Diary of an Autodidact: Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. I’m not really much of a horror reader, so nearly all of our annual “Spooky Lush” books have been ones I would not have otherwise picked up. This is definitely one of them. While I am glad I read it, and the discussion was interesting as usual (and it was nice to be back in person with friends for the first time in over a year and a half), I can say that Anne Rice isn’t exactly my cup of tea.

Time has flown, and I realized that this is the 51st title that I have read for this club, although some of those I read later rather than for the club meetings. Covid has also meant, ironically, that I have been able to attend all of the meetings over the last two years, which has been fun. I will append the list of books at the end of this post.

Anyway, apparently this book was wildly popular, if a bit controversial, when it came out in 1976. It puts a bit of a twist on the vampire story, telling it from the point of view of a vampire. It doesn’t depart from the formula as much as Twilight would later, but it has some new ideas.

Apparently, Rice wrote the book in part as a way of dealing with her grief over the death of her young daughter - Claudia is patterned after her.

The basic idea is that Louis is made into a vampire by Lestat, a lone vampire who is pretty much an abuser, withholding information from Louis in order to make him dependent on Lestat. This happens in New Orleans back in the late 1700s. Louis is an enslaver, and Lestat feeds primarily on the enslaved in the first part of the story. (This is just one of the things in this book that is pretty uncomfortable.)

Later, sensing that Louis is about to leave him, he practically blackmails Louis into creating another vampire, this time out of a five-year-old girl named Claudia.

Because vampires are immortal, they do not age, and Claudia becomes, over time, a woman trapped in a child’s body. This causes her distress, and she decides to take revenge on Lestat, attempting to kill him twice. Louis and Claudia then flee, first to Transylvania, then to Paris, in search of information about who and what they are.

In between, there is some mild sexiness, some disturbing scenes, and a certain amount of philosophizing. The last was the part I found the most interesting. Otherwise, it was okay, reasonably well written, but not on the same level as the original.

Here are a few lines I jotted down:

“People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don’t know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.”

I wonder how much this matches up with Rice’s own journey, first away from the Catholic faith to atheism, then back to Catholicism much later in life - although from what I can tell, she no longer believes in organized religion, and considers herself a humanist. It sounds like quite a journey in any case.

A lot of the philosophy is on the nature of evil. Because vampires are (sort of) immortal, they look at morality a bit differently.

“Evil is a point of view,” [Lestat] whispered now. “We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know with regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we.”

The thing that I have found the most disturbing in the last few years has been how many supposed “christians” think this way in practice. At least the idea that, well, since God kills, we are entitled to do so too. Think about the response to Covid, and the fatalism that “nobody dies before their time” so we should not wear masks, refuse vaccines, and threaten public officials who try to keep people safe. One has to wonder if they would be so casual about letting their kids run in traffic. Or, think about the fact that three quarters of white evangelicals think we have no duty to rescue refugees. Hey, I guess God doesn’t care about them either, so why should we?

“I’m convinced that Lestat was a person who preferred not to think or talk about his motives or beliefs, even to himself. One of those people who must act. Such a person must be pushed considerably before he will open up and confess that there is method and thought to the way he lives. That is what happened with Lestat. He’d been pushed to where he had to discover even for himself why he lived as he did. Keeping me with him, that was undoubtedly part of what pushed him. But I think, in retrospect, that he himself wanted to know his own reasons for killing, wanted to examine his own life. He was discovering when he spoke what he did believe.”

That last line is fascinating. Recently, a friend I have made noted that belief isn’t so much deciding what we believe, but discovering it. I think if we are willing to step outside ourselves, we can often see that what we actually believe - as revealed by what we do and say - is a lot different from what we think we believe. This is related to the idea that we don’t actually get to decide whether we are racist. Other people will look at our words and actions and draw conclusions about whether we are or not. (And some people get very pissy when others draw the obvious conclusions.)

