It Lives In Paperback!

Frankenstein is one of those stories that has become ubiquitous in the culture. Everyone knows a little bit of it, even if almost no one has actually read the novel itself.

The movies, especially the famous Boris Karloff efforts have transformed a pathetic creature of pain and power into an icon of merchandising and myth.


When I teach Frankenstein (which I haven't done in several years now), I always push the notion that it's a ghost story, and that there is no external evidence that the creature even exists. No one but Frankenstein sees his creation, though according to his narrative many suffer its effects. Even at the end when the Creature reveals himself to gather his creator's body, it can be argued that the madness which consumed Frankenstein has infected our ultimate narrator and that the ghost is a figment of madness, a madness which is a threat to the very nature of man's soul.


All that said, the book is in more paperback editions I'd wager than just about any other story of its kind. I own at least a dozen myself and I don't really try to collect them. The noirish cover at the top of this post is a real prize, making something else out of Mary's admittedly creaky story. I'm sure that sold a few to the hard-boiled crowd.


Some focus on the creator himself, some on the creature. Many use the iconography of Karloff's mug, but many find other ways to show the creature. He's been transformed by marketing as much as by his wayward father, lifted from grave time and again to sell a stil quite good book.


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