Book Review: Frankenstein
May. 9th, 2010 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerThis was a four-day weekend for me. I celebrated by reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
First: I want to drown Victor Frankenstein in a bucket. I understand, I do, that he has piles of good reasons to despair, having indirectly caused the death of almost everyone he loves (except, inexplicably, his younger brother Ernest. I think poor Ernest, alone in the world, slipped Shelley's mind).
However, my understanding does not stretch so far as to excuse the fact that he has a crying fit every other page, and when he's not crying he's importuning the reader with the fact that he is the most, most wretched wretch that ever lived - though far be it from him to complain - indeed, if he were not so wretchedly weighted with guilt, he would be the first to smile and ease the hearts of those around him! However, weighted as he is, it is utterly beyond his power to do anything but sigh, cry, and refuse to tell his family what's wrong. Good Lord, sir, hie thyself to a therapist!
Despite my disdain for Frankenstein himself, I actually quite liked the book - no mean feat, given that Frankenstein in the first person narrator. But the prose is fluid and well-balanced, and the plot - despite the fact that you know, even from the moment on page three when you meet Frankenstein chasing his monster across the barren ice, that the story is going to end in tragedy and despair - the plot is compelling; even at the umpty-hundredth burst of febrile weeping, you have to read on, you have to know what happens.
And I felt so bad for the monster. (At least until he killed Clerval and Elizabeth. That was rather more premeditated and unforgivable than his first murders.) All alone in the world! Abandoned by his creator! Victor Frankenstein is the WORST DADDY EVER. If he had just stayed with his monster and attempted to love it - deformed as it was - none of this would have happened. But does that once - even once, in all his self-pitying monologues - occur to Victor? It does NOT.
Despite the fact that no one has ever loved him, ever, the monster is - at least compared to Victor, which does skew the scale - admirably lacking in self-pity. Also, the monster is better spoken than Victor Frankenstein himself. Noble savage for the win!
I've totally recced this before, but now that I've actually read Frankenstein I simply must rec it again. Emostein, a short gennish fic from Yuletide 2008, a loving send-up of the sentimental excesses of the original. If you don't have time to read the original Frankenstein, this fic is a totally hilarious SparkNotes version, completely comprehensible without any knowledge of the original.
***
Next up on my Quest to Become an Autodidact in the Field of English Literature: F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. I've meant to read more of him ever since The Great Gatsby in tenth grade. Who doesn't love the green light winking eternally at the end of the pier?
First: I want to drown Victor Frankenstein in a bucket. I understand, I do, that he has piles of good reasons to despair, having indirectly caused the death of almost everyone he loves (except, inexplicably, his younger brother Ernest. I think poor Ernest, alone in the world, slipped Shelley's mind).
However, my understanding does not stretch so far as to excuse the fact that he has a crying fit every other page, and when he's not crying he's importuning the reader with the fact that he is the most, most wretched wretch that ever lived - though far be it from him to complain - indeed, if he were not so wretchedly weighted with guilt, he would be the first to smile and ease the hearts of those around him! However, weighted as he is, it is utterly beyond his power to do anything but sigh, cry, and refuse to tell his family what's wrong. Good Lord, sir, hie thyself to a therapist!
Despite my disdain for Frankenstein himself, I actually quite liked the book - no mean feat, given that Frankenstein in the first person narrator. But the prose is fluid and well-balanced, and the plot - despite the fact that you know, even from the moment on page three when you meet Frankenstein chasing his monster across the barren ice, that the story is going to end in tragedy and despair - the plot is compelling; even at the umpty-hundredth burst of febrile weeping, you have to read on, you have to know what happens.
And I felt so bad for the monster. (At least until he killed Clerval and Elizabeth. That was rather more premeditated and unforgivable than his first murders.) All alone in the world! Abandoned by his creator! Victor Frankenstein is the WORST DADDY EVER. If he had just stayed with his monster and attempted to love it - deformed as it was - none of this would have happened. But does that once - even once, in all his self-pitying monologues - occur to Victor? It does NOT.
Despite the fact that no one has ever loved him, ever, the monster is - at least compared to Victor, which does skew the scale - admirably lacking in self-pity. Also, the monster is better spoken than Victor Frankenstein himself. Noble savage for the win!
I've totally recced this before, but now that I've actually read Frankenstein I simply must rec it again. Emostein, a short gennish fic from Yuletide 2008, a loving send-up of the sentimental excesses of the original. If you don't have time to read the original Frankenstein, this fic is a totally hilarious SparkNotes version, completely comprehensible without any knowledge of the original.
***
Next up on my Quest to Become an Autodidact in the Field of English Literature: F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. I've meant to read more of him ever since The Great Gatsby in tenth grade. Who doesn't love the green light winking eternally at the end of the pier?
