Ann Rice Interview in "First Things"

Father Longenecker , AKA Standing on My Head , has a wonderful interview with Ann Rice in First Things. Go see Interview with an Ex-Vampire Novelist.

I have always loved Ann Rice. She brought again the mystery and special quality of New Orleans to a whole new generation though her books.

The interview focuses on her conversion, her new books on Jesus, and other question. For instance she finds modern Biblical scholarship a scandal.

Her Catholic readership was of course pretty big before she came back home to the Church. I do like what she had to say about her famous Vampire Chronicles here:

Your earlier body of work is pretty, well, wicked. Did you include the erotic elements to sell books?

I recently posted an essay on my website on my earlier work. I think this essay has answered quite a few questions from my Christian readers who are unacquainted with the books. Basically I see the entire Vampire Chronicles as a search for God, a search for the light. The vampire was a metaphor for me, in the atheistic world, grieving for a lost faith, for the lost possibility of grace. I think that vampires are powerfully metaphorical for people, especially young people because the vampires (in my work, at any rate) are always in rebellion, refusing to be shut out of life, trying desperately to see deliverance through love of one another, through painting, through music. All my earlier work is united by these themes. The erotic element in the books was never there to sell books; it was something that came naturally to me, especially in my younger years.

I very much can see what she means about the Vampire books. In fact I suspect that these theme of religion and especially the engagement of Vampires with the Christian religion was a tad taxing for some of her readers.

It would be wonderful if "Lestat" made a comeback some how. I along with millions fell in love with that character. Perhaps Lestat coming back and complaining about the state of the Liturgy :) and refusing to go anywhere but St. Patricks in New Orleans for a "proper Mass" would be fun.

However I fear Lestat is now dead forever. Anyway good read