Or she better be — I thought her series usually started off provocatively and interestingly, but then dribbled off into confusing and weird Catholic mysticism, and also got increasingly self-involved, so any Anne Rice revenant is likely to get tedious fast. She did manage to define a whole horror sub-genre, so I’ve got to give her credit for that.
She was…unique. What else can we hope for?
Oh no, I was just reminded of her response to criticism. Authors who chew out readers for not liking their books is always cringe.
Well, you know the drill: Stake through the heart. Cut off the head and stuff the mouth with garlic. The whole nine yards.
That is, unless you WANT a repeat of Prague in 02.
Could she be undead instead? Life imitates art?
Didn’t she start her long career about the same time as Stephen King? I never got into her books or movies. I do recall something her already having a New Orleans jazz style funeral.
“I’ve had my own jazz funeral When I lived in New Orleans I owned a beautiful coffin which I used to be carried in to book signings, and I’d pop out of it to sign the books. The most memorable was when I was driven in an old-fashioned glass hearse, with a bunch of musicians from the French Quarter alongside. I lay in my coffin listening to this mournful Dixieland jazz and feeling every jostle and bump along the way; it was a wonderful experience.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/anne-rice-the-interview-with-the-vampire-novelist-on-her-daughter-s-death-living-through-her-own-funeral-and-the-dangers-of-oxford-9829902.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_funeral
I guess when an author dies the text will live on to always have the last word? With the death of the author comes the birth of new readers (butchering the late Barthes)?
Creatively, she died a long time ago.
Arguably, things like Twilight may be her fault.
This is a great example of using someone’s death as a way to list your petty grievances.
I read Interview With the Vampire. I did not like it. Since it was her first book, and her best selling book too, it seems many people agreed with me. I never bothered to read another.
I don’t know Anna Rice or her work, but I will submit what a writer and tweeter I admire greatly said about her death today:
“I honestly think I would’ve felt far more alone as a weird, bullied kid if I hadn’t read her work. And the way she wrote sex completely changed the way I perceived my own body and sexuality, for the better. God I owe her so much.”
So there. Please consider.
She was not intellectually rigid- she severed her links with Christianity when she heard of the appalling conditions in those Christian for-profit wossname places where you lock up kids.
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And she went off into new directions in some of her books, trying to find other kinds of narratives leaning towards science-fantasy rather than gothic horror.
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In fact , I am right now sitting in a pizzeria reading her second- last book.
I have for some time considered writing her about the nature of what appears to be a synthetic habitat in near-Earth space but I never got around to it. Now it is too late.
It was the same with the late SF aurhor Harry Harrison, I mailed a letter less than a week before I learned of his death :-(
I am like that Japanese series, Death Note , people I write to die.
@8 Please,please,please ,please send a letter to .
b johnson
10 Downing St
London
SW1 2AA
birgerjohansson@8
I have a similar superpower but thankfully it only affects businesses not people. I think “Whatever happened to that [restaurant/bar] I used to like 20 or 30 years ago? I wonder if they’re still around.” I check and I find out they were open until quite recently but are now out of business. I just had this happen yesterday looking up The Wharf Rat, a bar in Fells Point, Baltimore in a space that I think has served as a tavern since the 1700s (which I know is only impressive to us silly Yanks). Now closed and auctioned to a new owner, though hopefully reopening as a bar. The last time I was there was 1995 or earlier. (I was there for NYE once and the holiday season brought it to mind.)
OK, this could happen a lot in a pandemic year when many businesses have been closing, but I swear it’s a much longer trend for me. It does tend to be after the fact, not predictive.
I was a big fan, more so of the Mayfair Witches than the vampires, until her Catholicism came roaring back with a vengeance. I know things changed on that because of the stances the church would take but I never got into her writing again. That said, she had serious talent. I remember one time reading The Witching Hour and getting so drawn in by her descriptions of place I got disorientated when I looked up and saw where I was.
After hearing the news, I checked her bibliography to see how many books I’ve missed and it turns out she collaborated with her son on a couple of sequels to The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned (the second of which is coming out in February) so I may have to give that read to see if writing with someone else helped reign in her worse habits.
@9 Don’t forget
D. Trump
Mar-a-Lago
1100 S Ocean Blvd, Palm Beach, FL 33480, United States
@8- birgerjohansson
Given you wrote to all of us today should we be concerned? Is this some 7 day videotape thing where a ghost crawls from a well on my TV?
