photo credit: Ran Valerhon

Day 22 on IWTV: Claudia's questions

Be glad I made you what you are, or I'll break you in a thousand pieces! 

Well, does that sound like an empty threat from the villainous Lestat? Louis does depict him as the villain of their lives, and this argument shattered the eggshell peace the three once had. I just feel bad that Lestat wouldn't admit the truth to his fledglings, that he had to be so secretive. He had his reasons, and sadly, we'll never know in this novel. We'll have to wait till we get to The Vampire Lestat so we get his side of the story.

Claudia, in the meantime, buried herself in her books, doing research on all things myth and occult. You know, if I were given immortal life, I'd probably read as many books as I could, too! What a wonderful way to spend eternity, to acquire and read books, and to travel! No, I won't be enrolling in high school over and over and over again.

Lestat had a beautiful fountain made, and hired replacement workers to the two that Claudia killed. And then Lestat made killings that made it to the papers! That bit put a smile on my face. But we also see Lestat being solicitous about Claudia's whereabouts. Oh, if only the Brat Prince just outright expressed his love for the little girl--whoops! woman vampire. Claudia now is beginning to ask the same questions Louis asked; the very same questions that had brought nothing but sadness to his heart.

The image of the skull in this scene is jarring, and a grim reminder of death. At this point, Claudia still did not know that Louis had a hand in her death, drinking from her, and that it was Lestat who gave her the Blood. In this sense, both of them are her parents. But could Louis admit this? Could he keep this secret?

Day 21 on IWTV: Claudia and the corpses

Why I have failed to point out Anne Rice's prose until this post is a major oversight on my part. Her prose has often been described as detailed, lush, vibrant. I agree. I would say her mind is awake, and her imagination is a well-exercised muscle. She does not hold back on description, but she never goes overboard. She treads the delicate balance of just enough description to help us see what she sees and hears and feels and tastes and smells, and that is a mark of a truly skilled writer.

For instance, to describe Louis's sadness, she uses images of darkness, nearing the edge of a cliff, cracks and faults in the earth. Anyone who has ever experienced a period of depression would recognize these. Anyone who's had a happy, blissful life devoid of any sadness (is there really anyone in life like that?) will be able to empathize at least.

Louis's depression threatens to descend and crash upon him once again. When he began to notice Claudia growing up, maturing into a woman, her mind no longer a child's. Anyone who has ever lost a lover or experienced the heartbreak of a break-up could identify with how Louis felt about this time in his life with Claudia.

It is easy to dismiss Louis's depression to his being inducted into the never-ending Night. But we must remember that he was already depressed when Lestat found him. He was mourning Paul's death. Languishing, inviting death to find him.

What Claudia did to the mother and daughter servants were macabre! Claudia has become an enigma to Lestat and Louis. If you are reading the novel along with me, you know the feeling of wanting to enter Claudia's mind, to see it from her point-of-view, and find out why she began behaving like this. But aren't women always a mystery?

Go read for yourself Interview with the Vampire: Claudia's Story, the graphic novel adapted by Ashley Marie Witter.

Lestat was mad at Claudia's brash actions, and Louis was trying to reason with him. As Claudia's "parents," they had had to take care of the problem of the servants: disposing the corpses and dealing with the bereaved family. There's a funny episode of Lestat getting a bit drunk...but this also forebodes a scary event to follow. Foreshadowing, my dear writers!

Claudia asks the question coldly, "Which one of you made me the way I am?" In the movie played brilliantly by Dunst, she screams out the question. In the book, there is a chilling effect.

Claudia drops her bouquet of chrysanthemums. Think about it. This woman in a child's unchanging body, forever in that size and shape, and the diminutive petals of the mums scattering to the floor. That's the picture Anne paints for us.

Claudia is a unique vampire. She has spent her life more as a vampire than a human. She makes all of these realizations. Lestat, being mean, said Claudia would have grown up into a hag (and not age gracefully). The spite between these two is too painful.

Off-topic note. I just noticed that New Orleans is in Louisiana, and Louisiana is named after Louis XIV, King of France in 1643. Louisiana means Land of Louis. And Louis is our protagonist vampire!

