So I'm listening to Dracula on audiobook, and Van Helsing drives me insane.

Submitted by KindlyOlPornographer t3_ya3dip in books

So much of his dialogue ends up like a shotgun blast of weirdly worded English that half the time he speaks I have to jump back to listen again so I understand what he's yammering about.

The most egregious example is right when he's first introduced.

"Tell your friend that when that time you suck from my wound so swiftly the poison of the gangrene from that knife that our other friend, too nervous, let slip, you did more for him when he wants my aids and you call for them than all his great fortune could do."

Is he supposed to be funny? Is it just 19th century phrasing thats gone out of date? Its like listening to Yoda recite Shakespeare.

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plebotamus t1_it8z0uc wrote

I think Stoker was trying to write a Dutch person who had poor English. He should have just played it straight instead of trying to write an accent.

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KindlyOlPornographer OP t1_it8zlhl wrote

See now if they said that outright it would make more sense. Now that I know that I won't stop and decipher every sentence.

As it is, it comes off almost Biblical in that sentences are bizarrely constructed with odd grammar that makes you go "wait, what?"

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Griffen_07 t1_it9194h wrote

That does still come off a bit better than the cartoony American.

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David_Umstattd t1_it9lii2 wrote

The thing is Texans are really as cartoony as Quincy is. Right down to our accents being something we can turn on and off when we want to. Which is the kind of little detail that makes it clear Stoker based Quincy off of some real Texan he must have met once.

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N4_foom t1_itb3fmy wrote

A double post, in which both are positive karma? Usually one gets absolutely nuked. This is rare

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winepigsandmush t1_itc362q wrote

It's supposed to be cartoonish. Quincey deliberately lays it on real thick once he realises that it makes Lucy laugh.

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David_Umstattd t1_it9l8ph wrote

Show don’t tell. You show a person with broken English, you don’t just say “he had broken English” gives him a unique voice.

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KindlyOlPornographer OP t1_ita64me wrote

You can have a character mention in an aside that Dr. Van Helsing has a unique way of writing or speaking that takes some getting used to.

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plebotamus t1_it900qu wrote

I imagine it's even worse with an audiobook! Good luck.

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stuckondialup t1_itbevki wrote

The Audible version has Tim Curry as Van Helsing. It’s freaking awesome. The rest of the cast is great too.

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David_Umstattd t1_it9lrm8 wrote

The audio book is actually one of if not the best audio books ever written. It’s an unimaginable achievement given the several different narrators all sound distinct but are consistent for the most part in their voices for shared characters. Honestly it will blow you mind.

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WillSisco t1_it9mhcm wrote

>unimaginable achievement

This is somehow one of the most hyperbolic statements I've ever seen on reddit. You know this is not uncommon in audiobooks, right?

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David_Umstattd t1_itaoem0 wrote

You’re missing my point. It isn’t the multiple narrators. It’s the multi narrators that have consistency yet simultaneous uniqueness to the narrator.

So Mina Murray’s narration does a voice for Van Helsing that is the same cadence and tone as when Jonathan Harker’s narration does a voice for Van Velsing, but not only are both these voices consistant they sound unique to the respective narrators (Harker’s impersonation of Van Helsing vs. Mina’s) but this is also done for Harker’s version of Quincy, Van Gelding’s version of Quincy, Mina’s version of Quincy, Harker’s version of Lord Godalming etc.

It’s really amazing and honestly unnecessary but really adds to the cohesion as the multiple narrators can make the various characters easily get lost in the older English.

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MissTakeElley t1_it9ovxu wrote

Roy Dotrice narrating GOT...think I heard that was the most voices done in a different accent than any other audio book.

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RomeoTrickshot t1_ita93wp wrote

I am big into audiobooks and I think it's okay, probably on the weaker side tbh

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M4dDecent t1_it9mxs9 wrote

Did anyone else honestly find the entire book to be goofy af? Like how many blood transfusions are we gonna do here before your characters learn a single thing Bram? How many pages are we going to devote to nerding out about shorthand? The accent is just part of a rich tapestry of goofiness.

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KindlyOlPornographer OP t1_it9nnk3 wrote

And every time Van Helsing comes up with a plan to save Lucy it gets ruined by the jackasses surrounding him.

