Rice, Anne

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RICE, Anne

Born Howard Allen O'Brien, 4 October 1941, New Orleans, Louisiana

Also writes under: Anne Rampling, A. N. Roquelaure

Daughter of Katherine and Howard O'Brien; married Stan Rice,1961; children: Michele (deceased), Christopher

New Orleans and the Catholic church have been central to Anne Rice's life. She was born and brought up in the Irish Channel, a working-class, ethnic neighborhood in the city. Her father, after whom she was named (she changed her name to Anne when she began school), was a post office worker, and her mother maintained a strictly Catholic and very Southern household. Born not in but on the fringe of the wealthy Garden District, Rice spent her childhood wandering the distinct neighborhoods of New Orleans, and many of her novels capture the sense of the old Creole city.

Shortly after her mother's death, Rice was moved from the Catholic church and New Orleans to Richardson, Texas, with her father and his new wife. There she attended Richardson High School (where she met her husband, Stan, whose poetry she sometimes includes in her own works) and Texas Women's University, eventually moving on to San Francisco State College. She received her B.A. in political science and creative writing in 1964, her M.A. in creative writing in 1971, and did further graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley.

Stan Rice was already writing poetry and Anne had a short story, "October 4, 1948" (1965), published in Transfer, but after the death of their daughter from leukemia in 1972, Rice took up writing seriously at her husband's suggestion, and her first novel, Interview with the Vampire (1976), became an instant publishing success. All of her books have continued to sell at a phenomenal rate. While she did not immediately return to the Vampire Chronicles after the success of the first, Rice later added more to the series, including: The Vampire Lestat (1985), Queen of the Damned (1988), and The Tale of the Body Thief (1992). The vampire series is responsible for much of Rice's fame as a cult writer. There are elements in the novels, however, that touch on the deeper issues of good and evil, salvation and damnation. Louis, the vampire of her first novel, is a tormented creature who longs for companionship. He finds it briefly in Claudia, a child vampire whom he creates, and in a vampire community that gives him the illusion that he is almost human. Interview with the Vampire brings out the best in Rice's writing. It captures her impeccable sense of place and her sense of how people become haunted and lost, and integrates these elements with the implacable sense of loneliness that one feels after great loss. Claudia's death in the novel is almost an elegy for her own daughter.

For almost 10 years after her success, Rice turned away from the Vampire Chronicles and wrote historical fiction, popular novels, and erotica. The Feast of All Saints (1980) and Cry to Heaven (1982) are carefully researched historical novels that examine respectively the lives of free people of color in New Orleans in the decades before the Civil War and of castrati in 18th-century Italy. Both deal with people on the outside, and Rice's empathy for the outcast is palpable. Culturally, the free blacks of Feast of All Saints are as restricted in their movements as Rice's vampires who can only come out at night, and the castrati of Cry to Heaven long for normal human lives as much as Louis the vampire does. Writing as A. N. Roquelaure, Rice released a trilogy of erotica—The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983), Beauty's Punishment (1984), and Beauty's Release (1985)—with the classic children's character Sleeping Beauty as the focus. Highly titillating in content alone, Rice's wonderful writing style enhances the story and then continues to shock the reader with themes of sadomasochism and bondage as she brings leather and lace together in the trilogy.

In 1985 in The Vampire Lestat, Rice brings back Louis' teacher/father, Lestat, the powerful vampire figure of the first novel. Unlike Louis, Lestat has no moral ambivalence about his condition, and in fact seems to revel in the power it gives him. Powerful physically, intellectually, and emotionally, he challenges not only the boundaries of the human world but of the vampire world as well. The third novel of the series, Queen of the Damned, seems weak, unfocused, and sometimes even silly by comparison with the first two. The same problem affects the fantastical novel The Mummy; or, Ramses the Damned (1989), which makes a joke out of the issues Rice once handled seriously. But in 1992 Rice redeemed herself in The Tale of the Body Thief, returning to the Vampire Chronicles, and Lestat—her most enduring and possibly most perceptive character—undertakes an amazing journey into contemporary philosophy and the meaning of existence. In this book and in Memnoch the Devil (1995), Rice's writing exhibits the power of her two earliest chronicles. In 1998 Rice released The Vampire Armand, in which she examines the life of one of her regularly appearing characters.

