THE ANNE RICE INTERVIEW:

BLOOD CANTICLE

McDonald: Lestat’s narrative voice struck me as a bit different in this novel.

Rice: Oh really?

McDonald: It seemed to me that his voice is coming up from his heels in a way it hasn’t quite before — more imploring.

Rice: More "imploring"?

McDonald: Maybe. There’s always been a swagger there in the past, which is still there, but he struck me this time as being a bit more eager to please.

Rice: I thought it was just the opposite. I thought he was a little more defiant. I thought he was a little more defiant. But go ahead, that’s very interesting. Obviously, a writer can’t know everything about what she writes. It’s impossible. You reach deep down and you bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book but you don’t know everything about it. You can’t.

McDonald: The book’s a little bit different structurally, too, in that you’re not getting as many of the longer stories within the larger story.

Rice: Right.

McDonald: Was that deliberate on your part?

Rice: No. When I get in there and start moving I create what feels right. It’s so instinctive with me. It’s so hypnotic. It’s so really unconscious that I can’t say it’s deliberate in any way. It’s deliberate, but I don’t think of it in comparative terms with regards to the other books. Compare it to the Tale of the Body Thief, or to The Vampire Armand — I mean, each one is so different. What I was conscious of with this one is the intimacy of Lestat. I was really with him, I felt really, really, really close to him. I felt able to do some experimental things I’d never done quite the way I wanted to do them before.

McDonald: You’ve said you typically wait for the paperback edition of your novels to be released in order to judge a book. We’re about one month out from the release of this novel. Any sense of what it will mean to your readers?

Rice: I don’t. I have none whatsoever. It’s just too early. They haven’t read it yet. There are some advance reader copies out there, but I haven’t gotten feedback. I have a reader line where people leave messages and the messages are just not yet coming in through readers. I also get e-mail through the Web site and I’m not hearing anything. I have been told that people are selling those advance reader copies on eBay for a lot of money. News reaches my ears.

McDonald: What was your reaction to the recent announcement of the award being given to Stephen King? There was certainly outrage in certain quarters that such a nod was being made to a popular writer.

Rice: Well, I think Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He writes really, really well. I think he deserves it. I think he has made a contribution. I think people in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King’s books and learn a lot about who we were by reading those books. I think he packs a lot of very very good writing into his books about time and place and character. I haven’t read a lot of Stephen King’s recent books, because I can’t keep up with his output, but I read a lot of his early books and I thought his writing in Firestarter and The Shining was just absolutely wonderful to name a few. And, Stephen King reaches all kinds of people...he makes them experience good reading. I think he’s great. I think he’s been marvelous for getting teenagers to read. I think he really is an excellent writer. I think he’s a very very intelligent man and I think he’s a very underrated writer. He’s been around so long now that he’s finally getting some intelligent reviews. In the beginning he was just dismissed out of hand, which I think was terrible.

McDonald: King has been a bit more aggressive in recent articles and essays in terms of going after some other best-selling novelists, as well as so-called "better" or "literary" writers. In Blood Canticle, Lestat boasts, "I don’t deconstruct nothin’. That is, you’re going to get a full-dress story here — with a beginning, middle and an end. I’m talking plot, characters, suspense, the works." A stab at Derrida and the deconstructionists. I’ve interviewed a number of crime writers recently who have derided non-genre fiction that seemingly has to be devoid of plot in order to be appreciated. Is there some critical mass or are you all colluding to try and shift the terrain?

Rice: (Laughing) I’m not colluding with anybody, but those are my principles. I’ve always worked with those Aristotelian principles — what Aristotle said would work in the drama. I heard those principles very early in college and I took them to heart — that the thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught about anything and I apply them to my writing. I try to do that. It’s also instinctive. I made it instinctive. It became instinctive with me.

McDonald: That’s through reading as well as the practice of writing, I take it. I know you’re also a Dickens admirer.