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Pointing_Monkey t1_itbar91 wrote

I wouldn't saying goofy, the early chapters from Jonathan's diary, and The Demeter log are pretty creepy.

The one thing that works against us, is we are reading a book which we probably know far too much about already, diluting alot of the suspense. Plus medical science has moved on a lot since Bram Stoker's time. Bloodletting was still a somewhat common practice in the 1800s, though it was in decline.

I do feel like the Lucy parts did start to drag, though. I do wonder if the story wouldn't have worked better as a novella.

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M4dDecent t1_itbv9y8 wrote

Absolutely, the early chapter are my favorite, but the rest of the book's plotting and character development etc really go off the rails. I'm not quibbling about the science, I can totally suspend my disbelief when it comes to bloodletting or, say, the coincidence of five random people having compatible blood.

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AlienFuel5940 t1_it9sq75 wrote

It's been a while since I read it, but I thought the pacing got weird toward the end. Trying to avoid spoilers but there was too much character point of view switching, and it got a little repetitive.

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byneothername t1_itawg9b wrote

I maintain that this is an unintentionally hilarious book. I was taught that it was an extended metaphor for corporations (undying entities), which makes the scene near the end where they stab Dracula and coins come out, all the funnier. The movie cracks me up too, although for different reasons.

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M4dDecent t1_itbvw14 wrote

Agreed! Interesting theory about the corporate metaphor, I'll have to read it again with that in mind (I was taught that it was all about sex and how dirty and awful sexhaving was and what kinds of trouble evil lustful sexiness could get you into.)

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byneothername t1_itdc73x wrote

It’s a funny read purely from a “is Dracula a corporation?” perspective. Dracula comes in, buys a lot of land, basically trying to do some takeover of London. They form a corporation to defeat him - Mina is their secretary! - full of people so that if one dies, they can replace them, so they’re also their own undying entity. Only way to beat ‘em. I enjoy this book and the Coppola film as very silly stories that take themselves seriously. They are incredibly cheesy.

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Beiez t1_itbelem wrote

Those blood transfusions drove me crazy man. Like he even KNEW it was a vampire who did it with all the garlic and shit, just tell us SOMETHING Van Helsing PLEASE I‘M BEGGING YOU I JUST WANT YOU TO FINALLY SAY IT.

But no. It takes over 200 pages and about twice as many blood transfusions until he finally tells the other characters what he knew all this time

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M4dDecent t1_itbviav wrote

YES. "Y'all could have had ONE conversation and fixed this early on, but instead you waited months to do enough librarian stuff until enough things went wrong that you had to finally stop doing librarian stuff??"

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jefrye t1_it93kdw wrote

Like the other user said, he's just supposed to have bad English.

I don't remember him being exceptionally difficult to understand when I read the book last year, though. Maybe the narrator's performance is making things more confusing, or maybe it would help to read along with those sections?

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David_Umstattd t1_it9l4qx wrote

You might be listening to the wrong Audio Book. You want the one with Tim Curry in it.

As for old Abe, VH speaks broken English, and when heard it sounds very characterful but when read it’s hard I imagine.

During the era most people HEARD books not read them (as books were usually read aloud to groups) thus the writing style is very different before the invention of pulp printing allowed the mass distribution of books at remarkably cheap prices made private reading the main way people experienced books.

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FriendoftheDork t1_itcj8yo wrote

Yeah I listened to this one as well. Funny thing, when it's VH PoV he speaks fairly good English, but when the other actors are citing him in their memories they put on thick accents.

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David_Umstattd t1_itdhpht wrote

Because nobody thinks THEY have an accent. It’s when other people recall their voice that an accent is given.

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FriendoftheDork t1_itduvwi wrote

Or perhaps the voice actors had different ideas on what kind of accent the character would have - thick foreign one, or a well educated professor who had lived in England for some time one.

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David_Umstattd t1_itgl2z3 wrote

In the audio book I read the accent is consistent across the narrators. But just with a twinge of that characters narration flair.

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joejoefashosho t1_itadbng wrote

Damn. I thought your complaint about Van Helsing would be the same as mine. I can't stand how the whole time he's suspecting that Dracula is a vampire, he keeps thinking about it out loud so much, which makes everyone go "what is it?" And he's just like "No no. In time I will reveal the thing I won't shut up about, but not yet!" It's like Stoker wanted to do the bare minimum but didn't want to just write "and then something suspenseful happens".

