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2009 Reading #10: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1. Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left by Susan Braudy
2. The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
3. From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes.
4. A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
5. Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer.
6. The Days of Rondo by Evelyn Fairbanks.
7. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
8. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.
9. The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson.
10. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Kind of cheating to count this as a book, but then this isn't really about keeping score so much as keeping track. This is one of those works I should have read a long time ago; it suffers from the fact that I know it so well by reputation. The suspense of the story hinges on the reveal, which is unfortunately the one thing we all know about it. Hyde is not so terrifying as one might have come to believe, from films or comics or what have you; he's a shrunken creature, reflecting the proportion of evil to good in Jekyll's basic nature. (I wonder if the hulking Hyde in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen* was Alan Moore's extrapolation of the growing evil weighing upon Jekyll's soul.) The story is interesting in that it is told mostly in the third person, whereas the other works in this collection were all in first; I think the story suffers by not having been told by Jekyll himself. If nothing else, it got me thinking about Jekyll and Hyde characters that have followed, the Hulk being the most obvious. I'd be curious to hear others that y'all can think of.
* Now I've read the stories of all the main characters of TLoEG except for Allan Quatermain.
2. The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini
3. From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes.
4. A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
5. Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural by Jim Steinmeyer.
6. The Days of Rondo by Evelyn Fairbanks.
7. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
8. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.
9. The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson.
10. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Kind of cheating to count this as a book, but then this isn't really about keeping score so much as keeping track. This is one of those works I should have read a long time ago; it suffers from the fact that I know it so well by reputation. The suspense of the story hinges on the reveal, which is unfortunately the one thing we all know about it. Hyde is not so terrifying as one might have come to believe, from films or comics or what have you; he's a shrunken creature, reflecting the proportion of evil to good in Jekyll's basic nature. (I wonder if the hulking Hyde in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen* was Alan Moore's extrapolation of the growing evil weighing upon Jekyll's soul.) The story is interesting in that it is told mostly in the third person, whereas the other works in this collection were all in first; I think the story suffers by not having been told by Jekyll himself. If nothing else, it got me thinking about Jekyll and Hyde characters that have followed, the Hulk being the most obvious. I'd be curious to hear others that y'all can think of.
* Now I've read the stories of all the main characters of TLoEG except for Allan Quatermain.
no subject
TSCoDJaMH is one of my favorites from long back. I love how Stevenson refuses to describe Hyde, merely saying he's somewhat "simian" or that there was something ineffably wrong about his appearance. Moore was taking off on what Stevenson said about the character, re: Jekyll shrinking and Hyde growing. A fine book. I love that it was based on a dream.
no subject
I agree that it was wise of him not to go in a specific direction with the description of Hyde; I can think of a lot of ways that could have gone wrong.