A Note of Response to Y'all...

Note: Those of you who don't regularly read Teri's Blog may find this rant a little hard to follow, but I reckon that there ain't many of those creatures out there...

Perhaps at one time Anne Rice was a good writer, but now she is just plagiarizing herself. This thought came from an article I read about her novel, Memnoc the Devil, and I went on to read the danged book anyway. That was the last one of her books that I made it all the way through.

In Queen of the Damned, Ms. Rice introduced something new to the genre, but in subsequent installments of her Vampire Chronicles, she has repeated the same angsty fruitiness over and over and over.

Maybe I can be a bit of a purist, but while I love Dracula (in most of his incarnations), I do enjoy stories that push the vampire notion to the limit. Movies like Lifeforce and Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf offer fascinating insights on the condition -- not to mention the effects -- of vampirism. The soul-reaving Raziel has a great appeal to me, and the Hebrew God of Exodus -- taking the life of every firstborn in Egypt -- is an aspect of the greatest vampire conceivable. There are people around us, at the office or neighbors, who can suck energy out of others just with inane conversation. Above all others, there is the invention of television, that modern wonder that is the vampire of our minds.

I don't hate Anne Rice, but I'd crave something new from her. I enjoyed The Witching Hour, even with the incest and brutality, but that was 'coz I hadn't read her take on witchcraft. Now that she's merged the Mayfair Witches with her Vampire Chronicles, the former kinda turns my stomach.

As for the 'homo-dellic' characters, I must say that being gay ain't a crime in my book, just so's y'all know. Even a gay vampire is okay, but a whole blasted nocturnal world filled with neurotic, boy-crazy, self-esteem challenged blood-suckers (most of whom exhibit godlike powers), well it pushes credulity. My power to suspend disbelief only goes so far.

If Ms. Rice wants to go on filing the serial number off of Lestat, giving him a new paint-job and thinking that -- prest-o, change-o -- she has a new character who only needs a name, that's her prerogative. I wouldn't do it, though...

Anne Rice books can be fun to read, but I think her fan-base has become too much of that suburban, ultra-goth mall girl sorta crowd. I guess we need those types, that they serve some cosmic purpose in the universe, but I am not one of those humanoids.

...As for you, Signore Dissentero (whose name rhymes with 'buttocks'), my writing skill remains as sharp as ever, and you are all my Literature Bee-yatches. The true faith of the Divine Monkey will live longer than any of us, and nothing you can say will stop me!