Prince Lestat, a true horror story for 2014

To hear the Prince's voice again has brought so much joy not just to me but to his many readers all over the world. The literary world had missed him. And so it is with great anticipation that I attacked this book, skipping the blurbs on the flaps and diving right into the text.

Again, the unique wry humor of Prince Lestat, his singular point-of-view, his insouciance and unpredictability fill the pages. But the book also causes a sense of inner dread for the reader. Even now Rice is successful in shredding to bits the thin line that separated fiction from reality. She plunges us into that terrifying zone of Suspension of Disbelief, that great playing arena that conscientious actors and talented playwrights strive to bring audiences to. It is in this Zone where anything is possible.

Lestat walks in this world as we do. This world of gadgetry and WiFi that has produced jadedness and, ironically, disconnection among humans. The Undead are among us, interacting in the Science we humans take pride in and find, strangely, our sense of security in. Are we really so safe? The danger becomes all too real, not only for us humans who walk in the sunlight and the night, but also for these Creatures whom we have come to love through the Vampire Chronicles.

And when these beloved Vampires face a formidable foe, express worry and concern even with their considerable powers and wisdom, then that really gives us humans something to think about. This is why I think that Prince Lestat is a true horror story for our times. This book should come with a warning: Not For The Faint Of Heart.

Who is the Voice? I have had several guesses throughout my reading, but none of them were correct! The vampires decide to meet together. The readers think, uh-oh, all these powerful blood drinkers under one roof? Is this really a great idea? But how can they defeat Pure Evil? The tension mounts with each turn of the page.

The power of the prose is that Anne Rice disappears and Lestat comes to the fore. It his voice reaching out and touching you on every single page. Though she shares "billing" on the artful cover, her name in bold red font as large as the title, it is He telling you the story.

While reading the Harry Potter series, all I wanted to do was to ride the Hogwarts Express and visit that school, even as Muggles are exempted from entering that magical castle. The reverse happens in Anne Rice's Vampire Mythology. They walk this same world we are in. We are not so safely removed from them.

Prince Lestat fascinates even as it chills to the bone. I read it only in daylight, meeting the dreadful Ancients and this amazing cast of characters only when the Sun is up. I delude myself to feeling safe at the remove of a book. I would dare not wish to meet these powerful beings in person, beautiful though they are, and even as there is this desire to tap into this internet radio station to hear their voices.

Is the underlying terror because of the recognition that these powerful beings were behaving as monstrously as humans have and do? Humans kill their own kind. We have done so since Cain lifted his hand against Abel. We have never stopped murdering since. Genocide is a constant staple on TV news shows. Is the thematic horror in Prince Lestat simply the shame of self-recognition? The truest horror we humans have faced throughout history happens when power is placed squarely in the laps of the wrong persons. Hitler and the Holocaust, Pol Pot, Stalin, Kim Jong Un, Ferdinand Marcos.

But what is evil really? What is good? These themes are explored in this thrilling page turner.

Each character introduced in a chapter moves the plot forward, and we ride this energy. And what a thrilling ride it is! Each new vampire shares his perspective on the cataclysmic events, this crisis they face. It reads like a delicious detective story, and the reader hunts for clues on each page, trying to piece two and two together, making connections from what he remembers from previous Chronicles, and trying to find a solution to this crisis.

Every incendiary chapter either explodes with a revelation, heightens action and suspense, or shows a moment of tenderness between two vampires who share an embrace or love for music. Yes, the vampires love. In that aspect humans and vampires are alike. In our capacity to love selflessly, and in our capacity as well to annihilate one another.

In various interviews captured on video and uploaded on Youtube of her Prince Lestat book tour, Anne Rice admitted to needing to read through the Vampire Chronicles prior to writing this latest volume. (There is even that slight nod to the castrati of Cry to Heaven.) And while new fans can just as well jump right into this book, with the help of supplementary appendices to this volume, I think for maximum enjoyment an initiate might want to start reading the previous Chronicles. I say this because Prince Lestat does have the tendency to spoil key plot points from previous novels, and they were delicious plot points that leap off the page if they weren't spoiled for you. Not only that, the Elder Vampires have fully fleshed-out characterizations in the previous novels, and anyone who has read them would inevitably feel some sense of intimacy or at least familiarity towards them.

