Title: My Coney Island Baby
Author: Matthew J. Costello
Date of First Publication: 1993
Place of Publication: Frankenstein: The Monster Wakes
Type: Short story
Characters: No Character
Themes: MAD SCIENTIST/MONSTER; BYRONIC HERO; ANDROID
Critical Summary: “My Coney Island Baby” follows a journalist named Jack Reynolds, who seeks out to write a story for the Daily News about the long-lost past of Coney Island. He starts his journalistic adventure by visiting the Coney Island Museum, interviewing its keeper, an old man named Sid Solomon and his sick wife Myrna. Upon arrival of the museum the audience is thrust into an old, dusty graveyard of Coney Island mementos and follows Jack’s discovery of an old picture of the theme park from the 1920’s, a booth clearly labeled, “Meet Frankenstein”. As Jack questions Sid about the authenticity of Frankenstein’s existence, the old man walks to the back of the museum, unlocks a mysterious door, and brings back an ancient leather journal having belonged to Victor Frankenstein himself. Sid’s adoration for Victor Frankenstein is apparent as he holds the scientist up on a pedestal, claiming that the monster was not a monster but a ‘creation’. After close inspection of the journal, Jack is quick to believe Sid’s proclamation that Mary Shelley was telling the truth about Victor all those years ago. And he begins to plot his rise to fame as the person who discovered Frankenstein’s monster, when Sid quickly ushers Jack out of the museum, cutting his interview short.
Because of his journalistic curiosity, he breaks back into the museum, and finds his way past the dark mysterious door where he feels around, finding what feels like to be mummified flesh. The lights turn on and Sid stands behind him, his wife Myrna in her wheelchair. The mummified flesh before him is an accurate description of what once was Victor Frankenstein’s monster. Upon closer inspection, Myrna is not sick at all, but dead, her eyes open and lifeless, her head covered in stitches. Unable to accept his wife’s cancer, it is revealed that Sid had followed Victor Frankenstein’s instructions from his ancient leather journal, kept Myrna’s brain intact, and lured Jack Reynolds into the museum to harvest his organs to bring back to life his beloved ‘Coney Island Baby’. The story ends with Jack Reynolds being struck with a sedative, losing consciousness his body is taken by the mad scientist, Sid Solomon.
The story follows the theme of “Mad Scientist/Monster” as Sid Solomon lures an innocent journalist in order to harvest his organs to place into his dead wife, recreating Victor Frankenstein’s experiment of breathing life back into the dead. Like Victor, Sid ignores moral values and selfishly conducts his experiment without concerns for the consequences to follow. The consequences being that of killing an innocent man as well as not knowing for sure how his beloved will be once revived: will she kill as the monster had, turning her potential rage on her husband, or live her life as it once was?
Administrative Notes: Arianna Gritton, CSUF; Dr. David Sandner (editing)