I feel sorry for Anne Rice
Sep. 22nd, 2004 04:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msagaraI don't know how many of you have seen the response she posted at amazon.com to reviews about her latest novel, Blood Canticle, but I'm assuming by this time many of you have -- because things like that tend to get around.
I read it with a kind of horrified fascination -- because, of course, it's the type of thing you think when you're very unhappy about a particularly nasty or incomprehensible review, which affects you say, when you're in the throes of PMS, etc.; the type of thing you might, in fact, grind out against a friend's shoulder in bitter frustration. Never the type of thing you post in public.
Otoh, she's always been a fairly public person, and she's not known for her lack of opinion about her work. How do I know this? Because I also visited her web site after I'd read her commentary. She's pretty clear about what she wants, and about how she views her own writing. And it's damn clear, reading her words there, that that lovely patina of detachment that writers are supposed to develop in public about their work and the comments or reactions it engenders? She hasn't. Ever.
Proof, of a sort, that you don't necessarily have to develop these calluses in order to be a million copy+ bestseller. Yes, that was a digression.
Do I agree with what she said? No. I don't think that people who didn't like it are clearly stupid or of lesser intellectual capacity. I think speculating on why the book didn't work -- that she was tramautized by the death of her husband and it affected her work, or that he must have been writing the other books because now he's dead and this one 'sucks' -- gives me some information about how seriously I should take the reviewer, and I understand why she might feel a sense of outrage at the implication that the words weren't hers. I think talking about the genius of one's own work is always teetering on the edge of wise (the wrong edge), but frankly, I've heard so many damn authors say the same things about their own work, either publicly or in chat rooms with a large number of people, that I guess it slides off the hard skin; it doesn't surprise me. It doesn't offend me.
What I find somewhat bewildering is the hostility that the counter engendered. She is clearly emotionally invested in her work to such a degree that she can't detach once the book has gone out of her hands; she's done something inadvisable and even publicly embarrassing (to herself), but I understand the source of the reaction because she's demonstrably not capable of not taking it personally; the work is what she has.
Do I advise anyone else to do this? Not on your damn life. And I would be eternally grateful to anyone who stopped me from doing something equally ill-advised; that's what spouses are for, poor sods.
The anger and scorn and derision and general cruelty that arose in response to her comments? I understand that less well. I don't understand that it comes from the same place; there's obviously no one with that same visceral attachment, that same inability to let go, because it's not their work. Yes, it's published. Yes, it's now open to public commentary, and yes people on Amazon have every right to post their opinions; I'm not arguing against that.
It's the reviews, if you will, of her response to the reviews that I find almost creepy. Or mob-like. Or something. It's like, "Okay, she's down and she's exposed a very stupid vulnerability, so let's all get together and kick her and giggle." I understand bonding exercises, and things that draw a group together in fun -- but this kind of fun is not my kind of fun. There's not a lot of malice in her words, that I can see; a lot of rage and obvious pain, but not a lot of malice; she's right there, in her words. She's completely exposed. There's a sh*tload of malice coming from other people, and it doesn't seem to come from a place of pain.
A better way to put this: She's not knowingly lying. She didn't knowingly turn out a bad book. She's not misinforming others to their detriment. Will the book make money for her? Yes, but not in a scam-artist way. I can understand a group assembling around any of these other things, because it seems to me to serve a purpose. Not entirely getting the purpose served here. (And Graydon, if you're reading this and you attempt to tell me this is some value of poor insecurity management, we'll have words <wry g>.)
My reaction to Rice's post is, as I said, a certain horrified fascination; it's like watching something implode. Or worse. But I'm wincing at it. If she came into my store tomorrow and screamed her head off, using more or less the same words? I'd grind my teeth and say nothing, and feel sorry for her because of the obvious cracks in the façade; but I'd be thinking, while I did it, there but for the grace of something-or-other go I. You build a lot of walls in this business, and it's like watching a car accident when they come down in this particular fashion.
I'm not immune to disaster scenes. I'm probably a lesser person because of this. I have to go and look. Why? Because obviously I'm stupid. And I have an edge. Just not that much of one.
I read it with a kind of horrified fascination -- because, of course, it's the type of thing you think when you're very unhappy about a particularly nasty or incomprehensible review, which affects you say, when you're in the throes of PMS, etc.; the type of thing you might, in fact, grind out against a friend's shoulder in bitter frustration. Never the type of thing you post in public.
Otoh, she's always been a fairly public person, and she's not known for her lack of opinion about her work. How do I know this? Because I also visited her web site after I'd read her commentary. She's pretty clear about what she wants, and about how she views her own writing. And it's damn clear, reading her words there, that that lovely patina of detachment that writers are supposed to develop in public about their work and the comments or reactions it engenders? She hasn't. Ever.
Proof, of a sort, that you don't necessarily have to develop these calluses in order to be a million copy+ bestseller. Yes, that was a digression.
