There must be balance. And there must be kept a healthy distance and approach towards things in general or they get unbelievably and comically ridiculous. I could never understand extremes – people from both sides of – let’s say – an argument which has been going on since the release of Memnoch the Devil. I’ve been usually a silent observer watching people wrestling either with the books (the last one Blood Canticle in particular), their own emotions concerning the book/s and with the thought that Anne Rice would no longer write about vampires.
On one side you’ve got appearing to be raving-mad self-called Christians-true-Catholics calling The Vampire Chronicles “satanic books” and praising Anne Rice’s “coming back to the light” while on the other side of this barricade you’ve got so called old-readers – who’d jump to anyone’s throat (Anne Rice’s included) to defend “good old” Lestat – and with them old-school Goths throwing meat at Anne Rice and laughing at her –something what may appear – an eccentric change of literary path. Such extreme reactions from both sides are not only ridiculous and infantile, but also show the lack of common sense and with it, the lack of contact with reality; needless to say, they stand for a clear proof that people don’t pay attention to the literary label which all of Anne Rice’s books have – and that is FICTION. Of course love for the books may explain that, in my opinion, violent defense of the characters; but nothing explains idiocy or ignorance or ad-hominem. Both sides lack healthy distance towards (probably themselves and) the books which although may be influencing, they have always been and remain fiction. This and more, my friends, all of us should have in mind when any and each one of us attempt to write a critical essay or simply voice an opinion not only on matter of Rice’s writing but just on anything.
And there’s Anne Rice herself; although I have no difficulty with understanding Anne’s choice – or motives even – of/for changing her literary subject from gothic to catholic, so to speak, I don’t quite understand why Mrs. Rice acts as if everything prior to Christ the Lord was “ the literary shameful incidents” which need to be revised, reinterpreted and explained again in order to fit the new literary and religious route in her life and work. And this is exactly the impression I’ve been getting from her for a long time now – in interviews and messages to fans. It surprises me, it saddens me and leaves me utterly stunned and baffled. As much as I can understand Mrs. Rice’s lack of distance towards matters concerning her religious conversion which probably was/is the main reason of that lively debate she’s been having with fans and critics over the World Wide Web, I can’t understand the lack of mentioned distance towards herself and her writings. It is as if Mrs. Rice was ashamed of her neo-gothic literary “nest egg” which now has no place in her new professional and private life. So it has to be, like I already said, reinterpreted to not cloud or distort the message of “the Christian fiction”.
And here we’re getting closer to the point, I’ve got this feeling that the dangerous line has been crossed – when an author stops being a writer and turns into man with/on serious mission – a crusader. It is toxic, I could risk saying, when fiction using religion and its iconography wants indirectly to be something more than fiction; there’s danger of falling into demagogy, religious indoctrination and devout impotent preaching. Author’s motives may be honest and pure but lack of distance usually spoils the effect. Of course, choosing such dangerous form of rhetoric won’t repel declared believers, but it’s rather highly unlikely it will be accepted by many of old readers or enchant skeptics or those with undecided “religious preference”. It’s not my place to judge the literary quality or value of Anne Rice’s “Christian fiction”, but I believe it would have been taken and understood far better if Mrs. Rice had kept her personal life and religiousness away from her writing. I fear that Anne Rice’s good intentions of trying to speak about “the Word which became flesh” and her personal experience of “faith in ecstasy” fell under the category of indoctrination in this purely American style, or maybe it’s me being a typical central Eastern European born in the post communistic-catholic country and brought up in catholic family thus being completely resistant to basically any form of indoctrination or too flowery and nonchalant talk about somewhat private – if not intimate – matters such as religion and faith. Yes, I am aware that it’s not viewed as intimate to the American people, it explains the popularity of televangelism and everything that comes with it in the USA while here in Poland it’s viewed extremely negatively. “America the country of People who simply believe”, as I read somewhere, it does not matter in what, but they do.The idea of evangelization is completely different in this Slavic corner of Europe.
The Mayfair Witches series and the Vampire Chronicles series stand for a fine example of a neo-gothic literature which enchants people and will continue enchanting, there’s no hidden mission or a a satanic mission as some hard-catholic try to make those books look like. The Christ the Lord series though brought Rice’s fiction to a completely new level, they became a tool of evangelization and religious indoctrination basically because of a heavy personal involvement of Anne Rice herself. If you read some of the comments from new (Christian) Anne Rice readers concerning her New Catholic Fiction, you’ll find declaration of “coming back to the Church”; “feeling HIS presence”; “Anne Rice making Christ so believable” (which is funny really). One may ask if Anne writes just fiction, I believe it’s not just a fiction anymore. I also don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing either. Of course, I have no doubt that her new Christian readers are simply delighted, I remain reserved and skeptical.
Anyway, instead of attempting to proceed further with some psychoanalytical analysis – so commonly performed in quasi biographies or in essays dealing with Anne Rice, her religious conversion and latest books – which could probably give laboured answers to all of my “whys” here, I prefer to pose only questions and wonder, and mourn. This is just a sketch to perhaps a deeper and nice thesis dealing on social psychology and literature and how an author turns from a writer into a preacher and their word becomes “THE word”, or “THE flesh”.
