Kim Newman's novella "Coppola's Dracula"

[lethargic_man]

Last week I finally watched Apocalypse Now. I'd foresworn Vietnam War films years ago, no longer being prepared to put up with the USA expurgating its guilty conscience over me (as the bad vibes tended to spill over into myself). However, so many things tie into Apocalypse Now—Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kim Newman's novella "Coppola's Dracula", Alex Garland's The Beach^*, etc—that I felt I ought to make the effort. (Even so, the first day I was going to watch it I quailed and bailed out, fearing I wasn't feeling positive enough.)

* "The horror." "What?" "The horror." "What horror?" "The horror."

Actually, if anyone had told me Apocalypse Now had enough of a humorous side to it to counterbalance its heart of darkness, I might have watched it years ago.

Now that I was finally familiar with Apocalypse Now I decided to reread "Coppola's Dracula" (which you can read online—or ask me for a compactly (fifteen sides) typeset version suitable for printing out). "Coppola's Dracula" is the story of the filming of Bram Stoker's novel, as told in the setting of Newman's Anno Dracula books, in which Dracula won, Van Helsing ended up with his head on a spike—and Stoker's novel, written from his political imprisonment at the hands of the Dracularian regime, is a pedagogical alternate history showing how Dracula could have been defeated.

In the alternate world of Anno Dracula, though, Coppola makes his Dracula film in the seventies, and it corresponds, in our world, not with his Dracula but with Apocalypse Now. Which meant that when I first read it, I did not get any of the references, and was rather annoyed by the horrible contortions Newman's Coppola did to the plot of Dracula.

Now, however, with Apocalypse Now fresh in my brain, I found it hilarious (and kept laughing out loud reading it on the Tube to and from work today). As a brief exemplar of why, here's the opening paragraphs:

A treeline at dusk. Tall, straight, Carpathian pines. The red of sunset bleeds into the dark of night. Great flapping sounds. Huge, dark shapes flit languidly between the trees, sinister, dangerous. A vast batwing brushes the treetops.

Jim Morrison's voice wails in despair. 'People Are Strange'.

Fire blossoms. Blue flame, pure as candle light. Black trees are consumed ...

Fade to a face, hanging upside-down in the roiling fire.

Harker's Voice: Wallachia ... shit!

And if you want to find out any more, you're going to have to read it yourself.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

A lot of the best of Newman is like that; hilarious if you know the sources and just opaque if not.

Jim Morrison's voice wails in despair. 'People Are Strange'.

The other thing, that leans on, of course, is "People are Strange" being the theme from The Lost Boys, though it's a cover: Echo and the Bunnymen, IIRC which I am not at all sure I do.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

The other thing, that leans on, of course, is "People are Strange" being the theme from The Lost Boys

Aargh! I should have got that! :o)