Accepting that someone has died is always a challenge. It’s more of a challenge if the person was an author because her work remains and makes her immortal. It’s even more of a challenge when the person was Anne Rice, whose work dealt with immortality to begin with. Many of her characters will never die, not even in theory, so it seems likely that she survives with them.
I’ll continue to think of her in the present tense. These are aspects of Anne Rice’s work that I love.
- She breaks the rules. As in, all of them. If you enjoy the gothic horror genre today, you can thank Anne Rice. She redefines the vampire, humanizes the witch, and it’s because of her persistence in publishing Interview with the Vampire that any vampire other than the stereotypical Count Dracula exists.
- She deep. Profound. Philosophical. And she’s not afraid of exposing these questions.
- She’s poetic and lyrical. No one else can write a description of a sofa and somehow leave you with a sense of melancholy.
- She’s a pioneer of inventing characters with multiple sexual orientations. Years and years before it was expected or popular.
- She grants intelligence and strong ambitions to her characters, regardless of gender, age, or any other reason these characters are often stereotyped and minimized.
- My God, this woman is a sensual writer. Somehow she even makes the humidity of New Orleans attractive. (I haven’t read her erotica. I can only imagine!)
- She loves her fans. She loves other writers. She loves her characters and stands by them.
Anne Rice lives on. Generations from now, readers and writers will still praise her revolutionary style and how she changed literature for the better, and forever.
