled inside my head. So I did just that but instead of giving it away to a complete stranger, I would like to give it away to a dear reader. Hence, dear reader, up for grabs is a copy of Clean Break by Jacqueline Wilson, Children's Laureate 2005-7. Inside, I've written the message suggested by Nicola, so that you also know where it was purchased. Leave a comment by Thu 10 Mar. I'll pick the winner on Friday and post to anywhere on Saturday. And that will really make it a WORLD book. When Dad and Mum break up, Em does her best to cheer her little brother and sister, even though she's miserable too. She tells them exciting tales because she knows a good story can make life seem better. Meeting the author of her own favourite books would be a dream come true. But can her other greatest wish be granted? Is any story powerful enough to... Read more →

Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla – Part II

Part I is right here Of Carmilla’s soothing lullabies, Laura says, ‘I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust. I had no distinct thoughts about her while such scenes lasted, but I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence’ (Ryan, 1994: 90). In a way, the author describes nothing other than sexual awakening, but the excitement is tumultuous because it is uncanny: as the horror pushes through the unconscious, Laura becomes familiar with a desire that has lain dormant within her and yet, that is destabilising in its forceful surfacing. This immense, disturbing power is what is mostly relevant when Carmilla is analysed as the vital literary ancestor to Dracula and when the vampire stories that followed these two tales are analysed as parts of an ever-evolving whole. While Polidori ends his tale on the high note of an epiphany (‘Lord Ruthven had disappeared, and Aubrey’s sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!’ [Ryan, 1994: 24]), Le Fanu concludes his novella with the melancholic, languid suggestion that, despite the dreadful denouement, Carmilla is very much missed (‘to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to my memory with ambiguous alternations […] and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door’ [Ryan, 1994: 137]). The dual disquieting nuance here (which was not present in The Vampyre) is one that shall return... Read more →