The Widdershins

Hi Widdershins,

Sad news this morning: the great author Anne Rice passed away at age 80. Her son Christopher, himself a noted writer, announced her death. It’s hard to overstate how big of a presence Rice was to my formative years, particularly for a closeted and confused gay teenager. People often dismiss horror and gothic fiction as frivolous, but the beauty and soulfulness of Rice’s creations was such a big presence for my generation. “Interview with the Vampire” blew the hinges off vampire fiction, certainly the most important and influential vampire novel since Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” With her genuinely profound rumination on life and death, morality and evil, grief and joy, Rice’s Lestat, Louis and young vampire Claudia (a grown woman forever trapped in a young girl’s vampire body, Claudia was based on Rice’s own young daughter Michelle, who died of leukemia aged 6; Rice’s grief inspired her to write “Interview with the Vampire.”) The novel forever changed not just Rice’s devoted readers, but the genre of horror itself in a way even Stephen King did not. Sequels to “Interview with the Vampire” followed, some brilliant, some not. The Mayfair Witches series also was a brilliant, page-turning multi-generational soap opera that began with stunning “The Witching Hour.” Rice wrote two magnificent historic novels too: “Cry To Heaven” (about castrati singers) and “The Feast of all Saints” (about children of slave owners and their slaves.) It wasn’t just the thrilling stories and beautifully developed characters, but Rice’s rich prose, so evocative in its mood painting and vivid descriptions of times and places long gone, that are left behind for us mortals to enjoy. Anne Rice will be interred in the family mausoleum in New Orleans.