Book Fortyfour: Frankenstein
11.01.2008
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Okay, so this is not the book I was expecting. Of course, when I thought of Frankenstein I always thought of the classic movie with the creepy castle and the mad scientist Frankenstein shrieking, "It's alive!", and the giant grunting monster with the nubbins on the side of his neck and big square forehead and the torch-bearing mob of villagers and the little girl with the flower and... well, you're probably thinking of it, too. So, big surprise to me that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein bears little resemblance to the movie. I mean, the book opens with the monster on a dogsled zipping across the north pole. What the?
But, wow, what a book! And this edition is pure loveliness, what with the Dan Clowes cover art. In fact, I only knew of this edition because I saw the original panels at the Clowes show at the Fantagraphics store in August. I was kind of hoping for a full comic of the Frankenstein story, but this Penguin Classics Deluxe edition is a pretty good tradeoff. There's also an introduction by Elizabeth Kostova, whose book, incidentally, is next on my list as I continue my spooky Halloween-themed book bonanza.
Okay, so this is not the book I was expecting. Of course, when I thought of Frankenstein I always thought of the classic movie with the creepy castle and the mad scientist Frankenstein shrieking, "It's alive!", and the giant grunting monster with the nubbins on the side of his neck and big square forehead and the torch-bearing mob of villagers and the little girl with the flower and... well, you're probably thinking of it, too. So, big surprise to me that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein bears little resemblance to the movie. I mean, the book opens with the monster on a dogsled zipping across the north pole. What the?
But, wow, what a book! And this edition is pure loveliness, what with the Dan Clowes cover art. In fact, I only knew of this edition because I saw the original panels at the Clowes show at the Fantagraphics store in August. I was kind of hoping for a full comic of the Frankenstein story, but this Penguin Classics Deluxe edition is a pretty good tradeoff. There's also an introduction by Elizabeth Kostova, whose book, incidentally, is next on my list as I continue my spooky Halloween-themed book bonanza.
posted by arajane at
11:01 PM
1 Comments:
It's true, what you say about the disconnect btwn the classic movie and the classic book--something I discovered when I had to read this long, long ago in one of my college English classes. But, what a great book cover you've got there! Oh, wouldn't it be great to see a graphic/comic version?
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