With the release of The Witching Hour (1990), Rice returns to New Orleans both literally and metaphorically. After almost three decades in San Francisco, she and her family of witches (called the Mayfairs) and a spirit named Lasher (who desperately wants to attain humanity) grapple with the nature of humanity, the tension between good and evil, and the mystery of life. Two more novels in the series quickly followed: Lasher (1993) and Taltos: Tales of the Mayfair Witches (1994).

Servant of the Bones (1996) and Violin (1997) are considered Rice's "ghost books." The latter, set in the resort city of Rio, was "inspired by Gary Oldman's Beethoven," says Rice, as well as "the lush film Amadeus " and her "bitter disappointment as a child that I had no talent to make great music, especially on the violin." While consistent with Rice's witch-and-vampire world, it brings in new language, new poetry, and new visions of romance à la Shakespeare and Keats.

Exit to Eden (1985), a Rampling novel dealing with fulfilling sadomasochistic fantasies, was made into a film in 1994 by Savoy Pictures. Directed by veteran Garry Marshall, Rice worked on the screenplay with Deborah Amelon and Bob Brunner, and the movie starred Dana Delany, Paul Mercurio, Rosie O'Donnell, Dan Aykroyd, Iman, and Hector Elizondo. It had all the makings of a great movie; unfortunately, it wasn't. The movie turned into a comedic spoof, wanting to be kinky but falling quite short. Interview with the Vampire, on the other hand, following 17 years of controversial planning, finally became an all-star, award-winning film in 1994, starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater, Antonio Banderas, and Stephen Rea. Neil Jordan directed Rice's screenplay.

In Katherine Ramsland, Rice has a devoted biographer/ bibliographer with at least six works about Rice's writing under her belt. Dozens of other books have been written by others chronicling this excellent writer. There is no doubt that Rice is more than a popular novelist. Both her historical fiction and her vampire and witch novels focus on issues central to modern culture, and she deftly integrates larger philosophical and theological issues into her fiction. Even her potboilers and erotic fiction squarely confront the issues of fate and free will in ways that less serious novels simply ignore.

Other Works:

Belinda (1986).

Bibliography:

Reference works:

CA 65-68 (1977). CANR 12 (1984). CLC 41 (1987).

Other references:

Beahm, G., The Unauthorized Anne Rice Companion (1995). Commotion Strange (Rice's fan newsletters). "David Bowie and the End of Gender" (1983). Dickinson, J., Haunted City: An Unauthorized Guide to the Magical, Magnificent New Orleans of Anne Rice (1995). Fox Video/Oxford Television Company/BBC, Anne Rice: Birth of the Vampire (1994, videocassette). Hoppenstand, G., and R. B. Browne, The Gothic World of Anne Rice (1996). "Interlude With the Undead" (also known as "The Art of the Vampire at its Peak in the Year 1876") (1979). Marcus, J., In the Shadow of the Vampire: Reflections on the World of Anne Rice (1997). New Orleans Times-Picayune (28 Mar. 1990). NYTBR (4 Nov. 1990). NYT Magazine (14 Oct. 1990). Ramsland, K., Prism of the Night (1991, 1994). Ramsland, K., The Vampire Companion: The Official Guide to Anne Rice's the Vampire Chronicles (1993, 1995). Ramsland, K., The Witches Companion: The Official Guide to Anne Rice's Lives of the Mayfair Witches (1994). Ramsland, K., The Anne Rice Trivia Book (1994). Ramsland, K., The Roquelaure Reader: A Companion to Anne Rice's Erotica (1996). Ramsland, K., The Anne Rice Reader (1997). Riley, M., Conversations with Anne Rice (1996). Roberts, B. B., Anne Rice (1994). Stephens, C. P., A Checklist of Anne Rice (1992). Smith, J., Anne Rice: A Critical Companion (1996).