Rice: Oh, very much. Dickens is another very underrated writer at the moment. Everyone in his time admired him and when he died there was no question of him being buried in Westminster Abby among the immortal English writers. But I think right now he’s not spoken of enough.

McDonald: Because he has plots and characters?

Rice: Yeah. But people should go back to him. I read The Old Curiosity Shop before I began Blackwood Farm. I was amazed at the utter madness in that book. Just the madness and the invention and the willingness of an author to follow his imagination down any path at all that it took him. You know, as Little Nell and her father wander through the countryside and come upon all kinds of characters. And it’s all united simply by the madness of Charles Dickens. It’s not united by anything other than the vision of this one person as he charts this journey and I was captivated by it. I frequently do that in my writing, and I know that I’m doing it because I claim Dickens as a mentor. In Blackwood Farm I sort of took that license to do that. I think I did that in Blood Canticle. He’s my teacher. He’s one of my driving forces.

McDonald: In the past, you’ve declared Memnoch the Devil to be your favorite of the Vampire Chronicles. I trust that is still the case. Blood Canticle opens with Lestat actually lecturing readers who didn’t give Memnoch the Devil its due.

Rice: (Laughing) Right.

McDonald: Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Obviously, you’re frustrated by the reaction the book got.

Rice: Right, right. I was frustrated. I was frustrated that so many of them (the readers) turned away and said, "This is not a vampire novel." I thought it was a really great adventure for Lestat as an immortal to go and meet God incarnate and the Devil — or someone who claimed to be the Devil and who claimed to be presenting him to God incarnate. I thought that was a great adventure for Lestat as an immortal. And I thought it was a very logical step for Lestat to take — to work himself up to that mystical point where that happened. And I thought what happened afterward — his turning away from that patriarchal structure and going back to Dora and renouncing everything that he saw and drinking the blood of Dora’s menses… I thought that was a very important thing that he did. And stealing from that vision Veronica’s veil and how it worked a strange conversion of Armand which was something that he never intended. I thought all of those things were worth talking about and I didn’t hear readers talking about them. I only heard them saying this wasn’t what they wanted. Now, as the years passed after that book, many, many people have come to me and asked me to sign copies of Memnoch. They tell me that it is a book that they cherish, and I’ve gotten a lot of responses to it that have been very rewarding. But initially, there was a great turning away from it, saying "This is just not a vampire book — we don’t like it." So I guess I was expressing that through Lestat: "Why didn’t you follow me? Yes, it was a difficult journey. You say you want me to come back, but you don’t want to hear what I have to tell you. You have to grow with me. You have to come where I go."

McDonald: That was a book that could have had a really nasty backlash from certain quarters, and it seemed not to draw that, either.

Rice: From what quarters?

McDonald: Having Lestat confront Christ…plenty of people boycott or attack books without ever having read them.

Rice: That book actually drew religious readers. When I toured the Bible belt for that book, a minister came to my signing in Atlanta and gave me his books. Religious people came to my signings and told me that they saw that book as a religious book. Not only did I not have a backlash from it, but they were the ones who actually accepted it as a religious quest book. I was very surprised at that response and very humbled by it. I thought it was great. It never had a backlash. Those people got it. They thought he was really looking for something: Lestat was really searching.

McDonald: Have you returned to that book several times since you published it?

Rice: Oh yeah.

McDonald: Do you do that often in turns of going back and rereading?

Rice: No, not very much. That book was so complex for me. You know, when I write something, every word of it is meant. I really mean everything that I’m writing. Everything in that book was meant. It’s all going somewhere. I guess I can’t say it enough.

McDonald: You’ve had a fair number of critical studies published about your works.

Rice: Yes, so I’m finding out.

McDonald: That must be very gratifying.

Rice: I’m very gratified…very gratified.

