The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

For today's countdown to Halloween's reading suggestion, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. I blogged about it in 2021, I wanted to revisit it properly this year. Every Halloween, I try to read one horror classic, so this year I reread that one. It was the first horror novel I ever read. What's to discover of the story, after the numerous adaptations and a plot twist everyone knows? Well, everything. Jekyll is a morally ambiguous character, for one, and a bit of an hypocrite. His alter ego Hyde is not physically deformed monster but a dwarfish evil man, whose appearance is uncanny and unsettling, but is mostly left to the imagination of the reader. The same goes with the bulk of Hyde's crimes, implied but never depicted, save for a savage murder. And finally, the plot unfolds like crime fiction. Even knowing that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person, the resolution remains shocking.

Long John Silver

There are many things I really enjoyed in Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight, the oldest theme park in the UK. Among them, the pirates section (I cannot remember the real name it had right now). A lot of what I saw there seemed to have been taken directly from my childhood's imagination, but there was at least one classical character. You probably have recognised Long John Silver from Treasure Island. Although I always imagined Silver to look far more cunning. This one looks a tad dumb. I showed himto Wolfie, who did not seem impressed. All the same, it was pretty cool to meet him there so to speak and I wished I could have been a child again just for that afternoon.

Dr Jekyll, Mr Hyde and me

For today's countdown to Halloween post, I have decided to blog about a classic horror story that is maybe neglected this time of year:I am referring to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Everybody knows it, yet I don't think that many people have read the novella. It inspired many adaptations,yet neither Jekyll nor his alter ego Hyde have an iconic image like Dracula or the Monster of Frankenstein, images which we can transform into Halloween decorations easily identifiable and so on. Hyde is ugly, but in the end he is physically a man. I discovered the book in 1990, in my library, just like other horror classics. That year, I read them many of them: Frankenstein, Dracula, Carmilla. I became a proper horror fan, absolutely obsessed by old horror stuff. Yet I did not develop the same fascination towards Stevenson's classic. I don't know why. I rediscovered it in 2006, during my literary countdown to Halloween and really enjoyed it. I wanted to read it in original English and bought the edition you see here (not the greatest cover, but the Introduction was interesting). I still think it deserves more than it has. My Halloweens are sometimes dominated by different themes or tropes, when I read and watch mostly horror fiction about a certain creature: the year of ghosts, the year of vampires, the year of werewolves, the year of Lovecraftian horror, etc. Maybe I should have the year of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, where I will reread the book, its unofficial sequels (I read one which was great), and watch its many adaptations. And of course blog about it when Halloween comes again.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

 For today's countdown to Halloween post, I am suggesting that you watch an animated adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. It is simply called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This may seems... strange, but I found it a few days ago and I really enjoyed it, in spite of the silly things added to appeal to children. Some changes are maybe more justified: Edward Hyde instead of a short man as he was in the novella is here a hulking brute. All things considered, it is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the source material and it has some genuinely scary moments. Better still: it does not shy away from the tragic aspect of the story. The body count is even higher than in the original story. And the murders, even though they are never directly depicted, are meant to be gruesome. I have to say, this is the kind of film I wish I could have watched when I was a child (although I don't think my parents would have allowed me to watch this). Anyway, it takes a bit less than an hour to go through, so here it is and enjoy:

Revisiting Treasure Island

I first read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson ten years ago. It was one of these books I kept wishing to read, but always waited for the right moment to read to fully appreciate. You need a lot of free time, ideally during a holiday. If I discovered the novel itself as an adult, I was familiar with the story since my childhood: I first read a pop-up book adaptation (this one) bought in Montreal when I must have been six or seven. The plot had been reduced to a skeleton of itself, but the main characters were there and it got me into pirates, treasures and it influenced a lot of our make belief games, especially during summertime. Then there was a Japanese animated series back in the 80s which my brothers and I really loved, even though the pirates, even Long John Silver, had turned into physics defying ninjas. I was eagerly waiting for every new episod. Then, years later, I bought this edition of the original novel when I first came to England.

It actually took me ten years to read it, which is pretty shameful. What struck me about the novel is that it can be read as proto crime fiction of the hardboiled kind, espcially at the beginning. All the pirates showing up at the Admiral Benbow, looking for the map that will lead them to the MacGuffin, it's all very common to modern crime fiction, if you think about it. Just like is the search for the treasure, where the investigation and the interaction between the characters more important than the resolution. Now I will not reread the novel any time soon as I have so many new books to read, but I have rediscovered the old animated series and I intend to binge watch it soon. I have seen the first two episodes and with all its flaws, it is still very solid entertainment.

Marooned

This painting is titled Marooned, it is the work of Howard Pyle, whom I blogged about here. He popularized the rather romanticized image we have of pirates. A character being marooned in a desert island was a common trope in adventure fiction, especially pirate fiction. I am uploading this image here because even though such dramatic event does not happen to common people in our day and age, the state and the painting does echo strongly in our psyche. Once does feel marooned when he longs for holidays, for instance. Which I will have this summer, but not just yet, so sometimes I feel very much like this pirate.

