Anne Rice
INTERVIEW WITH
THE AUTHOR
David Byron speaks with Anne Rice
David Byron is the founder of NVF Magazine, an online publication that promotes new voices in horror fiction and film. His past special guests include Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and Edwin Neal of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame. His latest projects include Queens of Scream: The New Blood
***
One of America's most read and celebrated authors, Anne Rice is known for weaving the visible and supernatural worlds together in epic stories that both entertain and challenge readers. Her books are rich tapestries of history, belief, philosophy, religion, and compelling characters that examine and extend our physical world beyond the limits we perceive.
Anne lives and works in California. Anne's life experiences and intellectual inquisitiveness provide her with constant inspiration for her work.
Horror Garage: Greetings, Anne, it's wonderful to have you here. I can't resist asking this first; being a Christian writer now, do you ever have anyone come up to you and say "Wow! I didn't know religious people wrote that scary stuff!"
Anne Rice: There has always been a viable link between Christian fiction and supernatural fiction, even of a dark or scary sort. Dickens' Christmas Carol is only one example of the "ghost stories" that were printed every December around Christmas time in English magazines. Dickens' Christmas Carol is his most famous ghost story, but there were many others published. Of course, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has always been recognized as a deeply moral tale with implications for modern science, and for the Enlightenment Humanist view of nature. In our own immediate time, J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings is perhaps the most respected Christian supernatural and scary fiction, and it has spawned many imitators in which "good and evil" are prominent themes. My vampire novels have always been about the search for redemption, and the theme is almost impossible to miss.
HG: What was it that made you want to become a writer? For me, it watching old Hammer Films and reading creepy comic books.
Anne Rice: Even as a five year old, I wanted to be a writer: I wanted to tell stories and live in stories. I was deeply inspired not only by motion pictures like Hamlet with Lawrence Olivier -- first film I ever saw -- but radio programs as I grew up in the forties, when there was a radio in every room. Lux Radio Theater, Suspense, Broadway Is My Beat -- shows like this were filled with wonderful stories. Also every Sunday there were Catholic religious stories on a program called The Greatest Story Ever Told that came right after Bishop Sheen's Catholic broadcast. I loved these stories, and again, I loved living in them. Films like King Solomon's Mines greatly inspired me, and I was also inspired by lives of the saints, which I read all the time in school.
HG: How has becoming a Christian affected your writing? I noticed you don't write vampire novels anymore. Any connection there?
Anne Rice: In 2002 I consecrated my work to Christ. I am working on His life story in a series of novels, but will probably punctuate these with several supernatural novels that are entirely Christian in content and framework. I will not however return to my vampire novels. They are a closed body of work now, as they reflected my long journey through the darkness to God and are no longer relevant to my Christian viewpoint. I do not want to re-open them because I cannot write them with sincerity. But I treasure the responses of my readers, especially those who cherish the Christian themes in The Tale of the Body Thief and The Witching Hour. Just about every novel I ever wrote, involving witches or vampires, was about salvation and the grief for a lost faith. It was about people struggling in a nihilistic world to find deliverance and meaning. But once I returned to the church and consecrated my work to Christ, "the long dark night of the soul" ceased to be my subject matter!
HG: What do you think of the films that have adapted from your books? There always seems to be a "loss in translation" when it comes to film adaptations. Stephen King told me he found that out the hard way.
Anne Rice: Of my work, there have been only two true adaptations. Interview with the Vampire which did capture the anguish of Louis, the hero, wandering in a godless world and aching for salvation, and concluding in despair that he could not find it. The other was the mini series The Feast of All Saints, which was true to the longings and hopes of the young free people of color before the Civil War. This did not involve the supernatural, but the work was about outsiders, and this is a theme uniting all my work -- even my most recent Christian work.
HG: What is your favorite book? How about film? I know that may cover a lot of ground, but I couldn't resist asking.
Anne Rice: I can say without question that my favorite "book" is the Bible. I'm completely involved now in studying the Bible, and frankly enjoying it as one of the most amazing documents I've ever encountered. The stories of the Old Testament cry to be made into high quality films, and my novels about Jesus Christ are firmly based on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. When it comes to secular fiction, I have always cherished Dickens' novels more than any others, particularly Great Expectations, with its haunting portrait of Miss Havisham and her wicked treatment of Pipe and Estella. This is, in many ways, a dark tale with slight supernatural overtones, and it involves a great dark mysterious house which represents an evil that must be escaped. This is my favorite book of all time.
