Halfwayish through Zastrozzi, the first of Percy Shelley's only two finished novels (for those of you who don't know, he was mainly a poet, but also did prose, essays, plays, songs, pamphlets, etc.) - MY THOUGHTS SO FAR:
- Charlotte Brontë's Shirley is not the only novel currently boring me — I love them both but I can't lie! But like with Shirley, I have hopes that the ending will make the whole of the narrative worth it. And if not... I hope his other novel St. Irvyne is better - and at least they're both short - and I don't expect much of his novel-writing to begin with because it wasn't his primary medium
- The fact that he was eighteen when he wrote this is killing me because the prose is so DRAMATIC and imagining a teenager writing this stuff is cracking me up
- REVENGE! REVENGE! REVENGE! ok we get it
- Many similarities to frankenstein yeah -- and apparently the Wikipedia page has a whole section about this topic
- I love how in the midst of all this dramatic chaotic shit going on in Verezzi's arc there's this sweet old benevolent lady minding her business who basically just wants to adopt him
- Matilda, the love interest, considers drowning herself in the river? Like a certain someone ended up doing? Um?
- Justice for Matilda!!! She doesn't deserve this slander! Okay maybe a little but really she's not that bad and deserves a little grace
- REVENGE! REVENGE! REVENGE! Percy please
- all those shelley scholars who talk about him having a persecution complex really must have been having a field day psychoanalyzing this one huh
- So apparently there's a popular play version of this story and I'm kind of interested to see how the hell they adapted this?
- I regret reading spoilers but I am proud to say that I rightfully suspected there was an intentional use of the gothic double in the work that would eventually have some significant meaning and I was right – much has been written about Percy's use of the gothic double in several of his works as well as his own life, since he is a famous instance of someone claiming to see their own double/real doppelganger, though no one knows if this was induced by mental illness or a drug-induced hallucination, though some people believe that he actually may have had a real life doppelganger(s) because some of Shelley's friends claimed to see him when he was supposedly not around (further fuelling his paranoia). This whole tidbit also has a Wikipedia page section, I believe under the doppelganger entry... anyway!