McDonald: You’ve characterized The Vampire Lestat as a failure in form — a novel that is "a structural mess" and a book that "just stops." It may be your fans’ favorite book. Have your attitudes toward that novel shifted over the years?

Rice: No. I still think the form of that novel is a failure. But I think what is achieved within that failure is obviously very satisfying to people and I’m glad about that. I mean, I love the book. One of my great disappointments is that it hasn’t been made into a film.

McDonald: And probably there is less of a likelihood of that in the sense that Queen of the Damned sort of cannibalized parts of it.

Rice: Well, Queen of the Damned — I mean, that film we can dismiss. I think there’s still a good chance it (Lestat) may be made into a very high-quality television series on cable. I’ve had some interest from somebody wanting to do that and it didn’t go through, unfortunately, because of a change in network heads. But it may still happen — a very high-quality series. Something like that — 22 episodes. Or it may be yet be made into a film. If the Tolkien books can be made into rich and beautiful films the story of Lestat could still be made.

McDonald: The technology is there to do it in a more cost-effective way.

Rice: Yes. Because I think that’s a tale worth telling — all about Lestat and the boulevard theatres in Paris before the Revolution and so forth and all of that. And Memnoch the Devil certainly, I think, could be made into a film.

McDonald: A lot of the pre-publicity for this book has focused on the fact that this is purportedly the last of the novels.

Rice: The last of the ones about the witches and the vampires.

McDonald: Right, the two series. It feels that way — that this book is the end.

Rice: I know I told my editor that it was probably the last.

McDonald: It does feel that way, but then again, at the end of Memnoch the Devil —

Rice: I’ll tell you the truth: I want it to be the last. Lestat is a character who works for me. It’s not easy to get into his voice. It’s not simple, otherwise I would just write Lestat books endlessly. It takes a great commitment. But once I’m in his voice it works for me wonderfully well. I love to be in his voice talking about just about anything…walking through an all-night drugstore…being in Rio de Janeiro — anything from Lestat’s perspective. So, I don’t know if I can give him up forever.

McDonald: I was going to ask if readers would be nursing false hopes for a possible return. At the end of —

Rice: (Laughing) False hopes of me giving him up forever?

McDonald: (Laughing) No, no, no…. Hoping you’ll renege and write another. At the end of Memnoch you closed with "Farewell mon amour," and it seemed that was the last, and here we are with another.

Rice: Well he doesn’t say in the book that he’s never coming back. I do want to go another way…to write something completely different.

McDonald: Is that something you’re prepared to foreshadow at all?

Rice: No, I can’t. I can’t…because, in the past, I’ve talked about books that have never been written.

McDonald: Then you have to discuss them forever regarding their status?

Rice: Yeah, and I don’t want to do that again. I really don’t know exactly what I’m going to do. I went away this summer to write a book and I didn’t finish it. There were too many things that happened. I hope to finish by Christmas and if I do that then I’ll know really where I’m going.

McDonald: The Internet has been a wonderful promotional tool for beginning writers, but you have afforded an unusual amount of access to your readers. I wonder why you chose to do that. You certainly wouldn’t have to do that in a sense with your level of success.

Rice: Oh, I enjoy the Web site a lot and I like being able to talk to my readers. I’ve always had a very close relationship with them. I’ve always liked to go out and do signings. We’re going to go on tour on Oct. 26 and I’ll do signings all over the country. I love to see face-to-face the people. Of course, you never see all of your readers. You only see certain kinds of readers — the ones who are willing to come to bookstores. And the ones who call in on the phone lines — the ones who are willing to call. And the same holds true for the letters and the e-mails. But, it gives you some idea of who is reading your books.

McDonald: This is the first time in about two books that you’ve gone out, right?

Rice: Yeah, two years.

McDonald: From the start, the vampire books have been steeped in allusions/evocations of Catholic symbolism and ritual. If anyone wasn’t getting it, you certainly drove the point home in the second book during Lestat’s transformation with the phrase, "This is my body, this is my blood." Do you think these novels would exist — even in altered form — if you’d been raised, say, Methodist?

