Title: Frankenstein
Author: Mary Shelley
Cover artist: Milton Glaser
Estimated value: $5-10
- Milton Glaser rules. So cool to see his '60s psychedelic style brought to bear on Frankie's monster.
- I love how this painting makes the monster soft, serene, beautiful, human.
- I should really reread this. It's been forever.
- Blah, text. Next.
Page 123~
"I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me. You would not call it murder if you could precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts, and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands. Shall I respect man when he contemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness; and, instead of injury, I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care: I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth."
God I love this. One of literature's great break-up speeches.
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]
2 comments:
This is a much cooler edition than my Oxford Classic paperback. :)
(By the way, "Pop Sensation" has inspired me to take a closer look at my own collection of books ... and start my own blog! I still can't compete with the best, though.)
It is a fine, interesting cover. But of a book that to my mind is the paradigm of the Bad Good Book. As a novel per se, as a story with characters that resemble, more or less, human beings, the book is an abject failure. The scenes with the monster hanging out, hiding! outside the forest cabin and learning language, emotions and how to read by just observing the family, is laughably ludicrous. The whole relationship between Victor and the monster makes no real sense. It is amazing the Hollywood got two such terrific movies out of this -- movies that have no particular relationship to the story the Shelley I wrote, by the way.
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