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On Rereading Interview with the Vampire
Dec. 15th, 2020 08:10 pmI consider myself a fan of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. The early books captivated me in high school and while I find much of the later material not great, my love for the core characters and concepts is enduring. My recent reread of Interview with the Vampire did not change that view, but it was definitely a different experience from reading it as a teen and young adult in the '90s. Here are my main takeaways on the book, in no particular order:
* It's really racist.
* It does good historicizing.
* I still love its refusal to engage with standard gender discourses.
* Louis is an extremely angry unreliable narrator (at least re. Lestat).
* Damn, Armand is a good character.
* Louis and Claudia's and Louis and Armand's relationships are both moving, realistic, non-clichéd, non-didactic examples of dysfunction.
Spoilery commentary on these below( Read more... )
* It's really racist.
* It does good historicizing.
* I still love its refusal to engage with standard gender discourses.
* Louis is an extremely angry unreliable narrator (at least re. Lestat).
* Damn, Armand is a good character.
* Louis and Claudia's and Louis and Armand's relationships are both moving, realistic, non-clichéd, non-didactic examples of dysfunction.
Spoilery commentary on these below( Read more... )
