Résumé du livre

Informationen zum Autor Michael Riley Klappentext In the novel that introduced Anne Rice to the world! Interview with the Vampire! a reporter seeks out the facts behind an extraordinary life. In the years since! Anne Rice has created a remarkable and acclaimed body of work - encompassing her celebrated Vampire Chronicles! The Lives of the Mayfair Witches novels! two haunting historical epics! and her controversial! equally sought-after excursions into erotica. One of the world's best known and biggest bestselling authors of contemporary fiction! Rice has herself been the subject of countless interviews! profiles! and a full-length biography. Yet who Anne Rice is! and the beliefs! fascinations! desires! fears! and passions that inspire her work! remain endlessly fascinating topics. In this first-of-its-kind book-length interview with Anne Rice! film scholar and author Michael Riley seeks out - and finds - the truth behind the extraordinary life and work of a unique! tantalizing writer. In Conversations with Anne Rice! the creator of Lestat! Louis! and Lasher talks in depth - and in her own words - about everything: from her early struggles toward publication to the tremendous literary reputation she has achieved. From the success and adulation of the vampire novels to the lesser-known books that are her personal favorites. From the influence of classical and popular literature to that of Catholicism and eroticism. From the role of movies in her literary vision to her definitive critique of the film version of Interview with the Vampire! and far beyond. Leseprobe INTRODUCTION       On Saturday evening, October 14, 1961, I drove with the parents of my friend Stan Rice from Dallas, Texas, to the nearby college town of Denton to attend Stans wedding to Anne OBrien. I had never met Anne, who had been living in San Francisco, but I had heard Stan talk about her a great deal. I no longer remember just what impressions of Anne Id formed in advance, but I do remember the moment we met. I remember being struck by how pretty she was and by her slightly shy and endearing smile. I liked her at once, but even so I couldnt have supposed that moment marked the beginning of one of the most rewarding friendships of my life.   Within a few months Stan and Anne had moved to San Francisco, where they were going to school and working, and a few months after that I moved to southern California to attend graduate school. Airfares were much cheaper in those days (only twenty-four dollars round-trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco!), so not long after my arrival I visited them in their apartment on Ashbury only a few yards from the intersection with Haight, which was to become so familiar a landmark just a few years later. Soon I was visiting regularly, and it was as if Anne and I had known each other for years. No matter what the interval between them, our conversations seemed continuousalways lively talks filled with the enthusiasm, the passionate commitments, the humor and intensity, the urgent engagement with life that define Anne to anyone who knows her.   We had been friends having such conversations for almost fifteen years when Annes first novel, Interview with the Vampire, was published, and her life and Stans were changed forever. In the years since then Ive watched as she has become not simply a successful novelist but one of the most widely read and admired writers in contemporary American literature. I have many times seen Anne interviewed on television, profiled in magazines and newspapers, greeted by throngs at book signings. Ive listened to people who have read her books talk about her with the kind of immediacy and familiarity typically reserved for those we know best. In an important sense, I have often thought, they do know Anne well, for her novels are deeply informed by her character and personality. To read them is indeed to have a kind of conver...