I think I'm with Lucy on this one-- good writers have convinced me to go along with things that don't do much for me but that the characters got off on, and have made things I have no problem with seem strange or threatening or gross.
If it works, it works (I'm borrowing a phrase here).
I think that accessibility is a reasonable concern upon which one can make certain authorial choices where sex is concerned, ones that have little to do with squick factor, or even shame, fwiw.
And having not had your experience in this particular regard, I'm speaking from my own experience, as usual.
It depends on what I'm supposed to take out of the text.
I don't consider, given the whole concept of the ID Vortex, that the ways characters respond to winter -- shorn of, say, being thrown out of the house to freeze to death -- are on par with the way they approach the negotiations of sex.
I'm willing to admit that some people think that this may be on par -- I can't think of any offhand, but sure. It could happen.
I don't fantasize about food; I'm not a foodie. It's one of the things I don't really care about, and I skip it; foodie books, where food=sex, wouldn't speak to me at all. Unless, you know, I'm reading Poppy Brite. Absent that, those details may, in fact, be tied to that vortex, but in that case, they're not details, they're dark epiphanies.
Why should it be different with sex? Maybe it shouldn't. But then again, why do we have whole communities that define themselves entirely by sexuality? People can be pretty specific about toilet-training, but they don't self-identify as communities.
I think it's different, because I think so much of our fantasy lives and our personal quirks are things we hold that much closer.
If you're writing something meant to be erotic and powerful in the erotic sense, you want to draw me there -- and implication, specificity that doesn't tread on my ability to be there in that fashion works better for me.
If you're writing sex a la Garp, you're not writing erotica. In which case, as I said above, it's a different map.
Ummm, that would be Stephan Zielinkski, and apologies for the mis-spelling.
Stephan Zelienski said: I'd like to present an alternate hypothesis as to why many writers tend to avoid getting too specific during sex scenes: it tends to limit the potential audience to people who share the particular quirks of the folk in the sex scene.
This is a big thing, for me. I think that we all have different kinks and quirks, and the more specific things get, the less engaged I get, unless for some reason the writer happens to hit the exact same buttons I have, which happens very, very infrequently. I'm happy to fill in blanks, where blanks are applicable, as a reader.
The scenes in which sex play a large part of plot and psychology are almost all of necessity darker; they pass out of the bounds of the erotic for me, and become part of personal geography; in that sense, I'm not being invited in on any level that the rest of the story hasn't already demanded of me. Or: I think the source wish-fulfillment has vanished entirely by this time, and the scene itself serves a different purpose.
My feeling from the UK papers online was Blair wanted Kerry in. He never said so explicitly but he never endorsed Bush. Any UKer is welcome to expand/rebut.
Fwiw, and not from the UK here, the sense from Canadian media was that Blair was dead silent on Bush and re-election -- and it would certainly have been better for Blair politically had Kerry won. In fact, from our media perspective -- and perhaps I'm reading selectively -- the only person who publicly endorsed Bush before the election was Putin.
I think Putin endorsed Bush as well.
Congratulations, indeed! I hope someone took pictures <g>.
I think, in a quiet sort of way, this is one of the most disquieting things I've read yet about the current political situation in the US.
I admit that I've been reading as little about it as I can because I'm not a US citizen, and I can't vote, and I get a lot of different viewpoints on the election because it does have a large international effect. There is -- outside of the US -- a sense that breath is being held, that waiting is being done, that you could hear a pin drop for the silence & tension.
Why, then, do would-be writers who have created the literary equivalents of those beginner bowls think they have created something that the world will want to pay money for?
They clearly can't see that these are beginner bowls. I've seen published books that wouldn't make it out of many workshops alive, fwiw, so it's clear that the 'standard' for what constitutes a non-beginner bowl varies widely.
But I think it's just more emotional and internal than that. These writers know what they're trying to say -- and that's probably what they see when they look at what they've done. I think it boils down to this: they loved the novel by so-and-so, and they love this story they've written just as much and love=good.
And why on earth would we feel sorry for them because they hold this delusional belief in the value of their literary beginner bowls?
I'm not saying this is clever or even right; I just think there's some pathos in this. Pity is like compassion, but shorn of a certain basic peer-respect.
