Rest in Peace Anne Rice

 

There was this one time, at Band Camp...

Where a bunch of my friends were talking about a movie they couldn't wait to go see when it came out that weekend. They had wanted to go Friday, but band camp lasted till Saturday and we had a performance right before dismissal so...

Yeah, life sucks that way sometimes I guess.

It turns out that the name of that movie was Interview With the Vampire. I went and saw it with a couple of other people that weekend. (Hey, we had a two hundred and twenty-five member marching band that year. I can't help it if I couldn't take ALL of them with me. Although it would have been nice if that one flute player had come...)

Here's the thing though: None of them told me it had anything to do with a book. Yes, you read that right. I had no clue that there was a book involved. So I totally went and totally loved it, (Remember how it had Tom Cruise and that one other guy in it? It turns out that Brad Pitt is a REALLY good actor but this is the first movie that I remember him from.) but the first inkling I had that it existed in book form was when I bought the VHS tape from Columbia House a few years later (remember them?) and Anne Rice showed up to talk about it. How cool was that? Here I was, finding out that I could read the book and watching my first ever author interview (hey, it was the 90s okay?) all at the same time. I was impressed. I headed out to B Dalton Bookseller the next day and picked up a copy of Interview and also The Vampire Lestat because Lestat was a totally awesome character and I mean, it was book two...

I fell in love that day. I fell in love with New Orleans (which I still haven't seen). I fell in love with homoerotic vampires. And I fell in love with an author named Anne Rice. 

Listen folks, I could read before I started kindergarten. I've read everything from Dick and Jane to scholarly history and an awful lot of science fiction and fantasy. I've read the Bible. I've read parts of the Book of Mormon. I've read bits and pieces of the classics for classes I've taken. I have read very damn few writers of Anne Rice's caliber and none that could paint a picture the way that woman could. Seriously, is it possible to read her work and not feel like you've physically been to the headquarters of the Talamasca? 

Seriously. I've ridden horses with Louis. I've been to Lestat's rock concerts. I've brooded with Armand. I've faced the sun with Claudia. I've toured through pyramids with Akasha. I feel like I'm part of Maharet's Great Family. I have been to heaven and hell, once again with Lestat.

And yes, Memnoch the Devil will always be my favorite Anne Rice novel. Why? Partially because of the stakes, Lestat was literally helping Satan save the people, and yes that does make sense if you read the novel. Satan, of course, is the Great Deceiver and Lestat does have a certain amount of vanity to him...

Yeah, most of the non-fiction I've read hasn't been this believable and I've read non-fic about events I can remember. 

But really, a lot of it was how well Rice set the scene. When Satan took Lestat to Heaven, I almost wanted to put the book down and start looking for my grandpa. When Satan took Lestat to Hell, I was tempted to see if I could find some of the great nutcases from history and ask them what they were thinking. Except he didn't call it Hell. It was Sheol I think. I need to reread that and if you haven't read it then what are you doing with your life? If you're smart, you're heading off to the bookstore and grabbing a copy.

You know what's weird? I read story on top of story about places that don't exist. I had been to Narnia, Middle Earth, The United Colonies of Cobol, Vulcan, Romulus and a million other places before I got my driver's license. Since I've been to other places. Hogwarts, Z'ha'Dum, Krispos,  I  can't even name them all. None of them, not a single one, has ever felt as exotic as Anne Rice's New Orleans.

I will grant you that I've never been there, but I have to wonder if a New Orleans native wouldn't read one of Rice's novels and wonder if they hadn't been someplace else. Someplace familiar, but different. A place much more mysterious and just cooler. It's a weird comparison, and don't I know it, but reading Anne Rice setting a scene in New Orleans is like the time another one of my favorite authors wrote an open letter to her husband as a blog post on their anniversary. It's the kind of love that, while certainly pure at its core, has a certain sensual nature to it. When Anne Rice described New Orleans you didn't want to travel there. You didn't want to move there. You wanted to marry the whole stinkin' city, stinky sewers, sweaty tourists, and all.

I haven't talked much about Anne's Christ the Lord series and it's because I'm a bit uncomfortable doing so. There is something about a young Christ playing on a dusty street in Egypt that just fits...

But also feels a bit like heresy. Then again, I was just talking about Memnoch the Devil so color me hypocritical. Still and all, I loved those books and I think it's time for a reread. 

But yeah, one day after I've actually managed to write a completed novel and published it and become a world famous author, and I'm writing my how-to book because I've got writers block toward my fiction writing, I'm going to have to do a chapter on setting the scene and transporting your reader. The thing is, I won't be describing how I do it. My whole chapter is going to consist of a sales pitch for Anne Rice: "Go read her stuff," I'll say, "Figure out how she did it and do it that way. You'll be better than I'll ever have a chance of being because you'll have learned from the true master."

So farewell, Mrs. Rice. Fair winds and following seas. Third star from the right and straight on until morning. 

Some of Anne Rice's works are available at the links below. If you click a link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no cost to you.

