PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

In less than two months, Christmas night of this year will mark the sixtieth anniversary of my first encounter with Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, and the beginning of my love and admiration for her which continues to thrive in my soul to this very day.

Apparently my father had defied my mother's instructions and had purchased for me---then a five year old in my fourth month of kindergarten---two of the Aurora Plastics Company's models, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man.  I remember that my mother became quite vocal about this purchase, but, over time, would be quite helpful by painting the models after my father had assembled them (like the model airplanes that were so popular in this days), as he continued to purchase them.  By Spring of 1964, at the end of the week in which my tonsils were removed, I had acquired what I still consider the canonical set:  Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Mummy, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Phnatom of the Opera, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  I am impressed with the fact, th, at on the back of the assembly diagram of several of the models, the Aurora Company gave a synopsis of the creature's origin (The Wolf Man, The Mummy, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon).  Because the others were taken from established literature, no synopsis was provided---evidently a strategy intended to compel young people to read the novels.  (In my case, it worked . . . except for Leroux's novel, The Phantom of the Opera, which I refuse to read).

But this process began with the model of Frankenstein's Monster, which was an effect of Mary Shelley's novel.  Approximately a month later---on a Friday night when my parents hosted one of their card parties, during which (that particular night), my father's impending thirty-eighth birthday was celebrated---I was awkaened to see the Universal Film, Bride of Frankenstein, which was already in progress, broadcast by one of our local "Shock Theaters."  I was so groggy from sleep that I was only able to be awake, and to remember, the hoisting of the Monster on the pole, his imprisonment, and then the scene in the blind man's hut; then I fell into a deep sleep and was put back to bed.  But, that was my second encounter with Mary's Monster, and also with the inimitable performance, in that part, of the great Boris Karloff.  (Five years and several weeks later, I, not yet eleven years old, was devastated by an early morning broadcast, during my breakfast, that Karloff had died of emphysema and other complications in London, England.  The host of the morning radio show that my mother listened to every weekday morning---a show that normally broadcast news and "easy listening" music---seemed very shook up by the news of Karloff's passing; and declared that, during the four hour duration of that morning'a broadcast, the entire line-up would be wholly focused on Karloff:  facts of his life, some samples of his recorded readings, and some light discussions of his major horror films.  When I arrived at elementary school, that morning (fifth grade), I encountered---for the first time of my life---my peers' well deployed abilities in psychological bullying:  I was mocked, jeered, and called names for my sorrow at Karloff's passing.  Almost all of those thirty little bastards have something nasty to say about me, and my suddenly raw emotions.

I have written elsewhere about how, despite "official" pressure to choose otherwise, I selected Mary Shelley as the subkect of my Sophomore project in my academic department at college, History.  Every student in every academic major was required to do both a Sophomore project and a Senior thesis, as well as completion of the required and electice courses, to graduate.  In the History Department, the course that administered the Sophomore project was titled "The Craft of History" (which we majors renamed, "The Crap of History"):  in those days before the Internet, it taught the bibliographical components of historical research and the uniform style and content of footnotes.  The Sophomore project was to compile one hundren index cards (3X5 size, always in stock at the University Bookstore) a particular historical subject.  Texts cited could be monographs, articles, and essays in professional journals or well established magazines:  newspaper items, and all biographies, were excluded.  My project was "the critical response to Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, 1818-1978, one hundred and sixty years."  Once I declared that in class, I became subject to another round of psychological bullying, as several persons---my academic advisor, the department chairman, several professor with and outside of the department, and several of my classmates attempted to persuade me to select another subject.  I flatly refused.  I was fascinated to read the pattern of critical response to Mary's first novel; and to see that it came in waves, positive or negative, depending on the time frame.  I turned in my one hundred cards, all properly written in exact bibliographical form, on the day they were due, and was given a very begrudged A.  Twenty-three years later, at a private reunion luncheon, the subject of my defiance, and of the questionable logic of my choice, was mentioned in conversation.  Even then, they were still talking about it.