Rice: They might have. Who knows? It’s impossible to imagine. The older you get, the more you find that questions like that just don’t….

McDonald: Do you find your relationship with the church evolving in any new ways?

Rice: Well, I went back to the church in 1998, so I have been a practicing Catholic ever since. I’m a very loyal Catholic. I go to mass every week and I’m very close to the church, really.

McDonald: There is a line in Blood Canticle that I found extremely haunting: Mona says, "Dying…had become the central obligation of my life." That doesn’t strike me as a line that can just be…created. It resonates. Is there something more at the back of that you could explain…where that statement came from?

Rice: She’s talking about her years of illness. And she’s talking about the situation that she was in. Obviously, I was speaking about something that I knew about. I was speaking from experience. I watched many people go through that. The vampires have always been metaphors for me. They’ve always been vehicles through which I can express things that I have felt very, very deeply. They’ve always had to do with grief and loss and I've always touched on things that have had a deep root in my own experience. I think when people are mortally ill, that does become their obligation, whether we like it or not — that’s what’s going on.

McDonald: Regarding your Web site, your recent "Meditations from the Beach" state that you’ve been writing in Miami….

Rice: Not Miami, actually. I have a beach place on the panhandle of Florida, in the North. I did have a place in Miami for a long time, but my place now is in a much more peaceful area of Florida. But I love Miami.

McDonald: A few years before moving back there, Bruce Springsteen said he needed to leave New Jersey because it was getting like Santa and the North Pole. Can you envision leaving New Orleans for similar reasons, or are you committed to New Orleans?

Rice: Well, I love New Orleans physically. I love the trees and the balmy air and the beautiful, beautiful days. I just love it. And I have a beautiful house here. I mean God’s blessed me with just the most wonderful experience in coming back here and buying a pre-Civil War house that’s just full of glorious detail and I feel deeply rooted here. I have a very big family — very big Irish-Catholic family — and close friends so I’m kind of ensconced here. And I have a big study and a huge library and I have a very comfortable writing situation here. I go away to the beach in Florida and I have a very, very comfortable writing situation there. So, between the two, I sort of have an ideal set up. I couldn’t ask for more, really.

McDonald: Your husband’s (Stan Rice’s) poems have been used in many of your works, and they do capture or evoke the tone and texture of which ever novel you’ve chosen to excerpt them for. Were his poems and your novels manifestations of your shared interests or preoccupations, or were they in some ways dialogues to one another?

Rice: They weren’t in any way dialogues. I just picked those bits of his poetry and got his permission to use them.

McDonald: Because they fit?

Rice: Mmm-hmm. He wouldn’t let anybody else do that — take small excerpts like that from his poems — and in later years he didn’t let me do that anymore.

McDonald: Really?

Rice: Mmm-hmm. He only let me do that for a short time and then after that, he didn’t want me to do it anymore.

McDonald: I have to ask you about the musical which seems to be going forward with Elton John.

Rice: Yes.

McDonald: Now, that was, at one point, bandied about several years ago, I guess. But this actually looks like it’s going to happen.

Rice: Oh yeah, it is happening.

McDonald: Have you heard anything from it yet?

Rice: I’ve heard the first four or five songs. They’re great. They’re absolutely fantastic. I have the CD of Elton John singing them. He sent it to me, and this is like a treasured object. It cannot be copied and get out into the world. He actually recorded the CD in his home and he sent it to me. I called him immediately at his home and told him "Fantastic…unbelievable. Absolutely wonderful." He was very happy that I felt that way about it. He did it right before the press conference in New York where they announced the whole thing. Rob Roth (Beauty and the Beast) is the director. They had an incredible line-up of talent — people doing the book. They sent me I think what they called the outline, but it was really just a wonderful short treatment of what they were going to do. It was quite wonderful. Very, very true to the spirit of the books. And the songs were beautiful.

