Slightly disappointed in Joe Bob Briggs this episode. This is the second film in the Nosferatu Double Feature, and he double downs on an apparent hate-on for Bram Stoker and wife Florence.
Joe Bob claims that not only is the novel, Dracula, not good, but wasn’t considered good when it was first released and that it wasn’t even mentioned in Stoker’s obituary due to no one caring for it. Thinking the novel is bad is fine, the rest though is re-writing history, or in this case probably just falling victim to a chronicle that was accidentally or purposely fabricated.
The weird narrative that the novel was poorly received was disproven by scholars a decade ago and shows that the book was actually critically acclaimed when first published. The “research” behind the book being poorly received used a small number of reviews. So, just as an example let’s say it used only 10 reviews for the research and over half were bad. When scholars looked at that research, they found that if you expanded the original reviews taking in as many as you could find it showed the novel was actually extremely well received even containing praise from people like Arthur Conan Doyle.
What is true however is that the novel did become more popular sometime after Stoker’s death. It’s been translated in over 30 languages, but that wasn’t during Stoker’s lifetime. The novel however IS mentioned in Stoker’s obituary. It says his best-known publication is Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, which was probably true in 1912, but it goes on to name his other works of “fantastic fiction” and Dracula is mentioned.
I just felt like I needed to get that off my chest. The rest of the episode is great, especially the Werner Herzog documentary spoof they did during one of the segments.
Review by Mr.DuLacVIP 7BlockedParent2022-06-04T01:54:59Z
Slightly disappointed in Joe Bob Briggs this episode. This is the second film in the Nosferatu Double Feature, and he double downs on an apparent hate-on for Bram Stoker and wife Florence.
Joe Bob claims that not only is the novel, Dracula, not good, but wasn’t considered good when it was first released and that it wasn’t even mentioned in Stoker’s obituary due to no one caring for it. Thinking the novel is bad is fine, the rest though is re-writing history, or in this case probably just falling victim to a chronicle that was accidentally or purposely fabricated.
The weird narrative that the novel was poorly received was disproven by scholars a decade ago and shows that the book was actually critically acclaimed when first published. The “research” behind the book being poorly received used a small number of reviews. So, just as an example let’s say it used only 10 reviews for the research and over half were bad. When scholars looked at that research, they found that if you expanded the original reviews taking in as many as you could find it showed the novel was actually extremely well received even containing praise from people like Arthur Conan Doyle.
What is true however is that the novel did become more popular sometime after Stoker’s death. It’s been translated in over 30 languages, but that wasn’t during Stoker’s lifetime. The novel however IS mentioned in Stoker’s obituary. It says his best-known publication is Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving, which was probably true in 1912, but it goes on to name his other works of “fantastic fiction” and Dracula is mentioned.
I just felt like I needed to get that off my chest. The rest of the episode is great, especially the Werner Herzog documentary spoof they did during one of the segments.