Has anyone else noticed that the reporter in that Washington Post article keeps saying "ISBN number"? Bleah!
<raising hand>.
But given the actual content of the -rest- of the article, a little redundancy seemed to pale by comparison...
belfry? (This could be a US vs. UK spelling variance; no US dictionary here. Sorry).
Not exactly. What I mean is that it's a bad idea for her to go attaching her name to negative things. It gives them life.
Thank you -- that was a much longer post, but it was much more clearly stated, and I now understand what you meant.
I'm not certain that I agree with it -- but I'm not certain I don't, either.
To me it seems entirely reasonable that Anne Rice should be held to a higher standard in the public eye than the collective mass of Anne Rice readers. She should be expected to display more intelligence, more reason, and more leadership. She is, after all, the reason why the other group exists.
I don't understand the reasoning behind this. I don't understand why authors -- who are often somewhat over-focused <she says, diplomatically> -- should be held to a higher standard of social behaviour because they're the creator of a universe that has fans.
Doesn't this in some way support the view that she is a Unique Artistic Vision? Isn't this just another way of saying that she does, in fact, deserve the hubris or arrogance of which she's being accused?
Or do you feel that the creator is somehow parent to the legion of followers who feel entitled to the creation? That, in some sense, she should be setting an example as the Mother of them all, good and bad?
Honestly, confused here.
Melissa: not to be ironic, but ... me too.
Elizabeth: Did you read the excerpt? She (or at least her narrator) truly does lambast his/her readers for not loving the last book. The excerpt can be read on Amazon. ... I'd say the author herself set up a context for this book to be slammed. Personally, I wish she had allowed an editor to respond, because I think it would have saved her a lot of personal grief.
Err, yes. The book to be slammed.
No, I haven't read it. I haven't read the book (Memnoch) to which the excerpt you mention refers, so I don't know if the lambasting is in character for the viewpoint character or not, and because I don't have that grounding, it's not something I can judge (see below).
My response to her post would be different if more of the negative reviews had, in fact, been about the book; had the readers said in a universal way that they felt Rice was slapping them via Lestat, that would make sense because it would be textual. This is why I don't feel qualified to judge her use of that viewpoint; few of the people who hated the book hated it for that reason, even the ones who were complaining about the depiction of "their Lestat".
I chose a very small sample of the reviews in which the main thrust was metatextual: the reviewer's sense of entitlement, the reviewer's attack on authorial identity, and oh, hell, malice, since I'm not certain where to slot the last snippet.
And if the negative non-reviews had been a very tiny percentage and she'd gone postal? I'd have a different reaction. But as it's not about the book, reading the book doesn't matter.
Otoh, it looks like Amazon has deleted everything not only written by her, but also written after the end of April this year. Which would, by this point, be some 50-60 reviews.
Author X gets really ticked off at some internet reviews and not only tells people they're stupid if they don't like the book but goes on to remind people how perfect he is, which is not a new thing for him to say.
In other words, context is everything here. If it'd been someone else, maybe I would've reacted differently to it.
Perhaps you follow Anne Rice far more closely than I do; I'm not one of her readers, so I'm not familiar with her behaviour. In fact, even when I am someone's reader, I'm generally not familiar with their behaviour, because I'm reading the book, not the author, and I don't particularly feel that the author owes me anything because, well, I paid for a book.
However, I'm only aware of the one other link I posted -- in which she talkes about her writing process and her difficulty dealing with being edited, which lead to her not being edited by someone else. I'm not familiar with any other occasions in which she tells people that they're stupid if they don't like her writing, that they don't understand her UAV, etc.
I'm perfectly willing to have my context shifted, fwiw -- but I'd like to do it by actually reading some of the things which give you the context from which you view the incident.
What I have is a single post about being edited, and a rant on amazon -- which is preceded by, oh, at a rough guess, 100 other rants, some of which were excerpted and dropped here to provide a view of what is a context for the (incredibly unwise) rant itself. I didn't even finish them all; I went through about the first 100, and stopped there because I could see how it could rub the skin off someone who is still bereaved.
