Why I Think Anne Rice Sucks
Christopher Gross
In article <5kdoj9$5...@sjx-ixn10.ix.netcom.com>,
Hunter <devil...@net.com.com.> wrote:
>I had fun reading "Interview with a Vampire." Then I read an
>interview with Anne Rice in The New York Times. She said she was
>upset because her books were great literature and should be carried
>around in students' backpacks at Berkely along with other great
>classic writers like Tolstoy.
>
>This seemed a bit pretentious to me, and I wondered if even Tolstoy
>would say that about Tolstoy. I'm not a writer or anything, but even
>I can tell the difference between Anna Karenina and Queen of the
>Damned.
I'll agree with you there. However, I'd argue that _Interview_, while not
among the greatest classics of all time, does have literary merit. I'd
also argue that _Lestat_ and _Witching Hour_, at the very least, are
pretty decent reads. But on the whole, you're right: if Anne Rice rates
her books with Tolstoy's, she's going too far.
>I have a theory to explain why her books went abruptly downhill: One
>night Anne Rice is sitting in her expensive house in the Garden
>District watching the nightly Fox line-up on her big screen
>television. She decides its time for another shopping spree; she
>needs some new antiques.
This is where I balk. I see this attitude all the time, and it drives me
nuts. Why, why, WHY must people always assume that any bad work of art
must have been done only for the money? Isn't it possible, just barely
possible, that maybe occasionally someone might just try to make art and
do a bad job? Can *every* bad book, poem, song, painting, etc. be blamed
on the creator's working for money instead of love of art?
Okay, I'm rambling.... I'm also criticizing a general attitude, not just
that one post. So please don't take it personally, Hunting Girl!
Getting back to the subject, I think the problem with the latest vampire
novels was that Anne was trying too hard to be literary and to write
something with philosophical significance. If all she wanted was an
easy-to-write, crowd-pleasing money machine, she'd probably write
adventure stories about Lestat. At least she's *trying* to avoid that
trap.
--A grumpy old man named Chris
--
______________________________________________________________________
Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog.
chr...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
Darren Mckeeman
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Christopher Gross wrote:
> Getting back to the subject, I think the problem with the latest
> vampire
> novels was that Anne was trying too hard to be literary and to write
>
> something with philosophical significance. If all she wanted was an
>
> easy-to-write, crowd-pleasing money machine, she'd probably write
> adventure stories about Lestat. At least she's *trying* to avoid
> that
> trap.
Not very well. It seems to me that 'Interview' was good -- but after
Vampire Lestat, all she did was write adventure stories about Lestat.
Pick up 'Tale of the Body Thief' and tell me it's not even a little bit
like this.
WeaselBoy
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Hunter
I had fun reading "Interview with a Vampire." Then I read an
interview with Anne Rice in The New York Times. She said she was
upset because her books were great literature and should be carried
around in students' backpacks at Berkely along with other great
classic writers like Tolstoy.
This seemed a bit pretentious to me, and I wondered if even Tolstoy
would say that about Tolstoy. I'm not a writer or anything, but even
I can tell the difference between Anna Karenina and Queen of the
Damned.
I think it was while reading Queen of the Damned that I finally gave
up. I seem to remember a scene about Armand mixing some sort of blood
milkshake in a blender and to me it had the ring of carrying an
anachronism just a bit too far. (Of course I was doing a lot of
opioids at the time. Maybe it was a cuisinart.)
I have a theory to explain why her books went abruptly downhill: One
night Anne Rice is sitting in her expensive house in the Garden
District watching the nightly Fox line-up on her big screen
television. She decides its time for another shopping spree; she
needs some new antiques.
So, she opens up her trusty laptop (TV still blaring in the
background) and cranks out "Lestat VIII." (Not to be confused with
Rocky VIII, because even Sylvester Stallone knew when to quit.)
So, I'm reading Lestat VIII, thinking, "Gee, didn't this same thing
happen on the X-Files?" And what is this Highlander guy doing in
Chapter 6? And what do we make of this little mummy named Urkel?