Favorite film: This is hard to say and the answer varies from time to time. Immortal Beloved and Amadeus are both about music, and I love these films very much. Their lushness and sensuality and their devotion to art are all elements that I use in my fiction, no matter what the theme. Again, my attitudes change. One film I adore is The Apostle by Robert Duvall about a simple Texas preacher and his attempt to serve God. It is the polar opposite of a lush film like Amadeus, but I truly love it. On TV right now, The Tudors is the series that I watch weekly without fail. Again there is lushness, sensuality, history and vital moral questions. I just love it.
On modern horror films, I don't know that I have seen any that have the depth for which I search. I think The Innocents, with Deborah Kerr, was a magnificent film, but that is now probably forty years old. I do think that in Interview with the Vampire, we achieved -- David Geffen, Neil Jordan and all involved -- something that was more akin to the deep horror films of the past with their moral intensity and their preoccupation with understandable good and evil, as well as the mysteries of the fallible human soul. I prize this film very much and love seeing that it is still very much alive for young viewers buying it on Amazon. I love reading their passionate reviews. More recently? I haven't seen much I do think the field is wide open for great films to be made. People are crying for them. But material gets wasted. We could use a magnificent film involving the Jewish story of the Golem, but I haven't seen one. This is a magnificent Jewish tale. We could use a re-examination of Poe because his stories had such psychological meaning. We could use the vampire more as a metaphor for the predator in all of us, and the inhuman in all of us. But I don't see this happening. Perhaps with new techniques we will see greater supernatural films.
HG: Do you think you will ever write another vampire novel? Sorry if the question puts you on the spot.
Anne Rice: No, I will never write another vampire novel again. I want to do supernatural novels, especially for my younger readers, but I will not reopen the vampire ouvre. It's finished. And so are the stories of the Mayfair Witches. I hope my best work lies ahead of me. This will not be Young Adult fiction, but I do have my more ardent and philosophical young readers in mind. They have responded wonderfully to Memnoch the Devil, one of the most densely religious of the vampire novels, and I cherish their response.
HG: Do you have any current or future projects you'd like to share with us?
Anne Rice: My most important project is Christ the Lord. And this will be four books. My second project, as mentioned above, will be a Christian centered supernatural series, but it is too early to describe how this will work. I do want my books to be shorter and more intense, than the sprawling immense novels I wrote in the past. As I grow older, my ideas are clearer and I am able to bring the manuscript closer to my idea of perfection, and I have come to respect the highly intense shorter novel. Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, for example, is as powerful as his longer For Whom the Bell Tolls. The Turn of the Screw is a powerful short supernatural novel of great literary strength and mystery.
HG: What is your personal opinion of horror fiction these days? It differs so much from the classics, like Poe and Lovecraft. It seems a lot of writers have lost grasp on what the term "horror fiction" really means.
Anne Rice: Horror fiction or supernatural fiction should be as good and as meaningful and as important as any other kind of fiction. There is no reason that a great supernatural novel cannot rival Tolstoy or Dickens. We need writers who have the vision to do this -- unfortunately, in modern day America, there is prejudice against "horror" fiction. People forget the powerful stories of Nathanial Hawthorne. They forget the immense originality of Edgar Allan Poe. They forget the controversy and interest that surrounded Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I have always wanted my "horror" novels to be profound novels, and I want everything I write to have meaning. I think "horror writers" should dig into their souls and find the true moral source of what they write, and try to have their work reflect an uncompromising fidelity to those truths and those torments.
HG: Well Anne, it was an honor to have you with us, and I am sure my readers will really enjoy this as well. And don't forget you are welcome at my magazine any time.
Anne Rice: Thank you.
END
***
WWW.ANNERICE.COM
Chronology:
Interview with the Vampire (1976)
The Feast of All Saints (1979)
Cry to Heaven (1982)
The Vampire Lestat (1985)
The Queen of the Damned (1988)
The Mummy (novel) (1989)
The Witching Hour (novel) (1990)
The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)
Lasher (1993)
Taltos (novel) (1994)
Memnoch the Devil (1995)
Servant of the Bones (1996)
Violin (novel) (1997)
Pandora (novel) (1998)
The Vampire Armand (1998)
Vittorio the Vampire (1999)
Merrick (2000)
Blood and Gold (2001)
Blackwood Farm (2002)
Blood Canticle (2003)
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2005)
Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (2008)
Under the pseudonym Anne Rampling:
Exit to Eden (1985)
Belinda (1986)
Under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure:
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)
Beauty's Punishment (1984)
Beauty's Release (1985)
Short fiction:
October 4th, 1948 (1965)
Nicholas and Jean (first ch. 1966)
The Master of Rampling Gate (vampire novel) (1982)
