Christopher Lee in “Horror of Dracula” (1958).
For years now, Joyce fans have held “Bloomsday” celebrations on June 16th, the date the events described in “Ulysses” were supposed to have taken place.
More recently, we have a substack allowing enthusiasts to follow, day-by-day more or less, the action in Bram Stoker’s classic vampire tale “Dracula.”
Confined by the pandemic to his home in Lawrence, Kan., in the summer of 2020, Matt Kirkland pulled an old paperback of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” from his bookshelf and decided to reread it.
“Being trapped in a castle, trying to get out, felt like it had a lot of parallels there,” he said.
He shared the epistolary novel with his 11-year-old daughter. As he read, Kirkland noticed the letters from the novel’s protagonist, Jonathan Harker, were also dated in the summer. He started to synchronize the readings to the dates on the letters, creating a sense that the events in the book were unfolding in real time, and heightening the drama for his daughter, who asked him daily for updates.
By the end of the year — with a lot of pandemic downtime in his hands — he’d decided to expand on the idea, creating “Dracula Daily,” a newsletter that sends a missive from Harker to subscribers’ inboxes following the book’s chronology. Kirkland queued up the posts and began sending them to subscribers in May 2021.
Count Dracula — a recluse plagued by yearning, a macabre flair for theatrics and existential loneliness — turned out to be an unlikely patron saint for the uncertain times, Kirkland said. The newsletter became a success and internet sensation: Subscribers found that serialization made the 125-year-old novel more accessible and created a community of readers at a time when many were looking for connection.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait for May 3 for the beginning.
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