Do I agree with what she said? No. I don't think that people who didn't like it are clearly stupid or of lesser intellectual capacity. I think speculating on why the book didn't work -- that she was tramautized by the death of her husband and it affected her work, or that he must have been writing the other books because now he's dead and this one 'sucks' -- gives me some information about how seriously I should take the reviewer, and I understand why she might feel a sense of outrage at the implication that the words weren't hers. I think talking about the genius of one's own work is always teetering on the edge of wise (the wrong edge), but frankly, I've heard so many damn authors say the same things about their own work, either publicly or in chat rooms with a large number of people, that I guess it slides off the hard skin; it doesn't surprise me. It doesn't offend me.
What I find somewhat bewildering is the hostility that the counter engendered. She is clearly emotionally invested in her work to such a degree that she can't detach once the book has gone out of her hands; she's done something inadvisable and even publicly embarrassing (to herself), but I understand the source of the reaction because she's demonstrably not capable of not taking it personally; the work is what she has.
Do I advise anyone else to do this? Not on your damn life. And I would be eternally grateful to anyone who stopped me from doing something equally ill-advised; that's what spouses are for, poor sods.
The anger and scorn and derision and general cruelty that arose in response to her comments? I understand that less well. I don't understand that it comes from the same place; there's obviously no one with that same visceral attachment, that same inability to let go, because it's not their work. Yes, it's published. Yes, it's now open to public commentary, and yes people on Amazon have every right to post their opinions; I'm not arguing against that.
It's the reviews, if you will, of her response to the reviews that I find almost creepy. Or mob-like. Or something. It's like, "Okay, she's down and she's exposed a very stupid vulnerability, so let's all get together and kick her and giggle." I understand bonding exercises, and things that draw a group together in fun -- but this kind of fun is not my kind of fun. There's not a lot of malice in her words, that I can see; a lot of rage and obvious pain, but not a lot of malice; she's right there, in her words. She's completely exposed. There's a sh*tload of malice coming from other people, and it doesn't seem to come from a place of pain.
A better way to put this: She's not knowingly lying. She didn't knowingly turn out a bad book. She's not misinforming others to their detriment. Will the book make money for her? Yes, but not in a scam-artist way. I can understand a group assembling around any of these other things, because it seems to me to serve a purpose. Not entirely getting the purpose served here. (And Graydon, if you're reading this and you attempt to tell me this is some value of poor insecurity management, we'll have words <wry g>.)
My reaction to Rice's post is, as I said, a certain horrified fascination; it's like watching something implode. Or worse. But I'm wincing at it. If she came into my store tomorrow and screamed her head off, using more or less the same words? I'd grind my teeth and say nothing, and feel sorry for her because of the obvious cracks in the façade; but I'd be thinking, while I did it, there but for the grace of something-or-other go I. You build a lot of walls in this business, and it's like watching a car accident when they come down in this particular fashion.
I'm not immune to disaster scenes. I'm probably a lesser person because of this. I have to go and look. Why? Because obviously I'm stupid. And I have an edge. Just not that much of one.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 07:50 am (UTC)This is the first thing I've ever seen publicly, aside from the criticism of Tom Cruise and the retraction of the criticism of Tom Cruise, fwiw.
I'm not one of her readers, but I'm not really a Vampire fan of any kind. I liked Buffy because she killed them. And then didn't kill them so much. But <ahem> I try to avoid religious issues in topic.
So I'm giving her the context benefit that I have.
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.
I don't get angry when something strikes me as inappropriate. I do get angry when something strikes me as stupid, otoh. And if I'm tired, gross incompetence makes me cranky. Okay, crankier. But I don't get a lot of glee out of being pissed off or offended.
Your response seems appropriate to me; you're responding in context to something I've said, rather than adding to the heap of things that are being repetitively said, and frankly, are using whole sentences, which separates you somewhat from many <wry g&g;t.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 08:09 am (UTC)*nods* Makes sense. If you want to see others I could probably dig them up, but I suspect there are more fun things you could be reading.
But I try to avoid religious issues in topic.
Hee!
I don't get angry when something strikes me as inappropriate. I do get angry when something strikes me as stupid, otoh.
That makes sense. I'm actually the other way around. Stupid, unless it's willfully stupid, gets a pass under "they can't help it." Inappropiate triggers my "they damned well should've helped it" response.
I don't get a lot of glee out of being pissed off or offended.
Nor I, but if I'm already pissed off or offended, I get some glee out of getting it onto the screen and therefore out of me. After years of swallowing anger and letting it eat my stomach, it's a nice change, and I'm learning to express it from the less risky targets inward.
Plus there are the pleasures of saying it well and of being agreed with, which are other incentives for people to post.
and frankly, are using whole sentences, which separates you somewhat from many
Heh. Also, thank you.