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Mr.. Stanley Wiater |
Not surprisingly, most novelists would be satisfied to find success in one genre, using a single identity. But Anne Rice, whose latest volume in her "Chronicles of the Vampires" series was 1989's Queen of the Damned, has in fact found varying degrees of success under three entirely different identities.
The first, of course, as the best-selling writer of such horror novels as 1974's Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, a sequel published a decade later. Interview with the Vampire, her first published work, was written in what was reportedly a five week, midnight to dawn marathon. In spite of her also having published two well-received historical works--Cry to Heaven and The Feast of all Saints--she is not at all displeased for being best known as a writer of elegantly written--and disturbingly sensual--novels. (The beginning of a new series, The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned also appeared in 1989.)
However, Rice is also no longer hesitant to admit that she has written mainstream novels using the pseudonym ''Anne Rampling,'' which include Belinda and Exit to Eden. The Rampling books are more noticeably erotic in content than those published under her own name. Even so, the degree of contemporary explicitness in these works pale by comparison with her trilogy inspired by the Sleeping Beauty legend. Using the pseudonym "A. N. Roquelaure," these are full-blown, S&M pornographic fantasies--but skillfully realized in the tradition of Story of O or Emmanuelle.
According to Rice, the situation was that she enjoyed reading erotica, but could never find any that was well-written. Her solution was to write her own: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty's Punishment, and Beauty's Release. No matter what the byline, an unmistakable erotic undercurrent courses through practically everything she writes--especially her horror.
A native of New Orleans, where she was born in 1941 and currently resides, Rice lives a very sedate life with her son Christopher, and husband, poet Stan Rice. She works in an office which she jokingly describes as ''unbearable'' because it is stuffed with books from floor to ceiling. The only visible office equipment is a word processor, printer, and a telephone. ''It's a combination of high-tech and clutter,'' she explains with a smile. From fans of her vampire novels, a few bouquets of dead roses are visible from their precarious perches on the corners of bookshelves. Clearly, Anne Rice takes her readers just as seriously as she does the critics. Meanwhile, until a motion picture can be produced of her vampire Lestat, she has authorized a series of adult comic books to graphically tell the tale.
WIATER: To begin at the beginning, how did Interview with the Vampire originate?
RICE: It was very spontaneous. There was no plan at all. I was sitting at the typewriter and just thought I wanted to try it.I wrote very spontaneously in those days--with no plan to as to even what word was going to come next. At first, Interview was a short story. I put it away, then took it out, rewrote it, put away, took it out; rewrote it. Again and again. It was during one of these rewrites that I got ferociously involved with it, and it grew into this very weird novel. There were a number of false turns--at one point I threw out half of it and started over. But in general it was great deal of experimenting and throwing stuff into the pot as if you were making soup.
WIATER: How did you come to make all of the main characters vampires?
RICE: You know, I was not a person who was obsessed with vampires, or who had pictures of them around the house. I hadn't seen any vampire movies in recent years, so it didn't grow out of any active obsession with them. It just happened that when I started to write through that image, everything came together for me. I was suddenly able to talk about reality by using fantasy. So, it opened a door. In some ways, that's what it all is for me--just the opening of one door after another.
WIATER: So you've never claimed to be an expert on vampire movies or literature?
RICE: I wrote the vampire novel I wanted to read. That's what I did--I wrote the book that I had never been able to find. That really told me what the vampire did in his "off hours." What he really felt. That's all I was doing. But obviously,if I wanted that, somebody else is going to want to be drawn into his living room at four o'clock in the morning and learn what he has to say in argument to his fellow vampires. And that's what the reader got, that kind of intimacy. And with all due modesty, the reader also got somebody who could write....
WIATER: So literary aspirations aside, you were aware of the conventions of the classic vampire novel?
RICE: And I loved the conventions! It wasn't a matter of being faithful to them, I loved them! That was the whole idea, to take the clichÄs: the man in the cloak, the pale face, the flickering gaslights, the struggling victims. To take all the clichÄs and weave them into something completely different. That's really the key to all my work: to take those clichÄs and conventions--which I call classic--and then attempt to find a new depth.