McDonald: It is spread out over more than one volume (of The Vampire Chronicles) too, isn’t it?

Rice: It is. It really encompasses the second book, very much, and some of the third, as I recall. And it’s just going to be incredible. Now, last I heard, he was touring in the summer, then Elton John was going to go back home and write a lot of the music this last month of September. I haven’t heard anything from him since. They were supposed to get to work this fall. I have phone numbers and I could call and find out what they were doing, but I have been very busy and I don’t want to pester them, but I think they are definitely going ahead, there’s no question. I’m very excited about it.

McDonald: That’s great.

Rice: Rob Roth, he’s the director, and I’ve talked to him. He’s tremendously excited. You know the people who make these things actually happen, they have such an electricity. And they have to, because they have to really drive everything. I mean, Elton John has wanted to do this for years. He’s wanted to do this almost from the time that Interview with the Vampire was published — 1976. But he’s run into resistance from people. He’s just patiently waited. He’s tried to put things together, but there have been blocked doors and passages. But then along came Rob Roth and he got Warner Bros. to want to do it. Then he approached Elton John and Elton John was more than ready and now it’s going again, so I’m more than happy. I’m overjoyed.

McDonald: I understand that the Mayfair Witches series may be being adapted for…cable?

Rice: It’s being adapted right now for network. John Wilder is writing the 10-hour scripts and they are quite wonderful. I work very closely with John. John is actually the writer, he’s doing the writing, but I talk with him a lot and work with him a lot. I’ve been out in Hollywood meeting him. My assistant Ross Tafaro is a producer. I don’t know if I’m a producer or if I’m just doing this as part of the package. I’m the executive producer, Ross just told me. I work so closely with John Wilder. We spend hours on the phone together going over various details. It’s wonderful to be involved at this level but it’s really hands-on. John is just one of the best adapters of fiction to television that I’ve ever worked with. He has a string of credits that go back so far, I mean, you just wouldn’t believe the things that he has adapted. He’s very very solid. He’s a real adapter. He doesn’t try to take your work and write a cock-eyed story of his own…show you what he can do to change everything you did. He really adapts — solidly adapts and he’s doing a fantastic job…and also meeting the network’s demands. Right now, I think he’s just handing in the 10-hour revised script this week. Mark Wolper is the producer — David Wolper’s son. The network we’re working with at the moment is NBC. Whether NBC will pick it up and give it the green light to go ahead remains to be seen in the next few days, actually. It’s very much alive and very much in the works. I gave up on the big screen. The Witching Hour was at Warner Bros. for ten years and it just didn’t work out. Then Mark Wolper, the producer, approached me about doing this for television and I said, "If you can get John Wilder to do the script, yes." And that’s what happened.

McDonald: It’s such a big canvas, for a two-hour or three-hour movie.

Rice: Ten hours I think is really going to be fine for it and then maybe we will move into a sequel, because Blackwood Farmand Blood Canticle really function as sequels. And I think if we do a television version — a really good, quality television version — of Blood Canticle, we can really flesh out the story of the Taltos and what happened to them on the island. I encapsulated it in Oberon’s dialogue, but it could be dramatized.

McDonald: You’re about three weeks away from releasing this book. After so many books, is there still a great anticipation for you as the release date comes? Still an excitement for you?

Rice: Sure. Yes. I want to see the Lestat people again. I really do. I want to wear my black velvet gown. I’m looking forward to it. It will be the last time I will be with Goth kids. It will be the last time, maybe. Because when I go in a different direction, I don’t know whether they will come. I love it — the suspense — I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do, you know? I really don’t.

McDonald: Is there anything else you’d would like specifically to get out there?

Rice: Gosh, that’s a nice question. I guess, take it seriously. Enjoy it, and take it seriously. And never forget it.

© Oct. 2, 2003 By Craig McDonald

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