Rating: 
Summary: Shame on Norton
Review: Traditionally, Norton Critical Editions reprint the best historical and contemporary criticism for their respective novels. But, it seems as though Norton has succumbed to the critical tide of multiculturalism and "studies" departments. Nowhere in this edition are essays attempting to provide readers with greater appreciation for the novel. Missing, too, are essays explicating traditional aesthetic aspects of novel construction, such as characterization, structure, etc. Instead, readers are presented standard multicultural fair: "Frankenstein and a Critique of Imperialism"; "Women in Frankenstein"; "Mary Shelley's Monstrous Eve"; "Female Gothic: The Monster's Mother"; and psychobabble - "My Monster/My Self." Funny, my reading missed that Frankenstein's monster had a mother. But, surely I must have read from a culturally-conditioned male, imperialist perspective. (By the way--and I am not making this up--one essay, "Coming Unstrung: Women, Men, Narrative, and Principles of Pleasure" begins with this insightful jewel: "I would like to begin with the proposition that the female orgasm is unnecessary.") As one essay notes: "There seems to be no critical consensus on Frankenstein. Various critical readings seldom take the time to read, let alone challenge, each other. They simply seem to keep adding one more perspective to the pile. Indeed, to them, interpreting Frankenstein is not a zero-sum game, in which each new hypothesis requires falsifying an old one." To take one example, consider Ellen Moers's "Female Gothic: The Monster's Mother." According to Moers, the critical scene occurs when Frankenstein first perceives his filthy creature, "the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life." The language describes a stillbirth, and, to Moers, this is its strength: Shelley draws upon her own experiences of the death of her own infants. The problem is that this interpretation can not be tested from evidence in the novel. "If one objected that Victor Frankenstein is not a woman, that he does not give birth, that the creature is alive not dead and is not an infant but full grown, and that the horror arises precisely from the difference between this delivery and all others, Moers might reply that such literalmindedness misses the point."
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing!
Review: Two things are amazing. This book and the reviewer who says "Despite many strengths, Frankenstein has fatal flaws". I find it grotesque when "critics" pick apart a masterpiece, a work that the critic themselves couldn't create in their wildest dreams. A work that they couldn't match with anything in their boring lives.
Yes, you can find something "wrong" in any work of art or science. But when something is so amazing as is this book (one of the greatest of all time, including the future), one should temper their criticism with praise. Point out all the good points , the amazing points, and the "flaws" will disappear as unimportant.
Critics are so pitiful.
Rating: 
Summary: ICKY
Review: UMMM CAN WE SAY "SUCKY" ? SORRY, BUT THIS BOOK DID NOT ENTERTAIN ME AT ALL, I THOUGHT IT WAS NOT EXACTLY WHAT YOU WOULD CALL "HORROR" WICH IS WHAT I WAS EXPECTING.. I THOUGHT IT WAS SAD AND PATHETIC
| 
