Interview with a Vampire

I have just finished reading Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice. An old novel (published 1976!) it is well known in popular culture, along with the movie in 1994, and apparently a recent reboot in the form of a tv series. Now, I must preface this post by saying that I have somehow, at the ripe old age of 34, avoided all forms of contact with anything Interview with a Vampire-Anne Rice until now. I had a vague idea of the movie starring Brad Pitt, but that was about it. I remember changing the channels when the movie used to appear as reruns on Channel 5. I simply do not care for vampire fantasy anything. I get it intellectually, but don't really see the appeal. So even though I know the novel by Anne Rice is of some significant acclaim, I didn't really feel the push to read it, that is until it came up in a conversation I had with a friend, Fin. Fin is a huge horror movie buff, and somehow that book came up when we met at a coffee shop sometime in late Aug (or maybe early Sept, it was before E started Kindergarten). Anyway Fin urged me to read it, and I said I'd give it some serious consideration. 

I was looking for another book in the library when I happened to come across a copy of Interview with a Vampire. I was quite surprised because it was a small library - just like all the libraries in Bergen County are small - and I knew they frequently weeded their collection thanks to the forever ongoing book sale right by their front entrance. Yet there it remained, so I pulled it out of the shelf... and immediately burst out laughing. I did borrow the book, but texted pictures of the front and back cover to my friends to also laugh at:

Anyway thanks to that ridiculous cover, I didn't really have much expectations about the book. But boy was I fooled. This novel was no pulp-y, easily digestible thing. Instead it was deeply introspective, wrought out, and required focus to fully appreciate it's many intricacies. And given that I seldom have time to read or the mind to focus, it has taken me at least 3 weeks to finish this novel, because I am so tired from what I am reading. It feels draining to inhabit the passive, agonized world of Louis, and all his feelings and thoughts. 

I took notes of some sections I enjoyed reading: "Not try to separate that loss from some other oppressive realization: that in Europe I'd found no truths to lessen loneliness, transform despair. Rather, I'd found only the inner workings of my own small soul, the pain of Claudia's, and a passion for a vampire who was perhaps even more evil than Lestat, for whom I became as evil as Lestat, but in whom I saw the only promise of good in evil of which I could conceive." and 

"Before, all art had held for me the promise of a deeper understanding of the human heart. Now the human heart meant nothing. I did not denigrate it. I simply forgot it. The magnificent paintings of the Louvre were not for me intimately connected with the hands that had painted them. They were cut loose and dead like children turned to stone... and of course... they could all be reduced to ashes."

Anyway, you can get an idea of the sort of lyricism that this novel abounds with. Every word and every sentence required focus and attention, and that left me tired. I had to take a nap after I finished the climax of the novel, before starting Part 4, the last section of the book. But anyway I am done, and I am glad to have read this book.