Peter Ackroyd, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein
Chatto; $32.95; 296pp
Since its publication in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been subject to numerous adaptations. From Richard Brinsley Peake’s play Presumption (1823), to the schlock-horror ham-fests of Hammer Films, to Brian Aldiss’s Frankenstein Unbound (1982), in which a scientist travels back in time to meet Victor Frankenstein and Shelley herself, the book has proven, and continues to prove, a favourite with writers across a range of genres. Conceived in the summer of 1816, at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, Frankenstein is a novel for all seasons. It’s as if this story of a revivified corpse were itself predestined to be brought back to life at intermittent intervals.
Peter Ackroyd’s enjoyable romp, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, is the latest incarnation of the legend, one that attempts to reproduce the slightly breathless narrative style of Shelley’s original gothic romance. But while there are similarities of style, there are conspicuous dissimilarities of plot. For example, the author has relocated the majority of the action from Europe to London, a change that allows him fully to exploit his considerable expertise in that area (London: The Biography was published in 2000, The Thames: Sacred River in 2007). The other big change is that Ackroyd has incorporated real figures into the story. Thus, both Mary and Percy Shelley are intimately involved in the story. Indeed, the first hundred pages of the novel read like a who’s who of Romantic England. Thomas Hogg, Humphry Davy and Samuel Coleridge all make appearances. As for the mental atmosphere inculcated by these intellectuals – Ackroyd is good on that, too, complicating the conventional picture of the Romantic relegation of reason in much the same way that Richard Holmes has done in his recent book, The Age of Wonder.
Cutting his studies at Oxford short, Victor relocates to London in order, as he puts it, to study ‘the structure of all animals endued with life’ and to identify the source of that life. To this end, he begins experimenting, first on the carcasses of animals, and eventually on those of human beings. These are supplied by the notorious ‘Resurrectionists’ – hopeless drunks who make a living furnishing the burgeoning scientific community with fresh (or freshish) subjects for study. By the time they secure the TB-ravaged but otherwise flawless body of Jack Keat, Victor’s studies have advanced to a new level and his workshop in Limehouse is kitted out with two formidable electrical columns.
Mary Shelley was remarkably coy when it came to describing the fateful moments when the creature actually comes to life, but Ackroyd exhibits no such squeamishness. Indeed, he fairly revels in them.
With trembling hands I engaged the power of both [columns] and watched in fascination and excitement as the electrical fluid surged through the young body. There was the slightest agitation and then, to my alarm, dark red blood seeped out of his nose and ears … His teeth began to chatter, with such violence that I feared he might bite off his tongue; I placed a wooden spatula between his open lips. At this point I noticed that his penis had become erect, with a small bead of seminal fluid at its tip.
Unlike Shelley’s original monster, who takes to violence largely as a result of the cruelty visited on him by human beings, Ackroyd’s monster does so immediately, which may suggest that the author’s Catholicism has got the better of Shelley’s humanism. Not that there is anything wrong with making such a major change. Frankenstein is a tool to think with and has always been subject to reinterpretation. Indeed, this isn’t the only tweak that Ackroyd gives to Shelley’s subtext. Victor’s idealistic references to the perfectibility of the human species have a distinctly twentieth-century feel.
But perhaps this is to make the novel – three hundred pages of high pastiche crammed with excitable characters and dazzlingly unsubtle portents – sound more serious than it actually is. In fact, it is enormous fun. A splendid blend of fact and fiction, of science and scientific humbug, it electrifies a classic of our literature.
Chatto; $32.95; 296pp
Since its publication in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been subject to numerous adaptations. From Richard Brinsley Peake’s play Presumption (1823), to the schlock-horror ham-fests of Hammer Films, to Brian Aldiss’s Frankenstein Unbound (1982), in which a scientist travels back in time to meet Victor Frankenstein and Shelley herself, the book has proven, and continues to prove, a favourite with writers across a range of genres. Conceived in the summer of 1816, at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, Frankenstein is a novel for all seasons. It’s as if this story of a revivified corpse were itself predestined to be brought back to life at intermittent intervals.
Peter Ackroyd’s enjoyable romp, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, is the latest incarnation of the legend, one that attempts to reproduce the slightly breathless narrative style of Shelley’s original gothic romance. But while there are similarities of style, there are conspicuous dissimilarities of plot. For example, the author has relocated the majority of the action from Europe to London, a change that allows him fully to exploit his considerable expertise in that area (London: The Biography was published in 2000, The Thames: Sacred River in 2007). The other big change is that Ackroyd has incorporated real figures into the story. Thus, both Mary and Percy Shelley are intimately involved in the story. Indeed, the first hundred pages of the novel read like a who’s who of Romantic England. Thomas Hogg, Humphry Davy and Samuel Coleridge all make appearances. As for the mental atmosphere inculcated by these intellectuals – Ackroyd is good on that, too, complicating the conventional picture of the Romantic relegation of reason in much the same way that Richard Holmes has done in his recent book, The Age of Wonder.
Cutting his studies at Oxford short, Victor relocates to London in order, as he puts it, to study ‘the structure of all animals endued with life’ and to identify the source of that life. To this end, he begins experimenting, first on the carcasses of animals, and eventually on those of human beings. These are supplied by the notorious ‘Resurrectionists’ – hopeless drunks who make a living furnishing the burgeoning scientific community with fresh (or freshish) subjects for study. By the time they secure the TB-ravaged but otherwise flawless body of Jack Keat, Victor’s studies have advanced to a new level and his workshop in Limehouse is kitted out with two formidable electrical columns.
Mary Shelley was remarkably coy when it came to describing the fateful moments when the creature actually comes to life, but Ackroyd exhibits no such squeamishness. Indeed, he fairly revels in them.
With trembling hands I engaged the power of both [columns] and watched in fascination and excitement as the electrical fluid surged through the young body. There was the slightest agitation and then, to my alarm, dark red blood seeped out of his nose and ears … His teeth began to chatter, with such violence that I feared he might bite off his tongue; I placed a wooden spatula between his open lips. At this point I noticed that his penis had become erect, with a small bead of seminal fluid at its tip.
Unlike Shelley’s original monster, who takes to violence largely as a result of the cruelty visited on him by human beings, Ackroyd’s monster does so immediately, which may suggest that the author’s Catholicism has got the better of Shelley’s humanism. Not that there is anything wrong with making such a major change. Frankenstein is a tool to think with and has always been subject to reinterpretation. Indeed, this isn’t the only tweak that Ackroyd gives to Shelley’s subtext. Victor’s idealistic references to the perfectibility of the human species have a distinctly twentieth-century feel.
But perhaps this is to make the novel – three hundred pages of high pastiche crammed with excitable characters and dazzlingly unsubtle portents – sound more serious than it actually is. In fact, it is enormous fun. A splendid blend of fact and fiction, of science and scientific humbug, it electrifies a classic of our literature.
