A vastly over-rated novel worth about a page of Jane Austen or two pages of George Eliot.

I must confess to being the sort of reader who finds Jane Eyre tedious, so my judgment of Frankenstein is undoubtedly suspect. It plods painfully, the characters all sound alike (and like a particularly bloody-minded undergraduate's conception of how philosophy professors converse), its fragments of more inspired writing are all derivative. It is hard to conceive of Percy allowing its lines to flow from his pen.

Don't get me wrong, though. The book takes on immense and important issues. It inspired later, better writers to pursue ideas that led to modern speculative fiction, particularly science fiction (which I consider a plus; your mileage may vary). It strove to view the human condition from outside its own perspective, in a way that literature from the viewpoints of deitites, demigods and angels had not.

Anyway, I'm sure some of this is imprecise or even wrong. Have at. I just can't see how any of the leading poets of Mary Shelley's era could be plausibly posited as writing the sort of prose found in Frankenstein.

Ouch indeed. But even if Shelley's poetic voice were found in the novel, would it be that shocking that Mary would have quoted him?

BTW, if you get a chance to read Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard, do. You'll never be able to think of Shelley, Byron, or Keats the same way.

On the perverse indifference of the theoretically-bound "post-human" professor to human suffering and the harm caused by this, I'd recommend Paul Bourget's Le Disciple. Professor Adrien Sixte would fit well into the English faculty at Duke.

I'll add that if you like The Stress of Her Regard, try Declare for Powers at the height of his, well, powers. (And for gods' sake, don't start with Anubis Gates.)

Let me play devil's advocate here. Shelby writes "I just can't see how any of the leading poets of Mary Shelley's era could be plausibly posited as writing the sort of prose found in Frankenstein." This statement seems self-evident. But what if a leading poet wished to disguise his poetic voice by deliberately writing the kind of clumsy, overwrought prose he imagined appropriate to his impressionable young wife?

Remember that Percy Bysshe Shelley, still only in his mid-twenties, had a serious literary reputation to protect and cultivate; remember, too, that sensationalistic or gothic fiction was then anathema to the literary reviews that could make or break a poetic career. Knowing the damage any authorial association with Frankenstein could inflict on his literary reputation, Shelley would naturally have taken steps to obscure any role in its composition. This much should not surprise anyone.

However, Frankenstein's publishing history provides fairly clear evidence that Mary did not write the original alone. The novel was first published anonymously in 1818. In 1831, almost a decade after Percy's death, Mary published a revised edition under her own name, clearly in an effort to revive her flagging literary career. But her slapdash revisions betray such ignorance of the original's scientific ideas, geography, and careful allusive framework that any careful reader can justifiably doubt the sole authorship theory. It's possible, I suppose, that by her thirties Mary had forgotten most of what she knew as a teenager about literature and science -- but it's also implausible.

Of course, we will never know precisely what role Percy played. And as long as gender advocacy trumps careful literary history, any debate on the issue will be driven more by academic feminists' sense of literary entitlement than by meticulous engagement with the textual evidence. Sic biscuitus disintegrat.

Actually, I started with Anubis Gates and it was good enough that I've been reading Powers, on and off, since.

The criticism by Germaine Greer that "glut the maw of death" is by John Milton is slam dunk proof to me that Percy Shelley wrote that part. John Milton wrote something similar in Paradise Lost but only a poet could rewrite what Milton had written. Only Percy could have improved upon Milton. That is a no brainer. It is a slam dunk. "I will glut the maw of death" is an improvement over how Milton expressed it. Come on! Only Percy was a poetic genius who could do that. So it is pure Shelley...Percy Shelley.

Also, Percy had a fondness for John Milton and used his quotes as epigraphs for books. In Zastrozzi from 1810 by Percy, the novel opens with a quote from Milton as an epigraph! Percy knew and loved Milton. Sure enough. One great poet would know another great poet. Slam dunk! Also, the word "satiety" is one Percy uses a lot in Zastrozzi. If you read that novel, you will see how the writing is very similar. The style is very close to that in Zastrozzi.

To me, this is more proof that only Percy could have written certain parts of the book. I think they both worked on it. But the book is a classic because of what Percy contributed. He made a stupid zombie ghost story into something we still remember today. And I think Percy was responsible for that.

Here is the original quote by John Milton from Paradise Lost:

"So Death Shall be deceiv'd his glut, and with us two Be forc'd to satisfy his Rav'nous Maw."

John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book 10: lines 979-91

In the novel, here is how it is re-written:

"I will glut the maw of death..."

Now, who is able to rewrite the Miltonian phrase the way it is in the novel? Notice how Miltom used "glut" as a noun but in the novel it is changed to a verb. That is very impressive. Can a 19 year old home schooled girl with no real writing experience pull that off? I don't think so. You have to be a poet to write like a poet and know a poet.

But could Percy Bysshe Shelley pull it off? Yes, he could. He is one of the greatest poets in the English language. For him, it is no big deal.

But we see the complex legerdemain needed to transform what Milton wrote into what appeared in the novel.

So I think John Lauritsen was right. That quote is pure Shelley. Percy Bysshe Shelley. It proves to me that Percy Shelley could have only written that. It is the closest thing to a slam dunk possible. Also, go and read Zastrozzi by Percy Shelley. He uses a John Milton quote as the epigraph there too. Mere coincidence?

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

Also, I think Germain Greer is silly and ignorant when she says the novel is a bad piece of literature. It is one of the novels that we all remember. And Percy himself said that it was probably the best creation of the age. And Percy knew literature. And time has proven him right. Again, I think the best and enduring parts of the novel were most likely written by Percy.

What Germain Greer forgets to mention is that Mary's subsequent works were all insipid, stupid, banal, and horrid zombie stories that were all flops. They lacked whatever this novel possessed. I would argue that what was lacking was Percy's contributions.

Let's face it. Mary knew how to write banal zombie ghost stories. But it was Percy Shelley who transformed it into something that endures to this day. Percy was a firebrand and revolutionary thinker and visionary. Mary was a hack.