Every Day I Read the Book: Dracula, Daily

Six years ago, Matt Kirkland embarked on the first of six (so far) literary journeys: He started the Dracula Daily newsletter, emailing a section of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula to subscribers every day.

There are two reasons that make this an excellent plan. One, the original text of Dracula is in the public domain, and Kirkland can do this without paying a red cent for it, and without violating any kind of copyright. Two, Dracula is an epistolary novel, told in the form of letters, journal entries, newspaper articles, and so on. Things that all have dates.

And so, starting in May and ending in November, Kirkland undertakes Dracula Daily, sending out to his legion of subscribers (the children of the night, I suppose) whatever bit of Dracula that corresponds to that calendar date. Sometimes it’s a paragraph. Sometimes it’s nothing at all. And sometimes it’s a lot of action, happening all at once. I think the longest entry weighed in at around 10,000 words.

There’s a chunk of time in the middle of the novel where essentially nothing is happening; when the next email finally comes, you can feel that passage of time. The one time Kirkland shows a little mercy on this front is the undated epilogue, which takes place some seven years after the closing day of November 6. Kirkland sends it out the next day. Had he been strict about mailing that out, the original subscribers to the first year would receive it sometime in 2028. (And who knows, maybe he’ll send it to them again, just to be cheeky.)

And what about the novel itself? Well, it’s been a while, but here are some of my thoughts.

• I found it hard to have sympathy for Jonathan Harker. The young attorney is the first person to encounter Dracula, and he has no idea what to make of him. He’s never seen a Dracula movie before. Imagine that! And for what seems like two months, I felt like an audience at a horror movie that shouts at the screen, “Don’t go in there! Turn right the hell around.” Consequently, he comes off like a bit of a dope. The guy misses so many red flags, he could be a FIFA ref.
• Mina is the best. It takes a while to get there—there’s a lot of mooning over Jonathan in the beginning—but she’s a good friend to her flighty buddy Lucy, and later on, when New Shit Has Come to Light, as they say in The Big Lebowski, she’s clearheaded and brave. She’s still hopelessly in love with Jonathan, but once he’s back in town and also working on the problem, I forgive her.
• Van Helsing is adorable. He’s SUPER Dutch, which to Stoker means weird little turns of phrases like “I have for myself thoughts at the present. Later I shall unfold to you.” I thought Anthony Hopkins’s somewhat goofy take on Van Helsing in Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation was an aberration, but no, it’s right there on the page.

• Also on the page is the occasional burst of dialect. Whether you’re Irish or Welsh or Cockney, Stoker wants to spell whatever you say phonetically, in a way that’d make your grammar school teacher beat her head against her desk in abject defeat.
• Technology! We get to see typewriters and phonographs, and a few other delights that we forget were around in 1897. That’s a treat.
• The vampire lore. It’s interesting to see what’s there at the beginning (an aversion to garlic, a certain powerlessness over water, changing into a bat), and what’s not (Dracula’s more powerful at night, but sunlight isn’t making anyone burst into flames). There’s a trick Van Helsing pulls a few times with communion wafers that I really enjoyed.
• And most of all… it’s exciting. Yes, the day-by-day nature of it resists the idea of the page-turner, but there’s some great anticipation in wondering when a certain piece of information will be discovered or understood, and even more so when it comes down to the confrontation between the vampire(s) and the vampire hunters. It’s a really enjoyable read.

The next trip through the book starts in May. Signup is free (and can be done anytime), although next time around I plan to move on to a paid tier, which includes a bonus weekly newsletter and some community interaction. My one piece of advice would be not to let yourself fall behind in the early weeks; read every email on the day you get it. Once you’re in the groove, you’ll be craving the next email the way Dracula craves… well, whatever it is, it’s not wine.