FRANKENSTEIN

• by Mary Shelley
• [rated by pbs readers as #43]
• 143 pages

Well, it’s finally happened. I got waylaid on a book for so long that I just had to move on. The book is The Eye of the World, The Eye of the Wheel, something like that – so popular that he wrote dozens more of them.

Clearly, the demographic he was talking to did not include this babe. Oh, I’ll finish it. I’m 500 pages in with as many to go, but light as the plot is, I know I’ll be able to pick back up. But damn! I couldn’t let another month go by, as many already had. So I gently put it to the side.

The book club that I visited with my Ruby book had mentioned Frankenstein and really liking it. So I grabbed it and started in. Even though every page is about 3 normal pages, it’s still shorter than Eye of the World!

What a curious surprise! I had no idea that the book would begin as it did, although the writing carried me right along.

The creation of the Monster was almost anti-climactic.

Frankenstein makes him, hates him and discards him. Huh? Where does he go?

It is then that you see the skeleton for so many plots to come! This is Jaws! You don’t want to see the shark often. You just have to know he’s out there! I suspect this was an extraordinarily fresh approach to horror.

Oddly, as an ex-therapist, I find myself completely unwilling to therapize this – monster as creator’s dark side, etc. It seems that, to do so, would completely obfuscate the horror that is so important here.

Ten extra points down to you Arlene Francis for another salient point. The plot is utterly ridiculous. She doesn’t even explain building the creature very well. Yet, in the properly explained nomenclature of the piece, you sort of

go with it. You gotta give some style points for that. Maybe especially when the creator has a long discussion with the Monster.

“He can talk? In paragraph form?” you almost sputter with an imagined spit take.

I’m half way through. I can’t imagine the monster won’t kill pretty much everybody, but maybe I’ll be surprised!

DONE.

Okay, here’s the thing. This was written in 1818. Great honk!

I think we have taken everything this book introduced and made it into so much more – that I don’t have a feeling for what it introduced, you know what I mean?

Certainly there is the beginning of horror here, no small feat. But in the eyes of this reader, it is so overtalked that I never felt the fear intended. Again, could be a

missed-the-boat on my part. Also, the plot is so clear from the first page that it holds no interest for me. Again, 200 years too late for the rapture.

But there is an omission that I think is glaring. Frankenstein – the creator not the monster – goes wild when he is young and creates the first artificially made man. For reasons that aren’t the least bit explored, he makes him the most hideous looking man possible. Why?

Mary Shelley, the author, doesn’t know a thing about how he could do this so she just skims over it. As a writer, I can dig that. Too much explanation can be icky in my book. But why the most hideous thing to look at of all time?

And then he just dumps it, to survive on its own. Sort of described as his coming out of a trance, he just forgets about it. Huh?

Okay, there is also the strangeness of monster and creator chatting in a cabin, after years. In this talk, the monster says that if he will just make him a companion, all will be well but basically if he doesn’t, he’ll make his life hell.

Not an unreasonable request, seems to me. Creator does nothing for a long time and then finally gets down to making him a Midge doll. But oh, it is just too horrible, so he rips it apart in front of monster and says no way.

Why does it drive him mad? Seems like a solution worth a try to this reader.

By the way, I apologize if I’m giving anything away here. Read the first capture only and you’ll get the gist.

By the way, my choice would have been no one ever saw the monster. This would be way cooler. Does it really exist or is this creator guy just a psychotic freak? There you go! Suspense!

Then, at the very end, the creator absolves himself of any wrong doing. Creating the thing was just boys-will-be- boys. No harm done. Making the score be monster all bad and creator? Way delusional.

I don’t know. I’m glad to have read it. I have a dim feeling of why it is as important as it is. I just think there are – as I write this – at least a dozen books, if not a hundred, that do it better.