The Letters of Mina Harker

Book 0: Semiotext(e) / Native Agents

by Dodie Bellamy, Emily Gould

Genres: Literary Fiction; Horror

Synopsis

Bellamy's debut novel revives the central female character from Bram Stoker's Dracula and imagines her as an independent woman living in San Francisco during the 1980s.

Hypocrisy's not the problem, I think, it's allegory the breeding ground of paranoia. The act of reading into--how does one know when to stop? KK says that Dodie has the advantage because she's physical and I'm "only psychic." ... The truth is: everyone is adopted. My true mother wore a turtleneck and a long braid down her back, drove a Karmann Ghia, drank Chianti in dark corners, fucked Gregroy Corso ...
--Dodie Bellamy, The Letters of Mina Harker

First published in 1998, Dodie Bellamy's debut novel The Letters of Mina Harker sought to resuscitate the central female character from Bram Stoker's Dracula and reimagine her as an independent woman living in San Francisco during the 1980s--a woman not unlike Dodie Bellamy. Harker confesses the most intimate details of her relationships with four different men in a series of letters. Vampirizing Mina Harker, Bellamy turns the novel into a laboratory: a series of attempted transmutations between the two women in which the real story occurs in the gaps and the slippages. Lampooning the intellectual theory-speak of that era, Bellamy's narrator fights to inhabit her own sexuality despite feelings of vulnerability and destruction. Stylish but ruthlessly unpretentious, The Letters of Mina Harker was Bellamy's first major claim to the literary space she would come to inhabit.

Release date: October 19, 2021

Publisher: Semiotext

Print pages: 272

Sample

July 3, 1986

Dear Reader,

KK says all horror novels begin with the locale and a description of the weather, "The Reader likes to feel situated." It's a cool clear San Francisco night, streetlights diffuse the vast panoply of the heavens but if you drive an hour north the stars are astonishing, the sky speckled like the black-suited shoulders of a guy with really bad dandruff, so many holes in the black your heart speeds for a moment what ifthe black collapses a misty glow flows along my recumbent silhouette, long white gown, long white neck, a livid face leans toward the bed, translucent claws lift my hem immobile thighs, white, white over my breasts floats Nosferatu's head, an exaggerated egg-shape, powdery with pointed ears, his lips stretch open pencil-thin, taut I am so aroused my clitflicks like a tongue so tender is his bite but I will never love him, he's too weird too intense from my open throat dark rivulets curve sucking sounds in stereo suck across the suck dim air of the Roxie Theater and suck dissolve in the audience's laughter ,faces radiant with ridicule and popcorn I shout, "That's me on the screen you assholes!" The laughter pauses then soars, fine grains of salt stinging the corners of its collective mouth. Who am I anyway? In Dracula, "Mina Harker" was this plainJane secretarial adjunct to the great European vampire killer, Dr. Van Helsing. I'm the one who gathered the notes, the journal entries, letters , ship logs, newsclippings, invoices, memoranda, asylum reports, telegrams-I transcribed them and ordered the morass so the Reader can move through it without getting lost no hassle, no danger-i.e., a plot or an amusement park, Safari Land, Transylvania Land. For my performance evaluation Van Helsing wrote, "Oh, Madam Mina, how can I say what lowe to you? This paper is as sunshine. It opens the gate to me. I am daze, I am dazzle, with so mllch light, and yet clouds roll in behind the light every time." Mter Dracula corrupted Lucy Westenra I was next on his hit-list, but four brave Christian men destroyed 50 coffins filled with dirt to save my soul-but turn to the last page of Stoker PRESTO ABRACADABRA on the anniversary of Dracula's death my "saved" loins heave forth an offspring. A.k.a. "sequel." A big tease, a big mistake-for the past hundred years imitators have barged into my story and hacked out enough sequels to fill a library bunglers lvith no credentials they keep shackling me to the most insipid suitors 9 macho types who stomp around with crucifixes and bad British accents their acting as wooden as their stakes: these men save my soul? Dodie's the latest intruder, getting it all wrong in her attempts to be civilized-forget about her forget about them-this is The Letters of Mina Harker THE AUTHORIZED VERSION if you want anything done right you have to do it yourself sucking sounds suck up the silence my throat is a cunt never will I perish in domesticity like aJane Austen heroine-I dart across the moor fog condensing on my long plait of hair, my lives my deaths multiple as orgasms HARKEN THE WORDS OF MINA HARKER, FORTUNE COOKIES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. The monstrous and the formless have as much right as anybody else. Springs poking my butt, his arms and legs jutting in all my directions KK and I sit on the velvet sofa in front of a twelve-inch black and white TV, eating our first wedded meal, champagne and Kentucky Fried. He coos, "Don't youjust love Hill Street Blues?" I look deep into his eyes, "Whatever." I'm happy as a hen, reminiscing eleven o'clock last Thursday night, frantic meows at the foot ofmy bed lvere driving me crazy he appeared on the landing with two cans of cat food. I was wrapped in chenille froIn neck to ankles, an irregular V of flesh splaying from cleavage to throat, I opened the door ... reaching for the can opener my gaze skimmed the bulge in his tight white pants, "Kidney in gravy is nice but how do you feel about Bits 0' Beef or Kitty Stew?" The chenille was so hot so heavy-one tug at the tie and I became a shattering of V's, a Duchamp nude. I reach for an extra-crispy drumstick my...