I just don't get it, although I do wear black sometimes.
Hunting Girl
ps. I suppose some of the Anne Rampling stuff is okay. She's not
half bad as a pornographer.
pps. We can all agree to disagree on this, right?
Blood
Finally! Someone and something I can agree with.
The Countess
The Lighthouse Keeper
>
>pps. We can all agree to disagree on this, right?
Actually...
I agree with you completely. <shrug>
Sure... I read the "Vampire Chronicles"... you COULD have skipped
"Vampire Lestat"... but I read it anyway. I guess it was an olmost
obligatory thing. I even tried drudging through the Mayfiar Witches
trilogy. Couldn't hang with that one... it was too much like "Flowers
in the Attic" or something... I dunno... but it SEEMED too familiar.
Quite honestly... the ONLY Anne Rice books I have ever really seen as
"different" and "cutting edge" are her Sleeping Beauty books. <shrug>
Then again... maybe I'm just a perv screaming to get out. Who knows.
The Mummy was different... but to be REAL HONEST... she's NOT doing
ANYTHING different. She's just twisting a pre-existing mythos into a
romantic style. I really don't see her books as anywhere near the
caliber of writers like Tolstoy. <shrug>
But that's just me.
Fear & Bullets,
The Lighthouse Keeper
>
James Walker
devil...@net.com.com. (Hunter) wrote:
>So, I'm reading Lestat VIII, thinking, "Gee, didn't this same thing
>happen on the X-Files?" And what is this Highlander guy doing in
>Chapter 6? And what do we make of this little mummy named Urkel?
I dont mind Anne Rice, but this had me on the floor laughing
Jim
>
You cant turn a sausage into a trout--It might be a great
sausage but it will never grow fins and swim.
Lady Greycat
--
Hunter <devil...@net.com.com.> wrote in article
<5kdoj9$5...@sjx-ixn10.ix.netcom.com>...
> She said she was
> upset because her books were great literature and should be carried
> around in students' backpacks at Berkely along with other great
> classic writers like Tolstoy.
>
> This seemed a bit pretentious to me,
>
Sounds pretty damned pretensious to me too. Her books are great dark fluff,
but nothing that hasn't been done before.
> I think it was while reading Queen of the Damned that I finally gave
> up.
That book bored me to tears. That's the one I stopped at. After that, i
haven't read any Anne Rice anything but over read Interview and Vamp
lestat. (If that makes sense) I pretty much refuse to read anything else by
her, because from what I've read on the book jackets and the backs of the
paperbacks, it sounds like the Vampire books but with a Mummy or Witch or
something thrown in for fun.
Greycat
Stained
Blood wrote:
> > I have a theory to explain why her books went abruptly downhill: One
> > night Anne Rice is sitting in her expensive house in the Garden
> > District watching the nightly Fox line-up on her big screen
> > television. She decides its time for another shopping spree; she
> > needs some new antiques.
IMO Rice's work went downhill when she stopped doing it all herself...
It is well known that she has a large staff of what she calls "Angels"
that help with a great deal of the research and writing on her books.
Logically it's just not possible for one person to churn out two huge
novels every year as well as keep up the busy tour schedule and many
public appearances that she does. The later works are very choppy and
hard to read, as a result of too many cooks with their hands in the pot.
Mind you, that doesn't mean that some of her earlier work should rank up
there with the classics... anyone remember "Belinda"?... stinky!
I've read all of her earlier stuff, (including the Mayfair trilogy) and
enjoyed it for what it was... entertainment. Back in '82/'83 her books
were very influential for goths-to-be, or for me anyway, but after the
whole Tom Cruise/Interview fiasco (can we say "kickbacks for
endorsement"?)any respect that I had for her as a writer and as a person
disappeared.
Is she up there with Tolstoy? Maybe when Tolstoy starts getting
recommended as a great book to take to the beach.
Sheryl
--
Warning: Cape does not enable wearer to fly.