David Gerrold's Jacob

As someone who was involved in a small way in the recent Hugo controversy, I have been looking for an opportunity to read something by the other side. I wanted to get a look at what they considered to be award worthy. Imagine my sense of surprise when I found out from an anonymous source that David ”You Should Never Campaign for Awards" Gerrold had sent out a letter promoting his book Jacob. “Awesome” I thought to myself, “I can finally get a look at what the other side considers to be award winning. Maybe I can learn a little more about how things are supposed to look.” Yeah, I was sadly disappointed.

Honestly, if this is what good Science Fiction is, I'll just read drek. I've never been so bored in my life. Nothing happens in this story. It is a conversation that takes place over years between two men. There is no action. There is no hint that action is coming. The vampire in the series spends his time describing things that happened in his life before he was turned. I love a good story in flashback but that's not what this is. It is a conversation in written form. Some would call this artsy I'm sure, but I just call it boring.

The best part about this book was the beginning of the prologue. It had me intrigued. It's told in first person from the part of the vampire and specifically mentions Twilight and The Vampire Chronicles. That's hardly surprising. Combine Bella's whining with Anne Rice's homoerotic touch with her vamps and you get Jacob. You just have to do it badly. And that is probably the most annoying part of the entire work.

I'm not a Twilight fan. I read about the first hundred-forty pages of the first book and gave it to my niece. She and her mother both enjoyed it. I saw the first three movies because my then-wife loved the series. Fortunately I divorced her before I got dragged off to the last two. My attitude toward The Vampire Chronicles is completely and utterly different. I was introduced to them via the Interview With the Vampire. I didn't find out until I bought the VHS that was even a book that went with the movie even existed because Anne Rice's work isn't shelved with the SF/F stuff and I don't usually venture into any other part of the bookstore but I loved it. I loved all of the books. And so, when somebody does this poor of an imitation of one of my favorite stories it pisses me off. Anne Rice's vampires did things. They went places. They partied in New Orleans and robbed ancient tombs of their inhabitants. They fought. They cried. The fought some more. They made up. The Talamasca showed up. One of them got turned. Etc.

Gerrold's vampires kind of do all of that but it happens offscreen and the details are left out. It's all talked about later in a “well, there was a war but I don't want to go through it all.” type attitude. There's a bunch of emotional whining, a lot of “Oh, I want to be a vampire and they're all being mean to me by not turning me” and a lot of “Oh noes, the vampire just left. I may never see him again,” but again, no action. Not all action has to be violence. There were a few sexual encounters described but for the most part only in vague terms. Honestly, if Gerrold was going to go into the sex he should have done it. Barring that, he could have left it at the bedroom door. Instead, he decided to half-ass things and it sucked.

Honestly though, the title that comes to mind while reading Jacob is not Interview With the Vampire and it's not Twilight, it's Axolotl Roadkill. For those that don't remember that was a story, written by Helene Hegemann which led to a controversy about plagiarism. She admits to having mixed two other stories together using a technique called “blending.” Others said she committed plagiarism. Apparently, Hegemann won the argument because her book is still available on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble websites. Gerrold seems to have taken lessons from her because he used the same techniques. Granted, all Science Fiction and Fantasy stories are derivative in one form or another

Jacob is a book with no internal consistency. I'm sorry, but a character can have a background as a male prostitute who got paid to have sex with other men or he can have sex afterward with a boy he is supposedly in love with and not know how things work, but he can't do both. Likewise, his lover can either be a clueless newbie who doesn't know how things work or he can be experienced with a string of former lovers. It doesn't work both ways. I'm not offended by sex whether straight, gay or some other kind. It doesn't bother me. Being treated like an idiot does. If an author expects me to suspend disbelief, plausibility is key. I simply cannot bring myself to believe that someone who got paid to have sex doesn't know how to have sex. A little bit of continuity editing may have gone a long way here.

Once upon a time, Leonard Nimoy refused to do Star Trek Generations because he added nothing to the plot and was there simply as some type of exclamation point. Nimoy talks about it in his memoir I am Spock. I wish he could have had a conversation with Gerrold before Gerrold wrote the majority of his prologue. After the aforementioned good part, he goes into his writers' group. He lovingly details a bunch of characters (including one transgender person who was doubtlessly thrown in simply for box checking or, if you prefer, “the purposes of inclusion.”) who never appear again and have nothing to do with anything. It's a simple exercise in boredom and possibly revenge on people who were in a writing group with Dear Author at one point. It adds nothing to the story and should never have been included.

Then we're treated our lecture for the day: All writing must be not merely to entertain but to enlighten. That's a fascinating theory but one that falls apart in practice, especially since there is nothing enlightening about Jacob at all. That's alright though, because there's nothing entertaining about it either. Jacob is, put simply, a complete and utter waste of time. There is no reason to read it and my advice would be to save your time and money and spend it on something less painful. A root canal comes to mind.

Bottom Line: 0.25 out of 5 toothpicks (to hold your eyes open while you're reading this.

Jacob

David Gerrold

ComicMix LLC, 2015

Jacob is available for purchase here:

Some entertaining stories that are worth your money are available for purchase here: