'Dracula': The novel as an actual entity.

 A metaphor for the workings of the universe according to the theory of ‘Process and Reality’ would be the novel.  Take ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker as an actual entity.  As a whole congealed event the elements in it are happening at the same time intertwined, separable conceptually but single.  The different modes of information are plied linking the characters.  All the apps of the age, stenography, wax cylinder recording, letters, legal instruments and the vade mecum of travel, Bradshaw’s.   The modern 19th.Century is pitted against the malign chthonic forces rising out of the East.  The hope of rationalism that everything can be explained by theory is ‘decided’ which means in the etymology favoured by Whitehead, cut off.  Transcendental sacramentals, holy water, rosary beads, the figured cross, superject their energies.  The congeries that is the novel is drawn from the mind of Stoker-god who is both within and without his novel.   He is sunk in the text and its embodied genius takes him, its putative author, by surprise.  The book becomes energic  when this happens.  It lives, it lives.