Hey folks, Harry here... We live in the age of "clever reinvention" where apparently the fusing of conspiracy and mythology have become the new "IN" thing. NATIONAL TREASURE's box office success, THE DA VINCI CODE's enormous literary sales success... Well, it was just a matter of time till somebody applied the 'code' to horror - in this case DRACULA. Well, going under the code name Max Schreck, this horror film award winner has decided to break down this novel - before it's published, though - Sony has already paid 7 figures to convert it into a film. Well, let's take a look - spoilers will follow...
There’s an old Hollywood saw that says bad books make great movies. If this is true, then the movie to be made from Elizabeth Kostova’s “The Historian” (which sold to Sony Pictures for a reported seven figures) has the potential to be the next “Citizen Kane.”
The book, which received a frighteningly large advance and some shockingly good reviews, is being marketed as the next “The Da Vinci Code”-- substituting that book’s “truth” about the historical Jesus with the “truth” about the legendary Count Dracula.”
The book begins a few years into the future, flashes back to the 1920s, 50s, and 70s, and is told mostly through letters and diaries (an obvious allusion to Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” which was told in a similar manner). There are four main characters, each of whom appears in the book’s complicated narrative either in youth or middle age: a professor of history named Rossi, his star pupil Paul, an anthropology graduate student named Helen, and Paul’s unnamed daughter who also serves as narrator (possibly an allusion to the nameless narrator of the first great vampire novella, J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”)
In a nutshell, the book tells the story of Paul who, when he was a graduate student, was given an old book containing nothing but the ancient symbol of the order of Dracula. When his mentor, Professor Rossi, disappears after revealing that he, too, had been given a similar book, Paul and fellow graduate student Helen undertake an adventure in order to discover the truth about Dracula before any harm befalls the Professor.
Now here’s the first (of many) big problems: there’s absolutely no sense of urgency in the couple’s undertaking. Our incredibly one-dimensional heroes have an incredible amount of mind-numbingly boring time to travel to scenic spots in Europe, leisurely enjoy the local cuisine at quaint cafes, and spend long afternoons studying old books in libraries. There’s no ticking clock (e.g. Professor Rossi dies at midnight!!), there’s nobody pursuing them in order to stop them from making history-altering discoveries (e.g. there’s no albino assassin nipping at their heels).
This is exacerbated by all the letters and diaries and stories-within-stories. Which leads me to the next big problem: every time the plot threatens to turn interesting, the author interrupts it (“I can’t bear it all at once!” Paul says about a million times) with five or ten pages of travelogue: what the streets of Paris look like in the spring, what to order in an Istanbul cafe, etc. I suspect the author thinks this evokes tension in the reader; in fact, it evokes the desire to throw the fucking book across the room (confession: I got to the point very early on where I just skipped all the travel shit).
At this point, you’re probably thinking the book sounds like little more than a travel guide and you wouldn’t be wrong. Which leads me to the next big problem: whereas the heroes in “The Da Vinci Code” discovered some really evocative, previously undiscovered mythology about Jesus, the heroes in “The Historian” discover...geography. The book’s big question has to do with the location of Dracula’s burial place (for no good reason, they think that’s where Professor Rossi has been taken), so most of the book involves maps and acquiring visas and generally being jerked hither and yon across Europe. Occasionally an interesting piece of mythology turns up, but the author is unwilling or unable to do anything with it--for instance, our heroes uncover evidence about some early Christian monks who discover a vampire in their monastery. Now I, for one, would have loved to hear that story...and would have gladly swapped for it the several hundred pages spent detailing the stale story of the nameless narrator’s journey to Paris with her idiotically-named English boyfriend, Barley. But it was not to be.
And what lies at the heart of all this tedious geographical exploration? What exactly is the author’s great big idea that justifies all that money and all the poor trees that had to die to produce all those 642 page books? (note: this isn’t a SPOILER, it’s on the book’s jacket) The big idea is that the historical Dracula, Vlad (“the impaler”) Tepes, Prince of Wallachia....was really a vampire! For the love of God, does Elizabeth Kostova (not to mention her publishers, reviewers, and the execs at Sony who bought this dead horse) think this is a fresh idea!? Doesn’t she know about Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 movie, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (or more importantly, James V. Hart’s script for it)? Doesn’t she know that this particular canard has been kicked around in horror circles at least since the early 1970s in books and shows like tv’s “In Search of...”?
And this, friends, is the biggest problem of all with “The Historian:” I don’t think the author knows a damn thing about the horror genre. She certainly seems utterly ignorant of the entire field of horror: books, movies, comics, television shows, etc. As I mentioned, the mythology isn’t new or compelling. And another thing, there isn’t a single really scary moment in it: not a creepy moment, not a “boo” moment, not a great big horror set piece (what the hell were they thinking at Sony?). Here’s what passes for horror: a gypsy woman, who’s never met her before, sees Helen sitting in a cafe, freaks out, and calls her a “Romanian daughter of wolves.” Oooooh, scary!! I’ve never seen that in a horror movie before!!
More importantly, she’s clueless about vampires. Basically she seems ignorant of a whole century of fantastically interesting work on vampire lore: Anne Rice, Stephen King, F. Paul Wilson, Kim Newman, “Nosferatu,” (both versions), “Vampyr,” the “Blade” movies, the “Buffy” series, the 1972 pilot for “The Night Stalker” (written by Richard Matheson, no less), “Dark Shadows,”--to name a few favorites. Despite the fact that “The Historian” is about historians, nobody bothers to do any real research into vampires. Instead, they take at face value the hoariest old myths from Stoker’s novel: crosses and garlic deter vampires, vampires are killed by driving a stake through one’s heart, etc. Now I love Stoker’s novel, but shouldn’t we be paying the big bucks to writers who come up with something fresh? For pete’s sakes, Anne Rice disposed of that crap with the crosses thirty years ago!
What’s more, Ms. Kostova doesn’t even get “Dracula’s” vampire lore right: she states that Dracula can’t go out in daylight (he canStoker is quite clear that the victim has to drink the vampire’s blood in order to turn into one).
And finally, there’s this. After slogging through more than six hundred of the most boring pages in horror history you finally meet the most famous vampire of them all--and he turns out to be a bore and a dolt, his conspiracy ridiculously lame and certainly not worth the trouble of reading this book to discover it. And that on top of all the other boring things and unresolved things that happen in this book: a vampire librarian about whom the author just kind of forgets, a mystery involving the narrator’s mother that doesn’t make a lick of sense, etc.
I’m going to end here. The last paragraph of this review reveals what Dracula’s big conspiracy is--that is to say it contains SPOILERS for those of you wise enough not to waste your time on this monumental, Russian novel-sized waste of time. For everybody else, especially for people who love the horror and vampire genres as much as I do, all I can say is: you’ve been warned.
SPOILER
It turns out Dracula has been leaving these weird blank books with the symbol of the order of Dracula inside of them in order to discover which scholars are smart enough to actually track him to his secret burial place. Professor Rossi is the first to do so (at least I think he is, it wasn’t clear to me whether he actually tracked Dracula to his burial place or was kidnapped by Dracula and brought there forcibly), so Dracula offers him the prize: a job as librarian for Dracula’s really great collection of rare books. I swear to God I’m not making this up. You’ve got to wonder why Dracula, who is a master of occult lore and has centuries of learning under his belt, doesn’t just put an ad in the Modern Language Association newsletter.
Max Schreck
