IIRC there's a Real Name badge on her response, which pretty much means the name on the review corresponds to the name on the credit card. That's enough proof for me that it's actually Anne Rice.
But also what convinced me is that I'd read through some of her messages to readers on her website before -- I think the one where she talks about not letting her work be edited is "Message from the beach 2" or something like that -- and a lot of the ideas, the phrasing and even the emotional tone were all the same. She was obviously less upset in the message to her readers, but there was the same insistence on her work as genius, perfectly realized, &c.
Amazingly, this is apparently someone who's become a Big Name Author without the ability to take a pasting -- I won't say "criticism," because I don't think the Amazon.com reviews approach that. But sometimes writers just get unfair or uncomprehending reviews. Amazon.com has given a megaphone to a lot of fans who write stuff like "I didn't read this book but the other book I read by this author is terrible" or "This is the best book written ever," so writers are coming up smack against it in a way that really wasn't possible before Amazon.com. If you got a really bad review in a little literary quarterly, say, usually you wouldn't hear about it unless you had a completist clipping service (or agent) or they sent you a copy. But now it's like everyone is their own quarterly review, and you don't have to search it out -- it's all there right beneath the PW Review and whatever else amazon.com chooses to put up.
I feel a little sympathy for her because I also tend to get out-of-control when responding to sheer nastiness tossed in my direction, but I'm tempted to print out her Amazon.com post and hang it on my wall next to my computer as a reminder to never, ever try to get in the last word wrt a bad review, whether written by an Amazon.com nameless nabob or Edmund Wilson.
It's interesting how many people are comparing her to a fanfic writer who can't take criticism -- because what she's responding to isn't the kind of measured criticism fanfic can get. I wonder how much of that is due to her status as a "genre" author -- a bestselling one, to be sure, but still someone without "literary" prestige.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 04:47 am (UTC)But also what convinced me is that I'd read through some of her messages to readers on her website before -- I think the one where she talks about not letting her work be edited is "Message from the beach 2" or something like that -- and a lot of the ideas, the phrasing and even the emotional tone were all the same. She was obviously less upset in the message to her readers, but there was the same insistence on her work as genius, perfectly realized, &c.
Amazingly, this is apparently someone who's become a Big Name Author without the ability to take a pasting -- I won't say "criticism," because I don't think the Amazon.com reviews approach that. But sometimes writers just get unfair or uncomprehending reviews. Amazon.com has given a megaphone to a lot of fans who write stuff like "I didn't read this book but the other book I read by this author is terrible" or "This is the best book written ever," so writers are coming up smack against it in a way that really wasn't possible before Amazon.com. If you got a really bad review in a little literary quarterly, say, usually you wouldn't hear about it unless you had a completist clipping service (or agent) or they sent you a copy. But now it's like everyone is their own quarterly review, and you don't have to search it out -- it's all there right beneath the PW Review and whatever else amazon.com chooses to put up.
I feel a little sympathy for her because I also tend to get out-of-control when responding to sheer nastiness tossed in my direction, but I'm tempted to print out her Amazon.com post and hang it on my wall next to my computer as a reminder to never, ever try to get in the last word wrt a bad review, whether written by an Amazon.com nameless nabob or Edmund Wilson.
It's interesting how many people are comparing her to a fanfic writer who can't take criticism -- because what she's responding to isn't the kind of measured criticism fanfic can get. I wonder how much of that is due to her status as a "genre" author -- a bestselling one, to be sure, but still someone without "literary" prestige.