Here is my suggested reading order. These titles are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

1. Interview with the Vampire: Claudia's Story, the graphic novel
2. Interview with the Vampire
3. The Vampire Lestat ← you may start with this book if you're merely concerned with the vampire history and mytharc
4. The Queen of the Damned
5. The Tale of the Body Thief
6. Memnoch the Devil
   (From here feel free to jump to Prince Lestat, But then I won't stop you from reading the rest in the series...)
7. The Vampire Armand
8. Pandora
9. Vittorio the Vampire (this being the most stand-alone in the series)
10. Merrick
11. Blood and Gold
12. Backwood Farm
13. Blood Canticle

If you can't wait, then read Claudia's Story, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned.

Several pieces of music, from classical to contemporary, are referenced in the novel. It's a delight that YouTube and Google exist now, and you can easily listen to them online. If only we can find the url to Benji's radio station!

One of my favorite themes shimmering through the novel is the idea that no matter how misshapen or ugly our physical bodies are, we carry inside a beautiful soul if we nourish it with love, surround it with beauty, art. You see this in the stories of Magnus and Hesketh.

Another important theme is one of a more truthful view of one's self. The Ancient Gregory speaking to Armand said it best: "You are on the threshold of a great journey, and you must begin to think in terms of what you can do as a powerful spiritual and biological being. Stop with the self-loathing. Stop with imagery of 'the damned' this and 'the damned' that! We are not damned. We never were. Who under the sun has the right to damn any living breathing creature?" Who indeed? Humans, hear this, we who make a sport of damning others as often as we damn ourselves.

Vintage Anne to turn our definition of Evil on its head, help us to reexamine it, face it, maybe accept its entity unto ourselves and learn from it. Prince Lestat offers philosophical considerations that fill an inquisitive mind for many nights, told through a fast-paced plot and flesh-and-blood characters. In the end it shows us that a true path to salvation must involve, at its core, a full acceptance and love of one's self and others. The woman who singularly created a new vampire genre now propels it into a whole new and exciting direction. I am sure that there will be a slew of Meyers and other imitators that will follow her lead and attempt to expand on her work.

The massive cast of characters in the novel may seem daunting, but a sort of dramatis personae at the back of the book helps. Even more so, each of the characters have their distinct voices, personalities, histories, and perspectives, and these preclude any confusion. No easy feat for writers of lesser talent, but this Anne Rice, whose imagination created the The Witching Hour with its many generations of witches. It is only a marvel that all of these personalities fully thrive and live in her head.

Truly, ours is an age of the Superhero. We see it in movies, in pop songs, in children's books. Didn't we see Marvel and Disney, two media giants, merge in this decade? In our time where there is much certainty, we do look for a Superhero who will be our champion, our strength, our guide, whether that Superhero is willing or not. The vampires have Lestat. Who do you look up to as your hero?

Lestat, Prince, I do not know if you check Google at all. I want to tell you I love you, as much as I fear you. I know this would reach you somehow. After all, Sir David Talbot said this about your kind, and I quote, "We're all human [still] no matter how long we go on." Thank you for showing us how to fully love and accept ourselves.

A break from Interview with the Vampire

I am taking a little break from Interview with the Vampire for a few days. I want to see the Steve McQueen movie 12 Years a Slave in the meantime to have a picture of African slavery in the late 18th century to early 19th century. This is to deepen my understanding of the plantation that Louis owned and managed, and the many black slaves he had. Anne Rice describes them as exotic and wild, and I hope to see a glimpse of that in the movie. I am not sure if 12 Years would be the best movie for that goal, so if you have better suggestions, feel free to comment.

I also am reading Anne Rice: The Interviews by Nola Cancel, and enjoying it very much. I bought the e-book over Amazon. I think Anne is a literary genius of our time.

I also gave myself permission, finally, to read Prince Lestat, which I am describing as a true horror book for our times. I shall post a proper review soon. Until then, welcome to December!

Day Three, IWTV: Louis's conversion

I forgot myself. I forgot myself totally.

