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Stanford’s “Another Look” book season continues in 2022 with Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The discussion will take place at 7 p.m., Tuesday, April 12, at the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall. Go here to register.
Stevenson’s short 1885 novel is universally known but little read today – an important reason why it needs “another look.” Vladimir Nabokov called it “a fable that lies nearer to poetry than to ordinary prose fiction.” The Russian author compared it to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary or Gogol’s Dead Souls.
“Is Jekyll good?” he asked. “No, he is a composite being, a mixture of good and bad, a preparation consisting of a 99% solution of Jekyllite and 1% of Hyde … He is a hypocritical creature carefully concealing his little sins.” Popular author Stephen King agreed that Stevenson’s novel is moral tale, “a close study of hypocrisy – its causes, its dangers, its damages to the spirit.” Utterson, he contends, is the book’s real hero.
Henry James called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a “short, rapid, concentrated story, which is really a masterpiece of concision.”
Stevenson’s dark vision had come to him in a dream – as it had for Mary Shelley, who went on to write Frankenstein, a book that Another Look featured in 2018. Both works share a fascination with the limits of science, medicine, and technology on our humanity.
Acclaimed author Robert Pogue Harrison will moderate the discussion. The Stanford professor who is Another Look’s director writes regularly for The New York Review of Books and hosts the popular talk show, Entitled Opinions. He will be joined by eminent novelist Tobias Wolff, founding director of Another Look and a National Medal of Arts winner, and Ana Ilievska, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Stanford Humanities Center and a lecturer in Stanford’s Department of French and Italian.
Books are available at Stanford Bookstore and Kepler’s – but the book is also widely available online and is offered as a free e-book on Amazon as well.
The event marks our first in-person event since the beginning of COVID in 2020. The occasion will also be offered virtually for those who cannot attend on the Stanford campus. (Registration encouraged, but walk-ins are welcome.)
We survive on donations, so go here if you’d like to further the cause of good books. Register HERE to attend what looks like it will be a terrific event!
Tags: Ana Ilievska, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Pogue Harrison, Tobias Wolff