Anne Rice, what are you ON?

[louiselux]

I nearly fell off my chair in disbelief at Anne Rice's reaction to critical reviews of Blood Canticle on Amazon. She replies, in a big fat tantrum the like of which I have rarely seen, to the people who have posted 'outrageously negative' comments:

"You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective. Indeed, you aren't even reading it. You are projecting your own limitations on it."

Sorry, you can't say that, Anne. You can't say that people are reading your books the wrong way, or that they should only read them with the correct perspective snapped firmly into place, like a set of swimming goggles.

"And no, I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself. I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance."

No one is that good. Still, it gave me a badly needed laugh after a morning spent in a seminar on focus groups.

ETA: although it strikes me that laughing might not be entirely fair. On second reading her diatribe suggests that she's not quite right, somehow, mentally.

Comments

[crotalus-atrox.livejournal.com]

Agreed: no one is that good. And Anne sure as heck isn't a virtuoso.

Silly Anne.

[lisa-bee.livejournal.com]

Wow. The more I see of her reaction to fans/editors/sanity the more amazed I am.

She needs a deflation of her ego, first, and then a really, really good editor. Neither are likely to happen, so we'll just get to laugh at her, I suppose.

[canthlian.livejournal.com]

What annoys me is that she continually gets published and republished, and no-one will publish my tentacle rape fanfiction porn. I mean, come on! They're exactly the same thing!

... err ...

Well, sort of.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

It's like watching a train crash.

You don't get all this? Fine. But I experienced an intimacy with the character in those scenes that shattered all prior restraints, and when one is writing one does have to continuously and courageously fight a destructive tendency to inhibition and restraint. Getting really close to the subject matter is the achievement of only great art. Now, if it doesn't appeal to you, fine. You don't enjoy it? Read somebody else.

Actually, it's not. What it really is like is reading the response of a fanfic writer who has been sharing her stories with no one but her devoted friends/fans who tell her how wonderful they are - and then, all of a sudden, she falls over this nest of fanfic critics who have been happily taking her (very bad) stories to pieces, and she's outraged because, obviosuly, they just don't get it - so how dare they express an opinion? The idea that because she's put so much emotional energy into communing with the character that her writing must be great is, well, it's so amateur. In the worst possible sense.

But your stupid arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander. And you have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies. I'll never challenge your democratic freedom to do so, and yes, I'm answering you, but for what it's worth, be assured of the utter contempt I feel for you, especially those of you who post anonymously (and perhaps repeatedly?) and how glad I am that this book is the last one in a series that has invited your hateful and ugly responses.

Oh my.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

... how glad I am that this book is the last one in a series that has invited your hateful and ugly responses.

The fanfic writer analogy rings true - this last part reminds me of someone saying that unless the horrible reviews stop, they aren't going to write anything else, ever! Considering the amount of people that apparently love the vampire chronicles, it's also petlant and ungrateful of her to say that she's glad it's over.

[lesadoreyl.livejournal.com]

I boggled when I first saw her rant too, but then I came across this (http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1095804613613&call_pageid=968867495754&col=969483191630%3C/a).

Rice will turn 63 next month, and the death of her husband Stan while she was writing Blood Canticle seems to have hit her hard. She had been married to him for 41 years and she said he was her model for Lestat.

So I guess that explains it.

[aramuin.livejournal.com]

This seems to be doing the rounds but I do agree about the fan-fic writer style of her rebuttal.

It seems to have drawn overwhelming reactions for fans of many different fandoms and (thanks perhaps to LJ and similar public debate areas) many are not of Anne Rice's fandom.

To me the rant reads as either a very immature hissy fit or a way of lashing out at pent up frustration and pressure from countless different things.

It is a pity for her and for genuine fans of her work as this is undoubtly what she will be remembered for. Not her dead-tree works but an internet attack on people who were expressing their personal opinions on what the end of a favourite series.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

That's very true - I think it will stick in people's minds far longer than her writing, sadly. It's really the thing that you just do not do, or you do in private, if you want to retain any dignity at all.

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

S'funny how it lists her address as New Orleans - she moved from New Orleans some time ago, the papers were full of it. (The New Orleans tourist office were saying it would lose them a lot of money). I can't spell beaurue beauro byu-row

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Bureau, but byu-row is far nicer and looks like Japanese. I always have to think about how to spell it.

I think she's gone off the rails a bit since her husband died, either that or she has all her mail delivered to her old house, which I suppose she might have kept.