WIATER: Considering the immense popularity of Interview with the Vampire, why did it take so long for a sequel?
RICE: Well, the main reason is I wrote other books! [laughs] I just really deal with whatever obsesses me at the moment. As a writer, I feel like I'm about five different people, and only one of them writes the vampire novels. Also, frankly, in the beginning I was afraid of being typecast as a "horror writer."
WIATER: Yet ten years ago was also the same time such mainstream successes as King and Straub were beginning to appear.
RICE: I'm not in the least bit afraid now. That was before I understood that it didn't really matter; that the horror fans were easily the most intelligent and perceptive fans the books could have. I mean, you can do anything in that genre. You can write a great, great, great novel in the horror genre. There's nothing in it that forces you to write less well, or to create shallow characters. I'd be very happy now if I were to write nothing but occult novels under the name Anne Rice.
Before I wrote The Vampire Lestat, one of the things that made me return to the genre was reading Stephen King and Peter Straub and seeing what they were able to do. I wanted to get back in there and "outdo" them! [laughs] It's a wonderful desire! I also read a lot of the great English horror writers, like M.R. James, J. Sheridan LeFanu, and Algernon Blackwood. Blackwood is a very erotic and wonderful horror writer.
WIATER: One of the strongest qualities of your novels is thedegree of perverse eroticism, isn't it?
RICE: Oh, I feel horror fiction is very erotic. People have written really brilliant essays on that subject. It's absolutely inherent in vampire material: the drinking of the blood, the taking of the victim; all of that is highly erotic. It's an echo of the sex act itself. Since the Middle Ages, people have referred to the orgasm as the "the little death." So the connections are there. But when I'm writing these novels, it's not thinking consciously about that: I'm just imagining I'm a vampire.
WIATER: You make it all sound so simple. Yet what do you say to those who would aspire to reach your phenomenal success?
RICE: What can I say? The only thing that's ever worked for me was to go where the passion was, to go where the pleasure is, to go where the pain is; to be very intense. Write like mad. Produce. Get the stuff out. I would be lying if I said I wasn't conscious of wanting to write a good story. I'm very conscious of wanting to write an exciting story, a gripping story. And I'm very aware of the fact that that is a commercial element.
WIATER: A strong story comes first, even before the characters?
RICE: With me, the story-telling has always come fairly naturally. Even my earliest work has this terrific narrative drive to it. It's always been a "and then this happened and then that happened" kind of thing. That gives a work a commercial edge. If I was giving advice, I would say don't ignore that. Remember what Aristotle said two thousand years ago about Drama: You have to have plot, character, meaning, and spectacle. So remember that spectacle is important. You had that audience gathered into the arena and you had to show them something that was entertaining. There had to be an element of color, of pageantry, of sensuality. That's how I've always interpreted the term. And in my work, I love to elaborate and amplify the sensuous and dramatic elements. I try to make a very entertaining and spellbinding texture, if I can.
Even Shakespeare would not have written a play unless it was exciting and full of surprises. So don't think that the commercial and intellectual are at odds with one another. They're not. You can write a great novel and have it be really suspenseful and have a lot of spectacle to it. Yet it can still have all the philosophy and deep meaning that your soul needs to make your writing worthwhile.
WIATER: What you've published to date has been solely novels. Do you recommend that someone try publishing short stories before taking on a novel-length work?
RICE: There are no rules; they should do absolutely what they feel like doing. But I would never advise a person to write short stories if they want to write a novel. There's just no point. Interview with the Vampire was a short story first, but I just didn't pursue short stories; they don't interest me now. The long form is what interests me. And frankly, I think you should go where the passion is. Many, many people start with novels. There is also a very practical concern: it's easier to sell a novel than it is a short story. There's almost no market for short stories in America; they don't reach the public or have the impact that a novel makes. And in terms of career, anyone who writes novels is going to have it easier than a short story writer.
But that shouldn't be the main concern either. The main concern is that you should do what you feel comfortable doing. I feel comfortable stretching it out. Going at it from all angles. I don't want to compress it into a short story. I really don't. Almost any idea that really grips me is worth a novel.
WIATER: I'm curious to know then just how the idea of Queen of the Damned originated. It does continue from where The Vampire Lestat ended, but deals with the "lives" of other vampire characters rather than just Lestat himself.
