I didn't post one of those responses to the review, because it's been said, but I identify with them -- my private response was much the same.
I didn't see the vulnerability and pain you describe coming from Anne -- I saw narcissistic drama queen. She refuses to let anyone touch her sacred words and then turns around and flames people for pointing out grammar errors. How dare we hold her responsible for...exactly what she just grandiosely claimed complete responsibility for? Um, no.
I can't speak for anyone else, but my malice comes, not from pain, but from righteous indignation. Oh no, honey, you can't be thinking to put this over on me, to make it my fault that I am too stupid to understand your masterpiece. I don't think so. (Of course, I've got my own history with narcissism and having things be made the other person's fault. So maybe this is a place of pain after all.)
It's also a context thing. If this were the first time she'd pulled something like this, she'd get the "wow, must've been a lot of straw on that camel already" benefit of the doubt.
But Anne Rice makes a habit of psychodrama of precisely this sort -- flouncing off, seeing betrayal and personal insult in any critique, leaving long rants on her answering machine and web site that, in the course of defending herself, manage to insult a large number of other people and sound laughable in the process.
Several friends of mine were deeply into Anne Rice fandom for years, and were finally disillusioned by her behavior as much as by the decline in her books once she refused editing. So as far as I'm concerned she used up the benefit of the doubt a long time ago.
In a nonfamous person I have no tolerance for repeated temper tantrums. Someone who pulled this in my real life would be long gone from it. In a famous person... I still have no tolerance for it. Less, in fact, because if people are shelling out for your novel and reading it all the way through, that puts an additional burden on you to act like a grownup in return.
I'm not sure getting angry needs to serve a purpose. I just get angry when confronted with something that strikes me as inappropriate, and then the purpose served is expressing my anger. In addition, I'd argue, it serves as an object lesson to other pros that falling in love with yourself to this extent is going to alienate readers, and to fans who behave in a similar fashion in our own small puddle to see how unattractive it is when viewed from the outside.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 07:40 am (UTC)I didn't see the vulnerability and pain you describe coming from Anne -- I saw narcissistic drama queen. She refuses to let anyone touch her sacred words and then turns around and flames people for pointing out grammar errors. How dare we hold her responsible for...exactly what she just grandiosely claimed complete responsibility for? Um, no.
I can't speak for anyone else, but my malice comes, not from pain, but from righteous indignation. Oh no, honey, you can't be thinking to put this over on me, to make it my fault that I am too stupid to understand your masterpiece. I don't think so. (Of course, I've got my own history with narcissism and having things be made the other person's fault. So maybe this is a place of pain after all.)
It's also a context thing. If this were the first time she'd pulled something like this, she'd get the "wow, must've been a lot of straw on that camel already" benefit of the doubt.
But Anne Rice makes a habit of psychodrama of precisely this sort -- flouncing off, seeing betrayal and personal insult in any critique, leaving long rants on her answering machine and web site that, in the course of defending herself, manage to insult a large number of other people and sound laughable in the process.
Several friends of mine were deeply into Anne Rice fandom for years, and were finally disillusioned by her behavior as much as by the decline in her books once she refused editing. So as far as I'm concerned she used up the benefit of the doubt a long time ago.
In a nonfamous person I have no tolerance for repeated temper tantrums. Someone who pulled this in my real life would be long gone from it. In a famous person... I still have no tolerance for it. Less, in fact, because if people are shelling out for your novel and reading it all the way through, that puts an additional burden on you to act like a grownup in return.
I'm not sure getting angry needs to serve a purpose. I just get angry when confronted with something that strikes me as inappropriate, and then the purpose served is expressing my anger. In addition, I'd argue, it serves as an object lesson to other pros that falling in love with yourself to this extent is going to alienate readers, and to fans who behave in a similar fashion in our own small puddle to see how unattractive it is when viewed from the outside.