From: U54778@uicvm.uic.edu
Newsgroups: alt.vampyres
Subject: Re: Anne Rice
Date: 11 Sep 92 08:44:09 GMT
 <oeeeCzi00WBO44CTFU@andrew.cmu.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago

Interesting new newsgroup.  Timely considering the spate of new vamp movies
coming out.

Anne Rice has been an interesting writer for a long time.  She also has been
one of those unique writers who do not make a big splash at first, slowly
gathering a cult following and ending up on the large reading lists.  I've
been interested since I read a NYTBR on her first work "Interview" (Geez,
was it really back in the late 70's?).  I took note that even though the
subject matter of this novel was considered at the time to be sensational
trite (consider all those grade B british dracula movies at the time) the
reviewer gave an glowing report and told how different this novel was.
Much later as I was scouring through the new arrivals at my favorite
used bookstore, I spotted it, remembered the review, and took it home.
I was dazzled.  The cliche of not being able to put it down came true.
Her characters rang with truth.  Her plotting always surprised you.
Her recasting of a world of vampires was not only believable but gripping.
And finally, her characters were three dimensional in depth, wrestling with
the anguish of such a life as well as enjoying its power.
Almost everyone I subsequently turned on to it was mesmerized as I was.
All who were similarly impressed came away from the book, caught in her
plotting hook at the end which makes the reader identify with the boy
interviewer in longing to partake in such a life.
Years later, as the cult began to expand, her second book came out.  I could
not believe that she could top her first one but there it was.  I spent a day
and night reading it and immediately read twice again.  As good as the first
one was in setting mood and developing rich characters, here was a larger
story and actually a compendium of smaller stories exploding beyond what she
had done in the first.  In the first, you had the cloistered life in New
Orleans, the complex relationships between the two men and the female child
vampire, the exquisite travels thru Transyvania, the drama of the Theatre
in Paris.  As rich as these were they paled to wbat she created in the
second book.  The early tales of being an impoverished countryside nobility,
the showdown with the wolves,  the friendship of the violinist, the scenes
in Paris,  the coven,  the delving deeper into the vampires roots with
Maurice, the gift of freedom to his suffering mother.  I was in vampire
heaven.  These tales were some of the best story telling I had ever read.
But now I must be critical.  Though the modern wrapping tale of Lestat as
rock star wasn't without some uniqueness and interest, IMO, it didn't have
the richness of the core of the book.  I found it flat in comparison.
And as you can probably guess, after waiting excitedly for the third book,
I found it messy and lacking the richness of the first two books.  I was very
disappointed.  I couldn't even finish The Mummy.
I know that many do not share my opinion of flatness of her later works but
for those who do, I couldn't stop wondering why.  What fell apart in her
writing that gave such promise in the first two works?  Several years ago,
I read an interview of her in the NYT Sunday Mag.  The answers seemed to be
all there.  Rice grew up in New Orleans and that is why she could give these
background scenes such love and attention.  She had been developing this
embryo of a book on vampires for some time.  And then her daughter died.
As she described it, she almost truely went insane with the anguish.  Her
husband pushed her back into her work on the novel to get her mind off the
sorrow and she wrote her angst and woe into this novel, introducing the
child vampire into the story as a mirror of her need to see her dead
daughter alive again.  Out of such human suffering do we enjoy such
moving and innovative works.  Later, in the second book, she again she
used the same device, painting her long suffering mother who had passed away
after a long sickness.  She gave the breath of life back to her as Lestat's
mother and again an unforgetable character and gripping scene was born.
Who would not want the power to give an eternal and wonderous life to one's
own suffering and dying loved one?  At the risk of over analyzing, I can
also see the masterful scenes of friendship, the yearnings to understand
the world, and the reaching for a more wonderous world of a higher
level of existence as an enlightened, luminous vampire being as the personal
, imaginative ways of dealing with crushing sadness.  My heart breaks for
her.  And yet through these travails, she has enriched the world of the
reader.
I see the modern wrapping rock music story of the second book as just the
need to bring her and us into the present.  The third book, IMHO, is being
weaved after all her personal demons have been quelled.  It has a pressing
concern for the plight of women as shaped by one wing of comtemporary
feminism as an organizing theme.  Before you flame me,  I am not running
down any form of feminism here.  I am just pointing out that the deep
personal emotions that extruded out in the first two books have been
replaced by a shallower, wider concern for all women and I miss that
depth.
I am still waiting with excitement for the fourth book coming out soon,
hoping that she again will reach inside her soul for the wellsprings of
her characters and themes and not just string out more stories on the
basis of what she believes her now adoring followers want.
ALAN ROGERS
Newsgroups: alt.vampyres