Book cover: "A Dream of Dracula" — plus other vampire stuff

• Title: A Dream of Dracula
• Subtitle: In Search of the Living Dead
• Author: Leonard Wolf (1923-2019). He was featured in a 2023 Papergreat post about another book of his: 1968's Voices from the Love Generation.
• Dust jacket design: John Renfer, using a 1941 photo that's copyrighted by RKO Pictures.
• Publication date: 1972
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 327
• Dust jacket price: $8.95 (which would a steep $67 in February 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• Dedication: "This book is dedicated Bram Stoker on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the birth of DRACULA."
• Excerpt #1: "Meanwhile, somewhere in that field of desire and Coca-Colas, hashish, LSD and old-fashioned, ordinary picnic pleasure, a child is born." [Wolf is writing about the Altamont Free Concert of 1969.]
• Excerpt #2: "Dracula is from the moment that we meet him in Bram Stoker's novel a dry horror, which is a way of saying that he is intelligent evil, unlike the wet, slime-covered things that slide through our instinctive dreams."
• Excerpt #3: "Vampires have even been reported in Outer Mongolia. And if Hollywood is any prophet, they will be found waiting for mankind on planets where our rocket ships have not yet landed."
• Excerpt #4: "Christopher Lee is the best and most famous screen Dracula since Bela Lugosi. I sat in his London living room, which felt as if all of its mirrors, couches, tables and walls had been dipped into a tasteful sea-green dye. Lee had the color television on and was watching an important cricket match. ... He spoke more or less nonstop, in a rich but curiously charged voice. It was at once evident that he took the role of Dracula with great seriousness and had read all about Stoker and the folklore of vampires. He had very clear opinions about his relationship to the role. He pointed out that he had nothing to do with the scripts of the films he made."
• Excerpt #5: "Dracula, then, is a novel that lurches toward greatness, stumbling over perceived and unperceived mysteries: Christianity, insanity, identity, a spectrum of incest possibilities, marriage, homosexuality, immortality and death." 
• Excerpt #6: "The vampire fascinates a century that is as much frightened as it is exhilarated by its rush toward sexual freedom. ... He kiss permits all unions. ... Moreover, his is an easy love that evades the usual failures of the flesh. ... And it stands for death."   
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.68 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review: In 2014, Aric Cushing summed it up thusly: "A personal journey through a landscape of childhood dreams, melancholy, and vampire sentiment."
• Rating on Amazon: 4.1 stars (out of 5) 
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2004, mirasreviews wrote: "'A Dream of Dracula' is a meditation on the novel 'Dracula' and its 20th century progeny — literary, cultural, and personal — published on the 75th anniversary of Bram Stoker's novel, in 1972. A few years later, author Leonard Wolf would publish the most elaborately annotated version of 'Dracula.' Wolf is one of the world's foremost 'Dracula' scholars, but the novel has touched him more intimately than other academics. 'A Dream of Dracula' is a collection of ruminations on 'Dracula,' vampires, blood, and death, often is a stream of conscious style, all connected, directly or loosely, to the 19th century gothic novel whose popularity is set to survive longer than even its vampiric villain did. The book's ten chapters weave in and out of the past and present."
• Other views: The book is discussed by "Tinhuviel Artanis" in a 2006 LiveJournal post: "This is ... one of the best books on the subject of vampires, vampirism, the folklore of the the vampire, and the vampire's influence on popular culture. Published in 1972, it has that air of revolution, the quest for freedom, and the celebration of the absurd wrapped neatly in its poetry." ... And Alex Bledsoe wrote about Wolf's book on his blog, stating: "Wolf was actually born in Transylvania, and the book is a dive into both the legend of Dracula in popular culture, and into the psyche of Leonard Wolf. One is obviously more interesting now than the other, but even the personal asides and extended vignettes have their entertainment value. Wolf was writing at the end of the Sixties, so some of his interviewees actually use phrases like, 'groovy' and 'turned on.'"