RICE: I was on a plane, and watching the second of the Star Wars movies, I believe, and suddenly the whole plot for the Queen of the Damned just came into my mind. It was inspired, I guess, by little things I kept seeing in the movie that I didn't really like all that much. I remember thinking what I wanted to do, as opposed to what I was seeing on the screen. And the whole plot just flashed into my brain. It happens all the time: you read or see something, andsuddenly you realize what you want to do. So I decided to break off from working on my witchcraftnovel, now that I saw the whole philosophical sweep and philosophical conclusion of Queen of the Damned.
A lot of this came into my head before I even wrote one word. Finally the time came when I couldn't afford to put it off any longer, and I sat down and wrote one word. [laughs] I became very determined to render exactly the book of my dreams. In other words, not to compromise in any way.
For me, it was the first book in which I really used the computer as the pure poetic tool it is capable of being. Because what the computer enables you to do is range back and forth across your work, and bring it up to your standards very easily. So even my smallest dissatisfactions, things I might have put up with if it had been typewritten, I was quickly able to boot up on the computer andchange. So that's what I mean by pure and poetic: the computer really enables you to get exactly what you want to get. There's really no physical barrier anymore between you and your vision. If you can get it into words, you can really create what you see.
On the typewriter, I don't think that's true. You reach a point where you have this big, ponderous draft, and even to make minor changes in early chapters would mean making a mess, losing control of pages, having to retype.... You're dealing with the industrial revolution; you're dealing with a mechanism, with labor...and all of that's swept away by the computer--there's very little between your mind and what you're putting down there. There's really no excuse for not writing the perfect book. You're no longer making the mechanical compromises that move it away from poetry. I see poetry as meaning language at it's very finest, and it's most intense and most compressed. And you're able to get that essence with a computer.
WIATER: When you say Queen of the Damned was the "book of your dreams," do you mean in a technical sense due to the computer or more figuratively speaking?
RICE: No, frequently in the past I had imagined enormous books with many different things happening in them, and eventually that would not be the book I would ultimately produce. It would always be too big, too difficult to execute, too long, too complicated. So there was always a gulf between the books of my dreams and the books that were finally written. Like The Feast For All Saints for example. That book takes place in the space of about a year or two. Originally I'd wanted it to go all the way from the 1840's to the Civil War into the 20th century! But at that point as a writer, I couldn't write the book of my dreams. I didn't have enough skill, I didn't have enough craft to do what I envisioned. And when it came to Queen of the Damned, I firmly resolved that I was going to go for the whole thing; to go for the enormous vision that had been born in my brain. I had finally reached a point where I could put all of that down; I was not going to compromise out of fear that I couldn't pull it off a particular scene, character, or jump in time. That's really what I was talking about.
WIATER: One aspect of your work which has practically become a trademark is your deft intertwining of the erotic with the horrific. How do you set about creating the proper mood and tone to successfully evoke this complex set of emotions?
RICE: It is a difficult question to answer, because horror and sensuality have always been linked. Good horror writing is almost always sensuous writing because the threat posed in horror fiction is usually a veiled erotic threat. But if you go back to your earliest horror stories in English, there's always a tremendous emphasis on mood, and atmosphere, and the response of the physical body to the menace. Vampire fiction in particular is always sensuous, so there's no problem really. [laughs] I mean, horror writers are almost always dealing in atmosphere and suggestion...suggestion. Confusion of the senses, confusion of the mind to overwhelming physical responses. That's part and parcel of the genre.
With me, there's no method. Writing to me is sensuality. It is talking about the assault on the senses, and the effect on the individual. You either do that naturally, or you don't do it. You can't school yourself necessarily in doing that. The most you can do as a writer is stand back from your material and say, "What have I left out? What was I feeling physically? What textual details are missing?" But there can be some wonderful writing with no textual details. You just have to go with whatever way it goes. You can read just a few pages of Stephen King and can see that he's a very sensuous writer. It's the way he perceives the world, how a screen door closing sounds, or the flavor of a chocolate bar or a hamburger or whatever--it's all in there.