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That-Requirement-285 t1_it9x9p1 wrote

It’s like how Quincey has the funniest fucking Texan slang that doesn’t exist at all.

Van is supposed to be Dutch so Bram is just trying to write his really bad English. He’s the Chewbacca of the crew. Incomprehensible.

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MerrickFM t1_ita2r4w wrote

Bram Stoker thought he could write natural-sounding dialogue for a character who spoke broken English as a second language.

He miscalculated to an astonishing degree.

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DoesntGiveAdam t1_itamq1z wrote

I'm reading this line in Boomhauer's voice now and I can't stop chuckling at it.

Maybe Stoker was just really ahead of his time.

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CliffExcellent123 t1_itbkhxc wrote

I actually quite like that the original Van Helsing is nothing like a traditional badass hero. He's a weird goofy professor, but he's also an experienced vampire hunter.

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Pointing_Monkey t1_itbado6 wrote

I started reading it recently, having spent years reading about how Van Helsing is annoying. So I was kind of surprised how I didn't find him annoying or hard to understand when I reached his part in the book.

The zookeeper on the other hand, I have no idea what that guy was talking about. It was like reading Aramaic translated into Latin, then translated into Jimmy Nail (a dialetic of Gordie, spoken by few, and understood by far less).

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Meyou000 t1_itao4yi wrote

I read Dracula last year and half jokingly referred to it as the endless ramblings of Professor Van Helsing.

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willreadforbooks t1_itamcia wrote

Yeah, I listened to the audiobook about a year ago? It was…interesting. I did get used to it, but it seemed to drag on. I might have preferred to read it.

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Neona65 t1_itas14j wrote

I hope you're listening to the full cast version with Tim Curry as Van Helsing.

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Trebalor t1_itc3kdj wrote

Interessting. In "Salute, Jonathan" he makes an much more articulated impression. I mean he is an academic of his time probably being much more aquainted to french than to english. Modern day dutchmen have sick english skills despite their accent.

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Wavybaby38 t1_itcf4n1 wrote

I have always felt so guilty of not really liking Bram Stocker's Dracula, the book feels... lacking. It could have been so much more with proper execution but i have felt the writing is silly.

​

Glad i'm not the only one thinking that at least. Carmilla is in comparison better written tho.

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KindlyOlPornographer OP t1_itcq77c wrote

It suffers from everyone knowing what a Dracula is. If you weren't familiar with vampires in general it would be a lot more spooky and mysterious.

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Suspicious_Motor_872 t1_itcugxk wrote

I'm also listening to the audiobook at the moment. The over-egged accent doesn't bother me as much as Van Helsing's (in)actions. I thought he was supposed to be shit hot, but he's really not all that. The amount of time he wastes being enigmatic but ultimately not helping poor Lucy.

I found her final days infuriating. Van Helsing arses around decorating the place with garlic as if that's a foolproof solution. Surely she'd have had a better chance if he or one of the lads had stayed by her side every night? He's all shocked everytime finds that Dracula has been during the night, but what did he expect? The scale of his incompetence is demonstrated by the fact that they actually end up running out of people to do blood transfusions.

(I have strong feelings about all this.)

Bear in mind I'm only halfway though, so perhaps he'll redeem himself...

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KindlyOlPornographer OP t1_itcvksi wrote

I got the impression that he was trying to buy time until he was SURE it was a vampire, and playing his cards close to the chest in case Dracula hypnotized one of his friends into talking.

Also to say it was a vampire would sound insane. He had to know for sure.

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ChalanaWrites t1_ite1sv7 wrote

I thought you were going to say you specifically listened to the audiobook reading by Christopher Lee and only realised in the last fourth of the book the book was abridged.

Because that’s what happened to me.

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tygerprints t1_itcmm6h wrote

It is really odd dialogue, I think it's meant to show what a colorful, "ethnic" character he is. '

I read the book when I was about 18, and found it incredibly long, boring, and non-scary. Of course by then I'd seen tons of horror movies and probably was more than a bit jaded.

I felt the same way reading "Frankenstein." I suppose it was shocking for its time, and maybe Hollywood has jaded my view of what monster are, but I was SO BORED.

Kudos to you, though, for having the gumption to give the audiobook a go. I hope you stick with it, despite the weird dialogue.

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