There is a bit of sex in the book, although not between vampires, who have no ability to enjoy any pleasures of the flesh, such as eating or sex. But, as in the original, it is pretty obvious that the attraction of mortals to vampires is sexual in some way. (And seriously, a beautiful nubile woman being pierced by pointy things, eventually dying? That’s not intended to be sexual? Or judgy about women having “forbidden” sex? And the Victorians definitely didn’t believe that illicit sex caused women to waste away, right?)

Rice’s version is definitely more bisexual and homosexual than Stoker’s original. In fact, the attractions between vampires seems to qualify as homoromantic bordering on homoerotic. There is definitely a crush by Lestat on Louis, and by Louis on Armand. But Louis also kind of has the hots for Claudia, which is kind of icky. (From other members, I understand that Rice has a pedophilic vibe to some of her books. Not full on, but at least hinted. Which probably was more acceptable in literature in the 1970s than now.)

I do want to quote a passage on vampirism and sex that I think is interesting. It is a conversation between Claudia and Louis.

“What was it like…making love?”

“It was something hurried,” I said, trying now to meet her eyes. How perfectly, coldly blue they were. How earnest. “And…it was seldom savored…something acute that was quickly lost. I think that it was the pale shadow of killing.”

As Rice describes the kill, the vampire feels a sort of intimacy with the victim, as if the blood itself carried the hopes and dreams and emotions, and thus the vampire feels a momentary bond and connection with the victim. It’s a bit weird, but also makes sense in the context of vampirism as a metaphor for sex. Adding the intimacy part is just another layer of the same idea.

There is also an excellent discussion between Louis and the French vampire Armand on the source of evil. This is a philosophical problem that plagues all monotheistic religions, and there is no easy or entirely satisfying answer to it.

“Then we are not….” I sat forward,”....the children of Satan?”

“How could we be the children of Satan?” he asked. “Do you believe that Satan made the world around you?”

“No, I believe that God made it, if anyone made it. But He also must have made Satan, and I want to know if we are his children!”

“Exactly, and consequently if you believe God made Satan, you must realize that all Satan’s power comes from God and that Satan is simply God’s child, and that we are God’s children also. There are no children of Satan, really.”

That is ultimately the issue. If an all-powerful god truly created everything, they must be responsible for the existence of evil too. And, as I said, there is no satisfying theological answer to this, at least that I have ever heard. (And the Fundamentalist one is the least satisfying of all.) The best I can find is that some fundamental law of the universe related to free will (which presumably god created) requires the existence of evil in order for good to exist. But, as I said, not fully satisfying. Of course, a necessary part of thinking philosophically or metaphysically is the acceptance of reality even - especially - when it doesn’t fit neat theories or ideologies. No adult way of thinking can avoid the necessary paradoxes and tensions of existence. This is both why Fundamentalism is so attractive - it eliminates the need for deep thought and acceptance of discomfort - and why Fundamentalism is at its core a toddler-level way of thinking about the world.

These philosophical musings were interesting, but I also felt like Rice never answered Louis’ fundamental questions. More than anything, he wants to know who and what he is, and how the vampires came to be. But the book never really answers any of that. He (and the reader) is teased with promises of revelation, but nothing ever is revealed. The last third of the book goes really fast, and there are hints of this and that, but other than existentialist ennui, there are no real revelations. The trip to Transylvania and Paris moves the plot forward, but it doesn’t add anything of significance to either Louis’ or the reader’s understanding.

There are a whole bunch of books that came later to make this essentially the first of a series, and perhaps there is more explanation in those books. I believe this one was intended to be a stand-alone at the time, though, so it was disappointing that explanations are never given.

So, I guess in summary, it was an interesting book, and reasonably well written, but it seemed to start off going somewhere that it never went, and ultimately, the needs of plot won out over answers. And, of course, I am not really into horror for its own sake, so I’m probably not the best person to evaluate the book on its own terms.

***

Just for fun, here is the list of books that our book club has read. At least the ones I have read too. Most of these were read for the club, but a few were ones I read previously - those posts pre-date the club discussion - and some I read afterward, because I missed the discussion. A few of the books were “optional” second books for a given month.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

LaRose by Louise Erdrich

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac