Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula
Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula - David J. Skal
Non-Fiction
Pages: 672
There is a Bram Stoker shaped hole at the centre of this book. For a biography that claims to explore the inner world of the man himself, I learned an awful lot about almost everything else in his life except him. Partly, no doubt, that is because Stoker was a very private man and his descendants have protected that privacy; partly because Dracula may now be regarded as a genuine classic and a staple of popular culture but in his day it was very much a sleeper hit; partly because so much of his life both personal and professional was devoted to his idol and employer Henry Irving; and partly, dare I say it, because the author seems more interested in Oscar Wilde than his subject.
David Skal's central 'exploration' is that Stoker was a repressed homosexual, who sublimated his desires into a conventional but sexless marriage, a youthful infatuation with Walt Whitman, strong male friendships with men such as Hall Caine, and a lifelong devotion to the charismatic and domineering actor Henry Irving. As a result of this, Skal persistently contrasts Stoker's life with that of Oscar Wilde, his 'out' twin, one might call him, who grew up in Dublin like Stoker, attended the same university, courted the same woman and moved in very similar theatrical and literary circles. As a result of this parallel there is as much of Wilde to be found in this book as Stoker. Indeed, if one condensed the pages to their component parts, I would go so far as to call this a triple biography - of Stoker, of Dracula and of Oscar Wilde.
That doesn't make for a bad read - far from it, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, at the same time that it frustrated me. Skal is a good writer and he keeps the pace moving at a lively clip. He has a fine turn of phrase and real understanding of the period. But that said, there is an immense amount of extrapolation and speculation when it comes to Stoker's inner life and motivations, and it's a unstable premise on which to base an entire psychological biography. And unfortunately the company Stoker is forced to keep in this book makes his own personality pale by comparison; utterly overshadowed in life by Henry Irving, here he is elbowed aside by the flamboyance of Oscar Wilde and the endless un-death of his own creation, Dracula. Poor Bram Stoker is not even the star of his own biography, and for that if nothing else I found this book an enjoyable, entertaining disappointment.