![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() An unusually evocative piece of storytelling, Dracula has always excited more storytelling-both in endlessly embellished dramatizations and in the similarly ornamented accounts of its own birth process. While the nightmare aspect may well have some validity-Stoker’s notes at least suggest that the story might have had its genesis in a disturbing vision or reverie-it exemplifies the way truth, falsehood, and speculation have always conspired to distort Dracula scholarship. But that hasn’t stopped the midnight snack of dressed crab from being served up as a matter of fact by countless people on countless occasions. According to his son, Stoker always claimed the inspiration for the book came from a nightmare induced by “a too-generous helping of dressed crab at supper”-a dab of blarney the writer enjoyed dishing out when asked, but no one took seriously (it may sound too much like Ebenezer Scrooge, famously dismissing Marley’s ghost as “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese”). There are many stories about how Bram Stoker came to write Dracula, but only some of them are true. ![]()
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