Oh Dear
In college I was, what I suppose could be called a goth. I wore black, black and more black. I hung crosses, crucifixes and daggers from my neck and earlobes. Silver glimmered on my fingers. I stomped the streets in my docs, perfecting my ‘fuck off and die’ grimace. I hid in my bedroom listening to dour, strangulated music: The Cure, The Mission and all the Beggars Banquet artists. At night I listened to Dannie Ellwell’s Alternative Bedtime and This Mortal Coil was kept on repeat on my stereo. The only bit of goth-dom I didn’t have down was the make-up. I’m still not a fan of slapping a load of grease onto my face, although with my advancing years I understand the point of it.
And, as with all goths who thought themselves worthy of the name I read ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ by Anne Rice.
Now 15 years later, I look back at that time with a certain fondness. I still wear a lot of black, my right hand is weighed down with silver, and from time to time I throw on an old Dead Can Dance CD. I have however, been unable to re-read the Vampire Chronicles. I tried once, but found the prose suffocating. The tortured teenage angst of an immortal made me hurl the book across the room.
‘Grow Up Lestat.’
I had become used to the cynicism of Buffy and Angel. Teenage Angst was out, Post Modern Irony was in.
Spike: I’m surrounded by idiots. What’s new with you?
Angel: Everything.
Spike: Yeah. Come up against this Slayer yet?
Angel: She’s cute. Not too bright, though. Gave the puppy dog ‘I’m all tortured’ act. Keeps her off my back when I feed!
Spike: People still fall for that Anne Rice routine. What a world!‘School Hard’ season 2
So when ‘Interview with a Vampire was released in the cinema I went to it grudgingly.
‘Tom Cruise can’t do blonde’ I whined. However, he did. And more surprisingly the Grand Dame herself praised the movie. At the time I thought this was a GOOD THING. That the author should praise a movie meant that they had not bastardised her original tale.
‘It must be ok.’ I thought.
Then I heard about Her Highness’ diatribe on amazon.com to reviewers of her book ‘Blood Canticle’. Which made me wonder why the author of a best selling series of books would get involved in a flame war and I began to question her judgement. (Although in a sort of vague, ‘this is kinda an interesting but possibly not very clever response to her fans’ way.)
Most recently Elton John has written ‘Lestat, The Musical‘ and Queen High Muck is delighted with it. For me, it sounds like something akin to the theatrical conflagration that was LOTR: the Musical. But AR is in all the papers and on the telly gushing about the production. Which, given her previous actions leads me to believe that she’s nothing more than what is known on the internetweb as an ‘Attention Whore.’
I remember picking up one of her early ‘other’ novels in the remaindered bin in Hodge Figgis years ago. ‘Ooh Ann Rice writing about Sleeping Beauty’ sez clueless Goth Donal, ‘that’ll be good’.
But it was not good. It was all about slippery love poles and sticky secret trysts with Dwarfs and Prince Charming gadding about with his smouldering manly firmness all inflamed. I had to go and have a lie down.
I think Rice copped early on that if she switched genres, sublimated all the eroticism and added a bunch of wanky angst; alienated teenagers and emotionally undernourished adults would flock to her. I have to hand it to her, she knows her oeuvre and her audience and must make a fortune off it. She certainly got a few quid out of me.
If she’s getting any cut from the musical or expecting a bounce in sales in the Vampire bricks I’m not surprised she’s out shilling it like a mad thing. The beast of commerce makes demands and all must answer. Got to pay the rent on that eighteen bedroom southern mansion and capes don’t buy themselves.
Comment by Donal — April 26, 2006 @ 11:31 am
Read “Interview” and quite enjoyed it, skimmed “Lestat”, and struggled to finish “Queen of the Damned”. After that, a big fat “meh”. When I heard she wrote mucky S&M books under a pseudonym, a lot of things about her style made sense.
I hadn’t heard about her outburst on Amazon but Wikipedia had:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/community-content-search/document/002-8416666-0721653?%5Fencoding=UTF8&documentId=R1FLRHCYSK13PB&index=community-reviews-realtime&query=ASIN%3A037541200X%20from%20the%20author%20to
Dear oh dear. It’s gratifying to see that even the great ‘n’ good can make absolute prats of themselves on the Internet. Shouldn’t someone making their living from writing a) be able to punctuate, and b) know the difference between slander and libel?
And speaking as a bit of a recovering Goth myself, I don’t hold with all this vampire/pagan crap that seems to be popular among Goths these days. Morris dancers who think they’re vampires: _real_ cool, kids. People like that deserve all the bullying they get. Hey-nonny-nonny _this_, motherfuckers! [flings an Inkubus Sukkubus CD]
Comment by Kesey — April 26, 2006 @ 12:15 pm
It’s sad to say, but I used to read them, and love them, but I also couldn’t touch them now without cringing.
That rant on Amazon is fab - I like how she says at the beginning that at no time has she said that the book is the last of the series, then at the end says that she’s glad it’s the last of the series. Oh, and how lestat has a conversation with the pope - a shark jumping incident if I ever saw one.
Comment by Is — April 26, 2006 @ 3:42 pm
Oh, and a brief scout on wikipedia showed me that she was the author of “Exit to Eden”, although she didn’t write the bits with Rosie O’Donnell and Dan Akroyd. I’m trying to work out if the movie would’ve been better or worse without them, and I can’t decide. (That and it’s not worth thinking about for more than 30 seconds)
Comment by Is — April 26, 2006 @ 3:46 pm
heh. was never a goth but i’m glad i wasn’t young when emokids were around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7us1-sWEUY
Comment by ronan — April 27, 2006 @ 1:56 am
Who would have thought you could create a subculture more introspective and ‘teh fey’ than Goths.
Comment by Donal — April 27, 2006 @ 10:03 am