DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE by...

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson (Vintage: $7). Like the Mona Lisa or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Stevenson’s classic tale of the duality of human nature has been so thoroughly intussuscepted into popular culture that it always seems to have been there: The reader never encounters it for first time. It’s interesting to discover how the original story differs from the numerous spoofs and spin-offs. The vision of a mad scientist draining a beaker filled with a foaming potion actually is a minor element in a Victorian morality tale about the dangers of unleashing man’s baser side. Unlike Faust, Jekyll pursues knowledge not for its own sake or for the power it brings but for the chance to pursue the dark desires educated men of Stevenson’s generation strove to suppress. As Hyde, he is destroyed by the violent, bestial urges he has carelessly unleashed. Although cloaked in proper 19th-Century language, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” continues to exert a powerful fascination.