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    Murdoch v Mary Shelley

    Over on Twitter, a fascinating ongoing story about a Sun editorial, and the plot and motivation of the characters in "Frankenstein, or, A Modern Prometheus"

    #2
    I heard about this via a Guardian article that was taking the piss out of them. Quite a thing for the Sun and (more surprisingly) the Times to effectively admit that no-one on their staffs have ever read Frankenstein.

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      #3
      I'm not convinced that everyone taking the piss out of the Sun will have read Frankenstein from cover to cover themselves.

      Having said that, I've got a degree in English Literature and the whole thing was essentially a test of nerve in which the students sought to prevent the tutors from being able to establish beyond doubt that they hadn't read the works under discussion that week.

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        #4
        I read the back cover of Emma and still survived the seminar on the damn thing unscathed. Was so nervous back then speaking in a formal group they probably couldn’t tell when I was flustered or bullshitting flustered.

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          #5
          Got a ten quid prize for my first year essay on Frankenstein its bad self, that more or less regurgitated the Marxist Feminist reading of my lecturer. Thanks, Prof Kolakotroni!

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            #6
            I had read an X-Men comic which tipped me off that the Karloff film wasn't to be relied upon.

            The watch-the-film approach had come unstuck pretty badly by then anyway after the Morte d'Arthur/Excalibur incident.

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              #7
              The heaving bosoms of Helen Mirren version?

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                #8
                Yes. Apparently, Merlin doesn't describe himself as a dream to some, a nightmare to others in the Malory. Not that I'd rule out the tutor not having read it and even that assertion being an elaborate double bluff.

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                  #9
                  You’d have been better off cribbing from the shitey Disney cartoon.

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                    #10
                    Frankenstein is brilliant though. Every time something goes slightly wrong he becomes incapacitated by nervous exhaustion for weeks on end. I don't know whether Mary was taking the piss out of Shelley and Byron, but it's how I read it.

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                      #11




                      Fucked his sister...(half sister).

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                        #12
                        Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the name of the monster. Wisdom is understanding that it is.

                        #hottake

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                          #13
                          Righteous reasoning there.

                          Originally posted by ooh aah View Post
                          Every time something goes slightly wrong he becomes incapacitated by nervous exhaustion for weeks on end. I don't know whether Mary was taking the piss out of Shelley and Byron, but it's how I read it.
                          I want to believe that this is so. The Romantics have such comic potential at our remove that it is always tempting to look for an element of self mockery for their own sakes.

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                            #14
                            Now now, I hope we're not going to start taking the piss out of people with consumption are we?

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                              #15
                              Your closer literary comparison will be The Count Of Monte Cristo if they don't let you out soon, pebble.

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                                #16
                                Frankenstein is a decent read though (at least the original 1818 edition). Dracula though, Jesus that’s pure shite. Hack is too kind a word for that fusty Tory wank Stoker. The only decent bits are ripped off from the far superior Camilla by Le Fanu. If you only read one lesbian flavoured vampire story by an Irish Unionist, make it this one.

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                                  #17
                                  I like Dracula. I mean I know that's a cliche given where I live (and the ethnicity of Stoker's character). But I think it's a rip roaring page turner of a story. I re read it a couple of years ago, and it's bloody great.

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                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                                    I like Dracula. I mean I know that's a cliche given where I live
                                    I wouldn't have presumed that's a given at all, AH – I mean, one might reasonably wonder if the good folk of Transylvania all hate Dracula and are heartily sick and tired of having their sunny, attractive province besmirched by the erroneous assumption via pop-cultural osmosis that it's a miserable back-of-beyond hellhole haunted by the undead.

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                                      #19
                                      Yes the tourism side of Dracula is ludicrous. Especially since it's presented like he was a real person and it has zero to do with the book at all.

                                      "Dracula's Castle" as promoted by the Romanian tourist office (in Bran) is nowhere close to where anything in the book takes place and gets its name because maybe just possibly there is a small chance that Vlad Tepes once might have spent a single night there

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                                        #20
                                        I make it my duty to tell as many people as possible that Count Dracula the fictional character is a Székely (he introduces himself as such to Jonathan Harker) which really bothers Romanian nationalists

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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by ooh aah View Post
                                          Frankenstein is brilliant though. Every time something goes slightly wrong he becomes incapacitated by nervous exhaustion for weeks on end. I don't know whether Mary was taking the piss out of Shelley and Byron, but it's how I read it.
                                          Ha! excellent.

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                                            #22
                                            The 1818 version is indeed brilliant, and so is Dracula, for the very different reasons ad hoc describes.

                                            Do not bother reading The Last Man, which is the novel Mary Shelley wrote after Frankenstein. It's an interesting premise, but it's literally about 450 pages too long (it's about 980 pages in total).

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