But wait, there's more

I've been keeping some vampiric tidbits tucked away, but they'll never make their own standalone post, so I'm posting them here:

A 2023 tweet:

Mark Hodgson of the website Black Hole wrote in 2014 about 1921's Drakula halála, a now-lost film that predates Nosferatu as an adaptation of Stoker's novel. Hodgson writes: "While the plot doesn't follow Stoker's novel, many situations are familiar from it. Dracula's immortality, his castle, his brides, Mary's suffering health after meeting him, the asylum ... possibly the story elements were juggled to dodge any copyright issue?"

Also in 2014, Hodgson wrote a fun post on Black Hole about visiting Bela Lugosi's former home.

And speaking of Lugosi, here's a photo I took recently of a Lugosi life mask mounted on the wall at Terror Trader, an amazeballs horror-themed store in Chandler, Arizona.

Receipt tucked inside 1978 Radio Shack computer programming book

Truly interesting paper receipts are going by the wayside. They were already being phased out when I launched this blog in 2010 (I think this is the first one I wrote about), and now the demise of this kind of ephemera is rapidly accelerating. We get emailed our receipts. We crumple them up and toss them in the wastebin on the way out the door. Or we get crappy little receipts with few details. But there's still the old stuff out there for us to stumble upon. In drawers. In desks. Or tucked away inside books.

This receipt remained inside 57 Practical Programs & Games in BASIC since the day it was handwritten by the sales clerk at a Tucson, Arizona, Radio Shack in October 1980. It tanned the two pages it was stuck between at the front of the book. It was a fairly pricey book for the time: $3.95 in 1980 is about $15.25 today. But, then again, home computing was a pricey hobby. And Radio Shack was probably the go-to spot for home computer enthusiasts. It remained so for quite a while. I purchased my first PC from a Radio Shack in Gettysburg in either 1993 or 1994. 

This book was written by Ken Tracton and published by Radio Shack in 1978. The subtitle on the front alluringly states "Programs for Everything from Space War Games to Blackjack ... from Craps to I Ching!" But that's a bit misleading. By my quick count, only 6 of the 57 programs in the book are games. (And I Ching isn't really a game.)

Most of the "practical" BASIC programs included probably sound very dull to today's computer users: Annular Sections, Bubble Sort, Compounded Amounts, Fibonacci Numbers, Gaussian Probability Function, Hydrocarbon Combustion, Inverse Hyperbolic Functions, L-Pad Minimum Loss System, Points on the Circumference, Vector Cross Product. These are programs, though, that provide quick results that otherwise would have required a lot of handwritten math, a scientific calculator, a reference book and/or an accountant to work out. The whole book appears to be available on the Internet Archive, if you're interested. Commenting on Goodreads in 2015, Jerry states: "I tried a couple of the programs in HotPaw BASIC on the iPad, and they still work. Why wouldn’t they? So now I have a BASIC program on my iPad to tell me the day of the week from any date post-1752."

If it's computer games you wanted more than mathematical nerdness, there were other books at the time, such as 1978's BASIC Computer Games by David H. Ahl, and, by 1984, there was COMPUTE!'s Guide to Adventure Games if you wanted to try your hand at creating something akin to Pirate Adventure, Zork or Planetfall.

March 2025 Postcrossing updates

Some Sunday afternoon postcard updates as I try to figure out why the theme song from 1975's Almost Anything Goes is stuck in my head — and why that early precursor of all of today's reality show nonsense has a rating of 8.5 on IMDb. I love 1970s culture as much as anyone, but sheesh. Anyway...

Postcrossing Arrivals

Gavin from Scotland, who works on technology that services pipelines, sent a photo postcard of snow-covered Castle Fraser and added in the message on the back: "We have actually had sun all week for a change. So hopefully spring is on its way." Alas, "Spring" is on its way here in the desert, too, as the forecast says we'll be in the mid-90s by the end of March.

