First, yes, yes, all my yes. The more good guides to best-editions for various works that are written, the less time I have to spend tracking them down, which can take a <i>long</i> time for some works (ugh, Eastern works in English translation are <i>hopelessly</i> difficult to assess).<p>Second:<p>> It is now frequently required reading in schools, and passing classroom references to “Shelley” may more likely mean Mary than Percy Bysshe (the obscure author of Prometheus Unbound).<p>This is a joke, or at least intense hyperbole, right? I'd wager way more people have read "Ozymandias" than <i>Frankenstein</i> (unfair because one's a page, and one's hundreds of pages, yes, but still, if we're talking frequency of mention) and several other of his verse works come up fairly often, while little other than <i>Frankenstein</i> does for Mary. If someone just asked "are you familiar with Shelley?" I would 100% for sure think they meant PB. I'd easily concede, of course, that <i>Frankenstein</i> itself is the most well-known (if not most widely-read) thing either of them wrote, though.
The silly version of Frankenstein almost kept me from reading this excellent book. After finally reading it this year, I was irked that I had only known Hollywood's cheesy version for so long. Here are some of the major misconceptions:<p>1. The monster is not called Frankenstein. Frankenstein is the Doctor.<p>2. The monster is not a bumbling fool but rather extremely intelligent.<p>3. There is no definite description of the appearance of the monster in the book and certainly no bolts in the neck.<p>4. It is also unclear how the monster was animated. There is no lightning rod and no "it's alive" moment.<p>Frankenstein is at or near the top of many best of all time book lists. Shelly's <i>The Last Man</i> is also one of my favorites.
> “Sometimes, watching him, I thought of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, a simulacrum of the human that entirely failed to express any true humanity.” But that of course is a remark inspired by film images rather than the novel. For the debatable nature of “true humanity”—and whether Victor Frankenstein (never Doctor in the novel) or his Creature can best express it—is precisely the dilemma of Mary’s original fiction.<p>Being alive but somehow, stomach-churningly inhuman <i>in appearance and expression</i> is precisely what's so awful about the monster in the novel. Inhumanity (again, <i>of appearance and affect</i>). The difficulty of expressing this visually is probably part of why the Monster in film is simply cadaverish and covered in scars and bolts and such.<p>Its exact appearance—dimensions and general Lovecraftianly-left-to-your-imagination inhumanity aside—and the details of the process of its creation, get little page space in the book. There are (framing) story reasons for the latter to be lightly treated, in fact.<p>Whether one can pin the Rushdie quote's inspiration to the film depiction depends on how one takes "express". It could, and was perhaps intended to, cover film and book alike.
>Mary Shelley’s original three-volume novel was published quietly and anonymously by Lackington and Co., Finsbury Square, London, in March 1818 and to little acclaim.<p>In fact it was an immediate hit and sold out quickly.
Yes! I read a little bit of Frankenstein in college, but I think I lacked too much knowledge of the various other books that Shelly references and probably some historical context to fully appreciate it. A recent video by Extra Credits on YouTube [1] made me want to go and find an annotated copy to read.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnSmGFmP8qU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnSmGFmP8qU</a>