From the Vampire Chronicles to the Wolves of Midwinter...
I feel like I'm crossing some sort of Rubicon by cross-posting from Tumblr to DW/LJ, but I had a thought after reading Elizabeth Hand's review of The Wolves of Midwinter by Anne Rice, and it turns out to be something I don't want to mislay in the giant overstuffed handbag full of odds and ends that is my Tumblr. Apologies to those seeing it twice...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-wolves-of-midwinter-by-anne-rice/2013/10/28/ecf026b2-3c0f-11e3-b7ba-503fb5822c3e_story.html
This is interesting in that it’s a negative review of the second Wolf Gift book, written by an author who’s a fan of the vampire and witch series. I think it might be the first intelligent critique of either book that I’ve seen outside fandom, and certainly the first to show insight into AR’s writing generally. Caveat lector: I haven’t read either book yet, though I’m keen to because I’m always interested in what Anne Rice is doing, even when I suspect it may not work very well...
It’s pretty impressive that Reuben manages to save a little girl from a paedophile AND sound really skeevy at the same time. Also, Hand is right on the money when she points out how weird the morality of the books is: the whole deal for Anne Rice with the wolf books was that she wanted to do supernatural! power! and freedom! without her characters being damned or beyond redemption, but it sounds like she’s retreading the supernatural vigilante thing with a throwaway hey-it’s-okay-it’s-only-paedophiles disclaimer.
And lord knows, many people have fantasised about dealing violence to those who destroy the lives of children, but it’s a really weird segue for Rice after some of what went on in the Vampire Chronicles…
I’m not even speaking so much of Claudia - as disturbing as some of that was (the woman in a child’s body making advances to her adult guardian and love), it never went unleavened by Louis’s guilt - as of the gradual build-up of sexualisation in the later books. In The Vampire Lestat, Marius/Armand is a grey area in terms of both what happens and how old Armand is, to the extent that you can choose to read their relationship in whatever way you can live with. But by The Vampire Armand we’re unambiguously hearing about how attractive Marius finds boys’ ankles, as well as the whole whipping scene. Instead of making an already conflicted protagonist more guilt-ridden, as with Louis, the book seems to embrace the idea that Marius’s interest in boys in general is unwholesome without ever critiquing it.
And then there’s David in Merrick, which is a new departure since we’re actually in his POV while he’s being captivated by a 14-year-old’s breasts. And there’s the whole backstory about that time there was a bit of trouble with the Talamasca, what with that young man he had an interest in (unfortunately combined with a professorial role in his life) who died on an expedition, and the series overall starts to feel like an apologia for fancying people when your respective ages mean you should really be helping them with their homework and telling them to tidy their rooms, not sitting with calendar in hand waiting for them to be legal.
How do we relate Anne Rice’s old books to her new books? I think she herself would argue for an evolution of moral intent and I’m actually really curious as to whether this focus on people who prey sexually on children as Reuben’s fair game victims is some kind of attempt to reconcile with how she’s portrayed children and sexuality in the past…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-wolves-of-midwinter-by-anne-rice/2013/10/28/ecf026b2-3c0f-11e3-b7ba-503fb5822c3e_story.html
This is interesting in that it’s a negative review of the second Wolf Gift book, written by an author who’s a fan of the vampire and witch series. I think it might be the first intelligent critique of either book that I’ve seen outside fandom, and certainly the first to show insight into AR’s writing generally. Caveat lector: I haven’t read either book yet, though I’m keen to because I’m always interested in what Anne Rice is doing, even when I suspect it may not work very well...
It’s pretty impressive that Reuben manages to save a little girl from a paedophile AND sound really skeevy at the same time. Also, Hand is right on the money when she points out how weird the morality of the books is: the whole deal for Anne Rice with the wolf books was that she wanted to do supernatural! power! and freedom! without her characters being damned or beyond redemption, but it sounds like she’s retreading the supernatural vigilante thing with a throwaway hey-it’s-okay-it’s-only-paedophiles disclaimer.
And lord knows, many people have fantasised about dealing violence to those who destroy the lives of children, but it’s a really weird segue for Rice after some of what went on in the Vampire Chronicles…
I’m not even speaking so much of Claudia - as disturbing as some of that was (the woman in a child’s body making advances to her adult guardian and love), it never went unleavened by Louis’s guilt - as of the gradual build-up of sexualisation in the later books. In The Vampire Lestat, Marius/Armand is a grey area in terms of both what happens and how old Armand is, to the extent that you can choose to read their relationship in whatever way you can live with. But by The Vampire Armand we’re unambiguously hearing about how attractive Marius finds boys’ ankles, as well as the whole whipping scene. Instead of making an already conflicted protagonist more guilt-ridden, as with Louis, the book seems to embrace the idea that Marius’s interest in boys in general is unwholesome without ever critiquing it.
And then there’s David in Merrick, which is a new departure since we’re actually in his POV while he’s being captivated by a 14-year-old’s breasts. And there’s the whole backstory about that time there was a bit of trouble with the Talamasca, what with that young man he had an interest in (unfortunately combined with a professorial role in his life) who died on an expedition, and the series overall starts to feel like an apologia for fancying people when your respective ages mean you should really be helping them with their homework and telling them to tidy their rooms, not sitting with calendar in hand waiting for them to be legal.
How do we relate Anne Rice’s old books to her new books? I think she herself would argue for an evolution of moral intent and I’m actually really curious as to whether this focus on people who prey sexually on children as Reuben’s fair game victims is some kind of attempt to reconcile with how she’s portrayed children and sexuality in the past…