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.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 07:42 am (UTC)I'm going to argue that one. I don't think she's done this before -- and lord knows there are people who probably know what underwear she's got on today, so if she had, it would have propagated, in much the same way this has.
There are a lot of people who can't stand her Vampires or her books.
I've been talking to other people about this, and I'm almost getting the feeling that maybe 1 in 5 read the reviews that she's responding to. Given the timing, you don't have to go that far back; even read the previous sixty to her comment, and you'll understand that it's not that they don't like it that seems to have pushed her buttons; there are certainly less than glowing reviews of all her other books.
I'm really guessing it was the person who said her dead husband was probably the real writer that tipped her over the scales (and way, way off, and I'd even bet my own money on it, as opposed to, say anyone else's); but then again, since she was going to do it anyway, why not also answer every other sweeping dismissal?
So either this book was somehow very special or important to her, or something -- because as I said, she's got a lot of negative reviews lying around the rests of amazon and she's never responded like this.
I don't know her; I've never met her; I'm not actually trying to defend her -- although I'm beginning to think that it's a twitch on my part.
I do understand the frustration with the lack of being edited, though, because I think it did make a difference.
But you know what? Colleen McCullough hated what she had to do to THORN BIRDS to sell that book -- and it's by far the biggest hit she ever had. I remember 6 months after it came out it was still outselling front-list new releases in the chain I worked at at the time; we were crating them in in 50's. Well, okay, 48's.
Still, she hated and loathed what she'd been forced to do editorially, and she never allowed that level of interference again.
Sometimes what we want to do as writers and what connects well with readers isn't the same thing :/. I'm not sure it's a waste of talent, per se in the case of Anne Rice; she seems to write so much from where she is in the moment that there would almost have to be changes because she's thirty+ years older than she was when she wrote Interview.
Ummm, and no, of course I don't mind -- I confess I don't immediately recognize
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 07:52 am (UTC)Well, there's about 200+ reviews before hers. I skimmed through them, noting that the majority of them were negative, but not an overwhelming majority. I didn't see the review which said her dead husband probably wrote her novels - I agree that was over the top - it's really out of court to publicly speculate about that, and I wouldn't have thought Anne Rice unreasonable if she reacted directly to that.
But I did see various things being said that she seemed to be responding to, and none of them were over the top - queries about was this really the last Vampire Chronicles novel, objections to unresolved plotlines, comments about Lestat's speech patterns, etc.
In particular, this part of her "review": You don't get all this? Fine. But I experienced an intimacy with the character in those scenes that shattered all prior restraints, and when one is writing one does have to continuously and courageously fight a destructive tendency to inhibition and restraint. Getting really close to the subject matter is the achievement of only great art.
What this really does remind me of, very strongly, is reading the response of a fanfic writer who has been sharing her stories with no one but her devoted friends/fans who tell her how wonderful they are - and then, all of a sudden, she falls over this nest of fanfic critics who have been happily taking her (very bad) stories to pieces, and she's outraged because, obviosuly, they just don't get it - so how dare they express an opinion? I've seen that kind of reaction - exactly that kind of reaction - multiple times in my years in fandom, and it's invariably something that comes from a writer who believes herself to be above negative criticism, and is accustomed to hearing nothing but praise.
(The idea that because she's put so much emotional energy into communing with the character that her writing must be great is, well, it's so amateur. In the worst possible sense.)
So either this book was somehow very special or important to her, or something -- because as I said, she's got a lot of negative reviews lying around the rests of amazon and she's never responded like this.
Has she ever responded at all? Has she ever read her reviews on Amazon before? I see she's written reviews on Amazon, but do we know if she's ever read her own reviews?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-22 07:57 am (UTC)Oh, absolutely. It's one of the benefits of being a fanfic writer: if I don't like what the editor wants to do with my story, I can usually say No. Over the years, I've learned which fan editors it's a mistake to say no to (because years later I re-read one of my stories and I think "Oh, yes, she wanted me to do that, and yes, it would have been a way better story if I had") and the fan editors it's a mistake to say yes to. At least all the time. I want my writing to be edited well - but not "not at all".