But it's in there because that's what King notices. You may notice something else entirely from your own perspective. The main thing is to immerse yourself in the material, and reach for the intensity. Again, go where the intensity is, go where the pleasure is, go where the pain is. Go for the passion. Do that honestly, and the rest will fall into place.
WIATER: Passion is a word which comes to you so readily. What do you believe makes the pursuit of a writer's life so worthy of the that passion--and the heartache?
RICE: Because it's the greatest creative profession. Anyone can do it any time. Unlike moviemaking, dancing, and classical music, painting--anything at all--writing requires a minimum of equipment, yet allows for a maximum expression of passion and creativity. You can do it at the kitchen table on paper you stole from the office with an old typewriter you got at a junk store. And you can make it from there to the bestseller lists. Somebody does that just about every year. Like Judith Guest, the housewife from Ohio who wrote Ordinary People and sent it in over the transom.
WIATER: But are you saying that if you just keep at it long enough, you're bound to succeed?
RICE: The important thing to remember is that it is an artistic realm--even if you're writing the most commercial fiction or non-fiction. That means there's no justice. It doesn't matter how hard you work, it doesn't matter who you know. What ultimately matters is what you put on that page--and whether somebody wants it at the moment. That's when anyone who wants to go into this profession has to a) believe in themselves totally, b) work like a demon, and c) ignore the rejections.
When you mail out a manuscript, you are not turning in a paper for a grade. You can mail out a perfectly wonderful and publishable novel and have it rejected ten times. And the reason it's rejected is because you hit ten different people who for various reasons don't want to work with this idea. You have to keep going. You have to never interpret rejection from New York publishers as a failing grade. They are not failing grades. They mean almost nothing.
WIATER: But your first novel wasn't accepted immediately. What kept you going until it was?
RICE: Some of the rejections I received for Interview with the Vampire were ludicrous. Fortunately I was confident enough to know that they were ludicrous. Somebody else might have been hurt and quit. But I kept writing, and kept mailing out. My attitude was, "I'm going to become a writer." I was a writer.
So my advice is to remember that you're dealing with people who make decisions on the basis of a whim, and just keep going. Keep going until you connect with a person who cares enough about what you've done to publish it. And don't be discouraged if you hit 20 people who aren't that one.
WIATER: Often a first-time novelist will receive some encouragement from an editor stating that if this was changed or that was removed, then they might consider publishing it. To make that first sale, would you recommend this venture on the part of the unestablished writer?
RICE: Never, never, never, as long as you live, revise a manuscript on the basis of a rejection letter. Never! Only revise that manuscript when you get the acceptance letter. Nine out of ten times, somebody who rejects a manuscript doesn't really know why they don't like it, and they're just saying something to you to try and get their feelings down--and it's probably stupid. Because if you could talk to them for twenty minutes, you would know they didn't read your book carefully, and that they weren't right audience for it anyway.
It's one of the most heartbreaking things in our profession, the writer who takes a whole manuscript and starts revising it because some idiot editor says ''I'd like your novel better if everybody in it was a Indian.'' Or whatever. So the writer does it, and a year later, the editor sends it back saying, ''I don't like it any better than I did before.'' Don't ever fall into that trap. Remember, these are people who are buying or rejecting on the most whimsical basis, and it's nothing worth listening to...
WIATER: Apparently you've had a few encounters with some less-than-kind editors over the years.
RICE: I really did get scathing rejections with Interview. And I paid not whit of attention to them. So you've got to throw that switch in your head that says ''I'm going to succeed.'' And you've got to believe in yourself, and you've got to remember that the arts have always been tough. There's no point in whining about it. Say if you wanted to become an actor. The first people you would have met would have been sitting around in a cafe saying, ''Go home, it's too tough, don't bother.'' But it's always been that way in the arts--a bunch of people sitting around telling you that you can't make it. Then others come out of nowhere and go right to the top.
What's important is what you've achieved at that moment and if somebody wants it. That's it. The arts have been basically the same for two thousand years. You just have to do your best, and make others want your work, and you have to keep looking for the people who want it. Above all, keep believing in yourself, because nobody can really tell you you're no good.
[Complete interview can be read in DARK DREAMERS]
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