I’ve not read any of her works but I would ask:
Is any vampire story that she wrote as good as Robert Aickman’s “Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal”
N.B.B. I’m not talking about political morality but artistry. Aickman was not a saint in the secular socialist world.
Davidc1 @9, gijoel @ 12
I am on the case!
Hemidactylus@ 13
My Internet ruminations have a longer delay, you will die of natural causes before she crawls out of the TV.
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BTW BoJo was caught on camera breaking the rules, a newspaper released the image this morning. He is going down as soon as the vultures have worked out who his replacement will be.
And Trump said “go out, break some heads and make arrests” during the peaceful protests of 2020. Meadows spills it all in his book and pretends he had no share in the responsibility…
You know, give me a honest vampire any day. They only want some blood and keep out of the way in daylight.
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Remember those two ur-vampires in Anne Rice’s books that were preserved in some amber-like resin? It makes me think of Biden and the corporate Democrats. No movement, no change.
Idols…(going off topic a bit)
SpaceX has big problems with the Raptor engine production line.
I do not like Elon Musk, but for the sake of his employees I hope they solve the problems.
birgerjohansson @16: Yeah, that memo was leaked something like two weeks ago now. The Raptor 1 is a money sink, they’re going to go bankrupt if they don’t get the Raptor 2 engine working, is basically what was said.
May want to salt and burn the body just to be sure.
I liked one of her books but it’s been so long I don’t remember the title. I liked her late sister’s books about werewolves during Charlemagne’s time. Sometimes you just want to read a silly novel .
Brightmoon, you might want to read ‘The Brothers Cabal’ a humoristic dieselpunk/gothic horror. Genuinely funny stuff is as rare as hen’s teeth.
Also, it’s got werebadgers.
While reading Interview with a Vampire, I came up with what I call the Uzi test for literature: “If a character with an Uzi jumped out of the bushes on page 50 and gunned down all the main characters, would I miss any of them?”
In the case of that book, Uzi man would have become my new favorite character instantly.
Like @6moarscienceplease, I never read another one.
brucegee1962@21
Wouldn’t you be sort of pissed off at the ineffectiveness of an uzi against a vampire? Granted, he put in an effort.
I never read any Anne Rice and never really cared much about vampires. As a teenager I read The Annotated Dracula (I think it was called that), which was Bram Stoker’s novel with (wait for it) annotations. The historical and literary footnotes were pretty interesting. The story was just OK. (But PZ’s spider tales always make me think of Renfield.) A couple of years ago I finally got around to watching Buffy, though I think the appeal in that case is less the vampires than the characters–the comedy and also moral dilemmas. That about covers it for me and vampires.
I will say that vampires appeal to me a lot more than zombies. At least they’re articulate. I never got the whole zombie craze at all.
I liked Interview with a Vampire. I read several other of her books but they didn’t really work for me.
Favourite vampire tale of all time? The movie A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
brucegee1962 @21: The conventional name for that is Eight Deadly Words. Those words being “I don’t care what happens to these characters.” In other words, they’re so uninteresting that you lose any investment you might have had in continued reading.
@22: Wouldn’t that depend on what sort of ammo the Uzi was loaded with?
DanDare @ 24
That film was made by a Iranian-American director from California, I bought a couple of dvds as gifts to friends from Iran.
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Do not diss vampires. If you can hire a vampire merc (like Alucard in Hellsing Ultimate) you have a big advantage over the baddies.
Hellsing Ultimate Abridged:
Integra (over the intercom):”We are expecting some very important visitors”
Alucard:”Are they hookers?”
Integra (fights back anger) :”No”.
Alucard:” And just like that, you have lost me.”
Microraptor @ 25
Alucard used silver bullets, made from molten-down crosses.
He dispatched a couple of Twilight-derived vampires that way right in the opening scenes.
He had less luck with a Catholic ninja imbued with self-repairing nanotech, and had to make do with sarcasm. And Catholics provide an infinite scope for sarcasm.
Iirc ann Rice vampires would be unimpressed by both stakes and uzis
Whats wrong with catholic mysticism as fantasy worlds go?
Fanfic authors will certainly breathe easier, but this is a sad loss.
birgerjohansson , thanks I’m a bit book crazy Think bookaholic more than book lover . I’ve been known to read the dictionary in the bathroom.
I read The Tale of the Body Thief I believe it was called a few years ago. In it, Lestat switches bodies with a mortal. It had two separate endings depending on whether you wanted to have a happy ending or not.
I enjoyed it.
RIP