Some people are lamenting e-books as the death of reading and writing. I think the e-book is reinventing both. On my Ipad last night, I ordered Itunes new “Dracula: Stoker Family Edition” for 4.99 and I spent a fascinating few hours with Bram Stoker, seeing I think, something of the future of books. I love “Dracula” one of the great written myths of modern time, and I was eager to see what Bram Stoker might make of new technology to re-cast his story. For anyone interested in the future of books, I’d take a look, because I saw it. Above, when Jonathan Harker makes his way up the Carpathian mountains toward Castle Dracula in his spooky coach, I was reading about how he was confronted by a wolf, and then one appeared, and it was snowing as well.
This book is like that. It’s a bit primitive in some places, a new technology. But I loved the way the book – a text and video version, new and old, of the classic, brought this wonderful old story to life. I heard footsteps in the castle, doors locking, wolves howling. I looked through a spyglass, which came to life when I tapped on it on a table, and it showed me the last moments of the voyage of the ghastly schooner that brought Dracula to England, the ship’s captain lashed to the masthead with a Crucifix hanging over him to keep his body intact. Notes are tear-stained, smudged, or shed gravel. Snow falls, drops of blood appear when appropriate and envelopes open with a rustle, revealing the journals that were so much a part of Stoker’s gothic novel. I could just imagine the possibilities for children’s books. Of for the George Washington biography I am reading. Instead of rushing to the computer to see where Valley Forge was, I could tap on the name and see a video or painting of it.
I think the answer lies not in one or the other, digital or print, but in a fusion of both, which “Dracula: Stoker’s Family Edition,” does imaginatively, if not yet fully. The e-book is 90 per cent text, but the graphics and tools and imagery brought me there. When Harker is exploring the spooky castle, realizing he is trapped, pursued by Dracula’s thirsty wives (right out of cable tv newscasts, is what I thought). When Renfield starts eating flies in his asylum, buzzing flies walk all over the page, an effect that is startling but effective. You in the room. I haven’t gotten to the old film “Nosferatu” yet, which is embedded in the story.
Not bad for $4.99. I hear a lot of clucking and hand-wringing about the death of books, reading, bookstores and libraries. I just don’t buy it. Culture, art and story-telling lives with human beings and will out. Bram Stoker and I sat up much of the night in front of a roaring fire taking a look as how books are being re-imagined. And good for them and Godspeed to them. They will be around long after I am gone.