Anke from Germany has a cat named Louis Vuitton and mentions that she's from Friedberg, which has a huge historic castle complex and a special connection to Elvis Presley, who was stationed there during his time in the U.S. Army.

Bona from Hong Kong, who prefers "chill" video games, writes: "It's pretty hot here too, but we are surrounded by water."

Victoria from Manchester, England, sent a postcard that features King Charles III's "Diversity and Community" postage stamp, one of four marking his new reign. Victoria writes: "I have a cat called Willow. She is the cutest in the world! When I adopted her in 2022 she had been there the longest as she was so timid, but she's really come out of her shell now. I think she's ready for a friend. I've been inquiring about kittens to join our family!"

Lothar from Germany, who is a retired mechanical engineer and works on model trains, also sent a great castle postcard featuring Meersburg. He added: "We visited it several times during our holidays in that region, but not in winter." He mailed the card with a stamp celebrating 500 years of the Wasunger Carnival.

Thanks and messages

from Postcrossing postcard recipients

Ari from Italy writes: "I received your lovely postcard (at the speed of light, too), thank you SO SO SO MUCH!! I love it, it truly made my day. And thank you for writing part of it in Italian, it warmed my heart so much. We are also very worried about the US's current situation, but I hope you'll be able to be hopeful towards the future; the world has known progress, peace and cooperation before, and I believe that oppression and violence won't survive for long."

"B" from Belgium writes: "I have recently received your postcard. I don't dare to say anything about the political trends in the US. All I can say is be patient during four years. ... I am a federal civil servant. In my country, the status of a federal civil servant is threatened. The current government want to eliminate it. I have already done a strike day. I have the impression that this is a general movement of which DT represents the hardest face. Thank you for your sending and for your words in my mother tongue. I appreciate it."

SimLing from Malaysia writes: "Hello Chris! Thank you for your cute postcard of your cats, it makes my day. I am so happy to receive the very first postcard from you since this account started. It will be the cover page of my collection. I've listened to 2025 remaster version of 'The Lamp lies down on Board Way' [sic] which just releases few days ago. Artistic!! And will always pay attention to the artist."

Jasmin from Germany writes: "Thanks a lot for your postcard! Your three cats on the picture are really cute. And I really appreciate your words. Well, D.T. is on the news every single day. And everyday I ask myself again: what the hell is he doing today? How he treats Selensky, how he speaks about Ukraine as if Ukraine caused this war. I spent some days in Hamburg last weekend and did not watch any news. But then one evening I suddenly read a headline that said Selensky was booted out the White House. And some people had annotated the article, complaining about his outfit — because he was not wearing a suit. I mean — what?? Everybody knows that what he is wearing is his kind of uniform. He even met King Charles wearing this 'normal' clothes ... Oh my goodness. As if there was nothing more important in this world. So I continued reading and started book no. 9 this year! Last year I read 55 books."

Lena from Latvia writes: "Hello Chris! Already felt the slight excitement and joy of receiving a postcard letter! I am 60 years old and writing letters to loved ones and acquaintances was a common thing once upon a time. I am glad that there is such a community of people postcrossing. It was nice to read some of the text in Latvian. (The content of this snippet is not joyful, though). A person always makes a choice where to direct his attention and with this attention feeds and supports an event, a phenomenon, a state. Just thinking out loud. ... I'm glad to live on this Earth! Every day is a gift! And people, all people are connected to each other like a single cloth, the fabric of being. We influence each other and we can do it consciously. You have powerful professional opportunities to influence the inner state of people, the vector of attention can be directed to the beautiful aspects of life. There are so many of them around! I seem to be getting carried away ... I've worked in different fields — now a school librarian. Today I taught a class at an elementary school about Astrid Lindgren's books and was pleased that some of the children took the books to read. For some reason, Fahrenheit 451 came to mind."