Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice

This sort of falls into the category of my going-back-to-my-high-school-roots theme, but this time I never read the book. Instead, it was the book that everyone (in my little honors English circle) was reading that did not, at the time, interest me in the least.

It was popular back then, of course, because it had just been made into a movie, and also because it's about vampires. Vampires are never really out of fashion, although the nature of the vampire genre is pretty fluid (see: Twilight). The interest among kids in my age group with Interview with the Vampire was spawned by the movie, I think, (which, incidentally, had been written long before the movie came out, before any of us were born), and it followed followed on the heels of their interest in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie) back in junior high. I didn't really understand, and until a few years ago the closest I got to vampire fiction was Bunnicula in elementary school.

Several years ago, though, I read The Historian, which was long and complex and eerie and enthralling. Then I read Twilight, which was fast-paced and hormone-y and not particularly well-written and fun. (But just for one novel. Not five. Sorry.) Then I watched seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV show) over the course of just over a year, which was awesome. And finally I caved and picked up the vampire book that first made me shun vampire books, but only because I stumbled into it while searching for something easy to read on my new Kindle on the elliptical machine during the cold winter months of not running outdoors.

After having read it, I understand why it was so popular. I don't know if I can say that I liked it, but I enjoyed it, if that makes sense. It was definitely intriguing. I felt like Ann Rice (via the narrator, the vampire Louis) tried a little too hard to hit the reader over the head with what the novel was about (the nature of evil, the complexity of characters, etc.), but there was still a lot of interesting stuff going on that made you think about, you know, the nature of evil, the complexity of characters, etc. And there was some good storytelling.

Awhile back I read most of a book called How to Read Literature Like an English Professor, not because I want to read literature like an English professor, but because the author had some interesting things to say about things to look for when you're reading. One of the chapters was all about vampires, and how books about vampires are really all about sex. I have to admit, this book more than any other vampire novel/movie/television series I've encountered (and admittedly, there haven't been all that many), made me agree with his assessment. Yes, even more than Twilight. The descriptions of vampires sucking blood (and they happened often, in great detail) were surprisingly scandalous. And I think what made them so was precisely the fact that they were not sex scenes. It may seem counterintuitive, but you can say a lot more in greater detail when you don't outright tell the reader what you're really talking about. As with any subject in any art form, metaphor can be a lot more powerful and explicit than outright description. 

To be honest, I sincerely doubt I would have picked up on this had I read the book when I was fourteen years old. But it's no wonder my peers (many of whom were probably much more capable of picking up on such things) devoured the novel. Of course some of them, I'm sure, were probably just reading for the story. Don't get me wrong - this didn't have the feel of a dirty novel at all, and it was certainly no paperback romance. The story was what drove the novel, but there were definite undertones, and that itself added an interesting layer of complexity to the story. In fact, overall I would say the novel tries a bit too hard to be deep and complex, and is at the same time a bit more rich and complex and thought-provoking than it seems after you've realized that it's trying a bit too hard. It didn't make me want to go out and read more Ann Rice vampire novels (she has plenty), but I feel like I did my cultural duty in reading this one.