M.C. Deuce
Excerpts from netnews.alt.gothic: 2-May-97 Why I Think Anne Rice Sucks by
Hunter)
> This seemed a bit pretentious to me, and I wondered if even Tolstoy
> would say that about Tolstoy. I'm not a writer or anything, but even
> I can tell the difference between Anna Karenina and Queen of the
> Damned.
but you're still HAVING TROUBLE with that LEFTY-LOOSY RIGHTY-TIGHTY THING.
mc2
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Christopher Gross
In article <01bc579d$556e3860$859393d0@greycat>,
Lady Greycat <M...@hiwaay.net> wrote:
>I pretty much refuse to read anything else by
>her, because from what I've read on the book jackets and the backs of the
>paperbacks, it sounds like the Vampire books but with a Mummy or Witch or
>something thrown in for fun.
As a side note -- you CAN'T get a good idea of what a book is like fromt
he jacket copy! At least that's been my experience. Over the past few
years I've tried to avoid reading the jacket copy on any work of fiction
until after I've read it.
Christopher Gross
In article <336A7DDA...@gothic.net>,
Darren Mckeeman <dar...@gothic.net> wrote:
>This is a cryptographically signed message in MIME format.
>
>> vampire
>> novels was that Anne was trying too hard to be literary and to write
>> something with philosophical significance. If all she wanted was an
>> easy-to-write, crowd-pleasing money machine, she'd probably write
>> adventure stories about Lestat. At least she's *trying* to avoid
>> that
>> trap.
>
>Not very well. It seems to me that 'Interview' was good -- but after
>Vampire Lestat, all she did was write adventure stories about Lestat.
>
>Pick up 'Tale of the Body Thief' and tell me it's not even a little bit
>like this.
Maybe a little bit. Still, I felt she was trying to Say Something about
what it means to be human, the nature of good and evil, etc. All of
that could have easily been left out, but Rice chose to put it in. Body
Thief wasn't an adventure story pure and simple.
Maybe it *should* have been -- notice that Memnoch the Devil had more
philosophizin' and less adventure, and it was definitely a worse book.
But Body Thief and even Memnoch both had their good moments. (I won't go
into detail, but this still might be a SPOILER for some people.) I like
what Lestat does at the end of Body Thief, because it dehumanizes him --
it's something that would seem right to a vampire but wrong to a human.
And I like the ending of Memnoch because Rice makes it ambiguous -- we
still aren't sure what Memnoch is doing, if he's lying, etc. -- and
because the world does not return to the status quo ante at the end of the
novel. None of this is relevent to the question of whether these books
were written just for the money, of course....
NeWarrior
>Hunter <devil...@net.com.com.> wrote in article
><5kdoj9$5...@sjx-ixn10.ix.netcom.com>...
>> I think it was while reading Queen of the Damned that I finally gave
>> up.
I got about 30 pages into "Interview..." and I started crying. It was the
most boring book I had ever read.
--
King of All Wilcox High Goths :)
NeWarrior
"The next Goth I see, I will not chase him/her yelling 'Return to the unholy
earth from which you have risen, fiend!' " -Count Spooky
nag...@miavx1.muohio.edu
In article <5kdoj9$5...@sjx-ixn10.ix.netcom.com>, devil...@net.com.com. (Hunter) writes:
> I think it was while reading Queen of the Damned that I finally gave
> milkshake in a blender and to me it had the ring of carrying an
> anachronism just a bit too far. (Of course I was doing a lot of
> opioids at the time. Maybe it was a cuisinart.)
>
> night Anne Rice is sitting in her expensive house in the Garden
> District watching the nightly Fox line-up on her big screen
> television. She decides its time for another shopping spree; she
> needs some new antiques.
Her pretentiousness and previous poor work aside, I really enjoyed both The
Vampire Lestat and The Tale of the Body thief (the latter in particular). I
couldn't get through The Queen of the Damned, and doubt I'll ever try again,
tho'. If you are ever in the mood to try again, I suggest Tale of the Body
Thief, it was a fun read.
bruce
Christopher Gross
In article <login-ya02408000...@newsserver.cc.monash.edu.au>,
Katherine <ka...@alphalink.com.au> wrote:
>The Witching Hour was the last Anne Rice book I read, and I thought it was
>_so_ bad. Utterly intrinsic, self-indulgent rubbish. I can't even remember
>how many pages there were of the 'reports' about the family of witches, but
>all the book seemed to do was deribe how each witch looked, her figure, her
>hair etc., then send them on their way to a mysterious and gratuitous
>death.
