Last week, Anne Rice died and the in a lot of ways, we lost more than simply a great storyteller who sold a ton of copies. We also lost the anti-J.K. Rowling. Let me explain. While Rowling’s politics are mostly progressive, and it’s shown in her public support for American Democrats, her now ironic themes of inclusion in her Harry Potter novels, and like Rice, her embrace of the fantastical to represent the outcast. For Rowling, it was mainly nerdy kids looking for a group to belong to, which in this case was a wizard school of kids who are basically chosen ones. With Anne Rice, it was adults, who felt shunned out sexually, socially, and emotionally, but more a group of cursed ones than chosen ones. Anne Rice’s books were extremely popular with LGBT readers, and until her death, she was a champion of those who are gay, bi, or trans. Rowling on the other hand, has tarnished her goodwill by coming out against trans people.
Rice,
though, never lost sight of the outcast as the main focus of her writing. In
her first novel, “Interview with The Vampire”, we are introduced to Louis, who
becomes a outcast after being bitten by Lestat.
He becomes something of his husband, and not only that, they find a
bitten young girl, and end up raising a daughter together. Lets not forget,
this novel was way ahead of it’s time, being published in 1976. Complete with
no chapter breaks, it’s a bewitching horror novel, and stands out in other ways
as well. Rice’s writing is lush, and unlike King, Koontz or other writers of
this time period, has a very Victorian novel sounding proses. Her writing is closer
to Austen than Lovecraft.
Lastat is a
complicated character, who appears on and
off throughout the rest of Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles” novels, and in my opinion,
is one of the great literary creations of the second half of the 20th
century. He is both good and bad, a hero
and anti-hero, and at one point, even becomes quite literally a rock star. In one
of her last novel, “The Prince Lastat”, his bloodline gets connected to every
vampire in the world, where if he dies, they all die. He is the center of all
the vampires in the world, and also the
center of Anne Rice’s novels.
Anne Rice’s
novels are a great read, and vampires aren’t all she wrote. She also wrote historical
novels and she wrote erotic novels under a pen name. She also wrote novels
about Jesus, werewolves and angels.
Rice had a complicated
relationship with the Catholic Church, leaving it over her son coming out of
the closet and their stance on women’s rights. The main theme of Rice’s work, I
always felt, is not fitting in, as a whole, and that is what made her novels so
interesting. Her vampires where sexy, but in a mysterious outcast way, and not
a sparkling Twilight way. Vampires have that curse of immortal youth, we would
all like, but often find when they have it, it’s quite a curse. Rice understood
this better than anyone.
