I re-read books for the same reason so many alcoholics turn to drink. Oh, the lovely numbing comfort of the known. There are no shocks, no surprises, no upheavals. Sure, there are no grand revelations or beautiful rambles through undiscovered countries either, but comfort is comfort. When my life gives me lemons and I can’t find any sugar to make the proverbial lemonade, I pick up a once-loved story and begin the affair all over again.Interview is a tale of this kind, and I’m happy to say a return to an old romance did not arouse any bitter regrets in me. I still find it beautiful and thrilling, though perhaps old hat after the recent resurgence in vampire obsession. But Anne Rice was one of the earliest writers to resurrect the horrors from their dusty old boxes and make them lovely and desirable like they had rarely been before. And, I would argue, since.
Interview With the Vampire is what the title says: a young, modern-day reporter, simply referred to as “the boy,” interviews Louis, a vampire brought to eternal darkness in the last days of the 18th century. Formerly a Louisiana plantation farmer, Louis has spiraled down into a suicidal depression following the death of his younger brother when he is chosen by a vampire as his companion. This mysterious nightdweller, Lestat, is essentially set up as the villain of the piece, alternately companionable and manipulative and with undefined motives. Louis believes he was chosen by Lestat for his wealth and property, but that’s an issue for another story.
Though not lacking in events and discoveries, Louis’ tale is not really about action, but rather is heavy on observation and self-analysis. He has been accused of being a whiner, an existentially troubled navel-gazer, but I like him anyway. If I had been “gifted” with eternal life with the one caveat of being a nightly murderer, I might turn a little introspective myself. Louis and Lestat’s relationship is very soon fraught with tension and frustrations that prompt Louis to strain for freedom, so Lestat decides to create the “perfect” companion to bind Louis to him, and in doing so breaks one of the cardinal rules of the vampire world: never create a vampire that cannot survive alone.
This helpless creature is Claudia, a child-monster with a five-year-old body and the eternally maturing mind of a woman. She is a brilliant creation, and her anger and sadness are some of the most compelling elements of the story. I recall reading an interview with Rice years ago, in which I learned that she had lost a young daughter to cancer and had created Claudia specifically to create an undying child and deal with her own personal demons. Essentially, Interview was written as therapy; the book itself was an escape from sadness into a world of dark glamour, and the intrusions of philosophy (Rice was a philosophy major) and the creation of Claudia enabled Rice to project her mental anguish into a realm beyond reality. This is what the greatest legends have always sought to do, take real fear and cast it into fantastical fiction.
Rice has created her own version of the vampire mythos to support her dark vision, and hers is probably my favorite of all the variations on the undead. Basically, it works like this:
1. A vampire must create another vampire by draining them to the point of death and then feeding them copious amounts of their own blood. After the vampiric transfusion, they live forever unless destroyed, which is very hard to do. However, they do fall into an uncontrollable, death-like sleep during the day, which can leave them vulnerable.
2. Vampires are not sensitive to garlic or susceptible to death by staking. Their only real enemy is immolation by fire or sunlight.
3. Religious imagery has no physical effect on them.
4. Vampires, at least the ones that live in covens and have masters to teach them, have rules. No killing your own kind, no creating dependent vampires, no entering churches or touching holy items (this is a rule, not an imperative or physical handicap).
5. Long-term living off of animal blood is not a viable option (I’m looking at you, you sparkly fuckers).
6. Vampires are asexual. They can’t reproduce or interact sexually, so their desires are not dictated by sexual attraction, but by pure aesthetics and the need for blood.
Vampires, in this world, retain all of their human characteristics; they’re merely enhanced by the vampiric blood. They are extraordinarily beautiful, though whether this is through selective creation or the effect of the transformation is hard to say, and their senses and strength are enhanced and grow with age or drinking the blood of older, stronger vampires. All of this is pretty basic to most of us now, but I can’t recall any works before this one (any significant ones, anyway) that made vampires such a combination of monster and angel. It calls to mind a pop-lit “Paradise Lost,” with its sympathy for the devil and reevaluation of old beliefs. Rice was a philosophy student and lapsed Catholic when she wrote this, and it shows in Louis’ attempts to reconcile himself to his own existence while simultaneously condemning himself at every turn.
This book, the first in what would later become the Vampire Chronicles, is still a much-loved favorite. I love the rich, slightly archaic way Louis speaks and his almost overwhelming sadness in the midst of what any mortal person would consider a magical existence. His speculations and dissatisfaction may detract from the experience of anyone looking for a straight horror story or paranormal romance (which this IS NOT) but as a vampire tale in the sense of understanding what it is to be “damned,” it’s stellar. The blurbs and reviews go on about the sensuality of the language, and it’s true, there’s a baroque grandeur bordering on melodramatic throughout, and it suits the nature of the story perfectly.
Beautiful and dark, I enjoyed this just as much the third time around. I just hope I will be able to say the same thing about the other entries in the series.