I don't know, I really liked Witching Hour. Regardless of its literary
merit, it's probably my second favorite Anne Rice novel, after Interview .
(Though I haven't read her non-supernatural novels; they might appeal to
me more.) I even liked the historical section in the middle of Witching
Hour, the one that everyone seems to hate so much. Maybe you have to be
the kind of person who would go to grad school for history to really enjoy
The Witching Hour....
Isamu
Now I really like Anne Rice, no real reason. I can just pick up one of
her books
and read away. Plus, I get review copies of all the new stuff. But, I
must admit
that you are correct. She isn't Tolstoy. Who is? At least I can read
her and
enjoy it. Unlike Steven King (don't get me started).
--
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Albatross
Blood wrote:
>
> Finally! Someone and something I can agree with.
>
> The Countess
Countess, trim thy posts.
A
Christabel La Motte
In article <5kdrks$9...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>, Christopher Gross wrote:
>
>This is where I balk. I see this attitude all the time, and it drives me
>nuts. Why, why, WHY must people always assume that any bad work of art
>must have been done only for the money? Isn't it possible, just barely
>possible, that maybe occasionally someone might just try to make art and
>do a bad job?
Of course it's possible. Just look at the career of Ed Wood. ;)
--
Christabel La Motte *quack quack* Washington, DC
PLEASE NOTE: The grendel.net address in the From: line is a spamtrap;
all mail sent there is automatically deleted. To contact me directly,
please send mail to lamotte @ sub-rosa . com (remove the spaces first!)
Katherine
In article <5kfnbr$r...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>, chr...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
(Christopher Gross) wrote:
> In article <login-ya02408000...@newsserver.cc.monash.edu.au>,
> Katherine <ka...@alphalink.com.au> wrote:
>
> >The Witching Hour was the last Anne Rice book I read, and I thought it was
> >_so_ bad. Utterly intrinsic, self-indulgent rubbish. I can't even remember
> >how many pages there were of the 'reports' about the family of witches, but
> >all the book seemed to do was describe how each witch looked, her figure, her
> >hair etc., then send them on their way to a mysterious and gratuitous
> >death.
>
> I don't know, I really liked Witching Hour. Regardless of its literary
> merit, it's probably my second favorite Anne Rice novel, after Interview .
> (Though I haven't read her non-supernatural novels; they might appeal to
> me more.) I even liked the historical section in the middle of Witching
> Hour, the one that everyone seems to hate so much.
I think the main reason I 'hated it' was the sheer repetitiousness of
the subject matter. As I said before, the same elements over and over
again. It's at that point I noticed the deepest sense of self-indulgence-it
seemed to me that Rice spent more time describing her beauties than
actually using the words to make a good story. It's such a long book, and I
really feel a lot of it is wasted, and the tale couldn've been told in a
much sparser way which probabaly would've been more effective. And then
ending left me feeling quite deflated as well, especially after the buildup
of words and words and words!
Nevertheless, I did read the whole damm thing, which I suppose says
something about it! (even if it was along the lines of 'She can't
_possibly_ make it go on any longer than _this_')
> Maybe you have to be
> the kind of person who would go to grad school for history to really enjoy
> The Witching Hour....
I can see your point (re. grad school/history, but somehow I don't think
the book was written for that purpose..perhaps I just read it with too many
preconceptions? At any rate, I didn't enjoy it at all.
Cheers-
-Katherine.
--
"That wall paper is killing me. One of us has to go."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) on his deathbed
*********************************************************************
The Unofficial Birthday Party Homepage:
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~kateb
Luluwhite
Before you judge Anne too harshly, read Cry to Heaven- and you may just
rethink all the slamming you've just done.
Amazing book
One of my all time favorites
-Mare