I can't say I wouldn't feel a need to lash back if I were ever in her shoes (G-d, please put me in her shoes... no wait...) but I'd like to think I wouldn't come off sounding like I thought I was the God of All Writing.
The problem is, as far as I can see, that there is no way to lash back that doesn't cause more damage to you than it does to your detractors.
Given the context of the reviews -- especially the last one I clipped -- I just don't find it offensive that she's defending her work. How she's defending it? Not the only published writer I've heard do it this way. It's the way that will open her up to most ridicule, however.
I can count about a dozen that I've heard say some variant of "I Am The Greatest Writer On Earth" in a less immediately accessible public fashion, but not entirely in a dark closet. It shocked me then, because I assumed we were inhabiting the same consensual reality; now, I consider it a... thing. What are those things we writers have? Ego? Neuroses? One of those.
In fact, one of the few writers in that group whose work I did admire said directly to me, "If you don't think you're unique, if you don't think you're the best there is, then why even bother? Why are you doing this? There are much easier jobs and they pay a lot better."
Would he say this in public? Never. In a small room with a few people in it? Yes. But never in public, never in print. Humble, self-effacing, friendly guy -- who internally thinks he's the greatest writer on earth. I don't think he's an egomaniac, fwiw. We all do whatever we have to do to finish the story.
Her problem is that the public facade isn't really working at the moment.
I did a rough scan and couldn't quite find them. Most of the reviews concern Anne Rice's posting. It seems to have caused more of a response than the book itself.
Ummm, no. Try the paperback version of the book -- it has 240+ reviews, and only the first twenty or so are about the rant.
Fwiw, for people who feel that she's reacting to measured & reasonable criticism I offer a couple of highlights -- because clearly, these are they eye-stings. These are all pre-rant reviews.
"Anyone who reviews this novel with high praise has obviously missed the entire theme, the nuance, the atmosphere of all of Anne's previous work."
"… Even when her books are mediocre (Pandora), she still makes the reader feel as if they were in the room, you can almost smell the atmosphere. her descriptions of places, cities, homes, feedings, hatred, and death are exquisite. ... That is why I do not think this book was even written by Anne Rice. … Please Anne, if you read this, we, your loyal fans will forgive you if Lestat awakes and we find out this book was a dream sequence, (ala Dallas) and you decide to do this right."
"I know many diehard fans may wish to throw stones at me for what I am about to say but it must be said. Please to not take it in poor taste in speaking of the dead, but after the drivel that I found in Blood Cantacle it left me curious as to whether Anne's departed Stan may be the real writer behind the Vampire Chronicals and perhaps other of her works as well. It seems totally incomprehensable that the same author who gave us Memnoch the Devil could spew forth such juvenile literary garbage."
"This book was so not worth the time it took me to skim it. I doubt Anne Rice wrote this. If she did, her mind has broken. Um, I missed several books in the series, trying to aviod the new ones, and I was wondering where in Hell, is Louis? And why does Quinn look just like him? Also, I liked the first ones of the Mayfair Witches series, but "Taltos" come on."
"This book has reached new lows for Anne Rice, if it even was Anne Rice who wrote it. Previous reviwers mentioned the idea that another author may have taken over for Anne, which I find quite possible. The writing style is so different from earlier works that it leaves me room to doubt."
"God willing she'll realize why people are so angry about this book. …To all of you who enjoyed the book, I regret to say you have been bamboozled."
"Anne Rice, do us all a favour, STOP WRITING. Mourn your dead husband instead and shut up."
There are lots more; I gave up. On Amazon, the reviews are listed in reverse chronological order, so I didn't see the other allegations of a different or ghost writer that are referenced in on of the latter quotes.
And. Well.
And I have read lots of vampire stories that I liked so much better than hers. Joanna Russ' vampire stories kick ass. I like some of Tanith Lee's interpretations also. How come Rice gets all the credit for making vampires cool?
Errr, mostly because they sold a zillion copies?
Sort of like Harry Potter and his importance in YA fantasy literature.
Actually, I have to admit I'm not finding it funny -- it's kind of like watching a train wreck in slow motion, or a nervous breakdown in progress :/.
I feel sorry for her.
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| 2004 | 61 |
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