I uploaded it for another reason: my interest for piracy is rekindled every summer. I used to have pirates make belief games as a child, great fun. This year I am going on holiday in Devon, so very close to the sea. I already chose what I would read for my stay, but I might bring another book in case I finish this one and I was pondering about bringing something set by the sea, or in the sea and featuring some sort of pirates. Treasure Island starts not too far from Devon, but I already read it. Which makes me think: I have no idea what book I would bring with me on a desert island. Too many to choose.

Scary reading suggestions

Since Halloween is coming soon, I thought I would give some reading suggestions to my readers. I did the same thing same time last year. I may not be particularly inventive year after year, but this blog is called Vraie Fiction after all and should be sometimes about fiction. This year, instead of giving a list of books, I will give short story titles (and hopefully I can find them all online). So here it is:

-The Judge's House, by Bram Stoker. Not merely because the story was written by the author of Dracula, but because it is a really good spook in its own right. And it has some elements that Stoker will later develop in his most famous novel. (Talking about Dracula, I will blog about it soon. I have wanted to do so for years as it is my favourite horror novel.) What I particularly love about this short story is that the ghost is not merely scary, he is malevolent and can hurt physically. And there are rats, which makes the story even scarier.
-Canon Alberich's Scrapbook and Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad by M.R James. Respectively the first story he wrote, the first story I read of him. Little gems of atmospheric horror. Alberich is more straightforward as a ghost story and so is the threat, but Whistle has a long, slow build up of terror that is a real feast for the reader.
-Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson. I only read it once, more than twenty years ago, in a French translation, but I still remember it. I am going to read it again this month. Why did he kept haunting me? Stevenson is great as putting the little sinister details that stick to your mind like a bloodthirsty leech to your vein. I don't want to spoil the ending, but it just makes me shiver still today.
-The Tapestried Chamber by Sir Walter Scott. A classic ghost story from the early days of the genre. 
-The Red Room by H.G. Wells. Wells is of course better known as a science-fiction writer, but he shows he can work in other genres. This story is a deconstruction of the genre, almost an anti ghost story, but it still manages to be scary.

So here it is, there is enough here to keep you in the mood until Halloween.

Inland Odyssey

I might be milking the Odyssey's analogies a bit too often on this blog, but there you go. My recent trip felt like an odyssey, even though my wife and I travelled by train most of the time, with a few bus and boat trips here and there. It certainly felt like we were entering another world when we got into the Lake District.

The weather, for one, was radically different than what we have had so far here in the South. July in the Lake District often felt like a mild September day. Not that I complain about this: I was getting tired of the heat and was glad to be in cooler temperature. I am a Northerner everywhere I go: I feel comfortable in Northern weathers and felt that Cumbria was oddly familiar. The mountains, the large lakes, the forest, it is in a way quite similar to the Saguenay region in which I grew up. In another way, it is not so similar, as no town we visited was positively horrid. Civilisation espoused nature instead of spoiling it. Place for place, I would rather live up there than here, if my wife and I could both have similar jobs. It is not exactly my Ithaca, but it could be just as good.

My travel book was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. I wish I had discovered this book earlier, when I was Jim Hawkins's age. Still, Stevenson is always enjoyable to read. I am still reading it, will probably finish it soon. People might think it was odd to read a sea adventure book for a journey that was done inland. Still, I thought it was appropriate for the trip, as it is the story of a sort of odyssey. Travelling novels (road novels?) are about the return as much as the journey, and the changes lived by the character through the process. I don't know if I changed much these last holidays, I still think I rediscovered things about myself.

Romans de voyage

Je ne sais pas si c'est parce que je serai en vacances bientôt, mais je lis des romans de voyage ces temps-ci. Je viens de terminer L'Énigme du retour de Dany Laferrière (cadeau de Noël de ma mère) et j'ai commencé à lire Treasure Island, le classique de Robert Louis Stevenson. deux grands livres, de manières bien différentes. J'espère parler des deux bouquins prochainement, au moins par citations.

Il y a deux romans de voyage: celui qu'on lit en voyage et celui qui parle de voyage (ce que les Anglais appellent parfois un road novel, comme il y a des road movies). Le déplacement géographique illustre le voyage intérieur des héros, leur cheminement. En littérature, les exemples sont légions.

Je ne lis pas assez Stevenson, on oublie parfois que même s'il faisait dans la littérature à genre, il était un écrivain remarquable, avec non seulement du style, mais un style, capable de rendre une époque révolue avec authenticité. J'ai découvert Treasure Island d'abord dans une courte adaptation en livre 3-D, ce genre de bouquins avec les personnages et le décor en papier qui sortent des pages. Le roman était résumé en une dizaines de pages avec peu de texte. Puis il y a eu la série animée japonaise, qui m'a vraiment fait aimer accrocher. J'ai retrouvé le générique sur youtube et ça me donne toujours les mêmes frissons. Étrange que je lise l'original aussi tard dans ma vie.