Those were the mortal Louis's overwhelming thoughts when he encountered the supernatural creature that is the vampire. He said his past "shrank to embers."

This experience is almost akin, in fact, almost perfectly describes, my conversion to Christianity when I was twelve. I grew up as a Sunday School kid. My parents separated when I was six, and since then, my uncle Albert and aunt Wilma had taken me to church every Sunday. I enjoyed the stories, but that was all they were to me: stories. Fantastical, adventurous, but having no more real value than say Jack and the Beanstalk or Puss in Boots. All these stories anyway amounted to one moral for the young boy: be good and obedient.

Then one summer, in Laguna, someone shared the Gospel to me, and the clouds parted in my mind and my heart cracked open. I realized God loved me, and expressed it undeniably through the Man Jesus Christ. All those stories in the Bible taught me in Sunday School: Moses crossing the Red Sea, David defeating the giant Goliath, all of them pointed to Jesus' love, birth, sacrifice, death, and resurrection. I was reduced to nothing. I made a decision to embrace Christ.

I guess it was opposite for Anne Rice at the time. In the biographies of her, we learn that she turned to secular humanist atheism in college, having grown up Catholic. And I think she expressed the same feeling in this scene of Louis's transformation into the vampire. Isn't it curious that the feelings surrounding the separate experiences are the same? Two different conversions, both resulting into the death of ego.

I always return to that moment when my faith runs dry. And also at the story of my baptism, which is a story for another blog entry. And my near-death at the floods of Ondoy. God always saving, God always loving.

Louis cherished his last sunrise before he became a vampire. He was going to lose the light. I, on the other hand, grew up to be a teenager and realized I lost the dark. The music of the Smashing Pumpkins, whose poetry I loved were denied to me. So were Anne Rice's books that had the words vampire, damned, devil, thief and witching on them. I never smoked or drank. I tried to be obedient. But internally I rebelled.

In college I broke free from all shackles and read the novels I wanted and smoked. I was expelled from the catholic university because they found bottles of liquor in my bag, put there by my classmates. I went all crazy. I thought why did I convert to Christianity so young? Why don't I have the stories of ex-drug addicts, or ex-prostitutes who tasted the dark before coming to Christ? Why was I to be denied all these worldly pleasures?

Louis's transformation into the vampire was physical. He was to have a body that would have powers no human being could have. But his soul... did it change? That was his burning question for the rest of the book, and highly worth examining.

When I converted to Christianity, there was no heavenly lights falling down on me. The world felt utterly the same. But inside I felt cleaned, loved, treasured, assured. Writing about this now as a thirty-three year-old man, I think, what happened? How come I lost all of that? I might not have changed physically dramatically like Louis turning into a vampire, but my inside was changed. I became, in the words of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, a new creation. Am I less loved and treasured today than that first day? Surely not! For God is faithful and continued to love me in spite of my many rebellions through adolescence and young adulthood, and even in my 30s.

For us Protestants, the proof of commitment to our new faith was through certain rituals: prayer of acceptance and repentance, baptism. Both symbolized the death of the old self and the rebirth of the spirit. We were to study Scripture and continually meet with fellow Christians. For Louis, the proof of commitment Lestat required of him was for him to witness the death of his plantation overseer. Louis had a reverence for life which, he said, never went away even though he became a vampire. Why is death always a part of any ritual of conversion, whether symbolic (as in baptism) or actual (as in Lestat's killing)? These are mysteries of life I would not know. Life and death seem to be deeply ingrained into the very fabric of our universe.

Day One on IWTV

I realize how serendipitous it is that I begin with Interview. I so wanted to forget about my plan and review Called Out of Darkness because, although Anne is most known for her fiction, her memoir is my favorite of her books. I also want to go into Prince Lestat so badly!

Interview begins where the reader's position is. It is as if we were the boy, too, wanting to find out about the vampire even as we shudder at his presence. And then we are seduced, by the vampire, by his story, by his beauty and voice. And we fumble, just like the boy, not knowing the right questions to ask. We are faced with the supernatural here.

I have to go back to when I first read Interview. I was in high school. I did not know that a lot of people in my generation were the same. My classmates have seen the movie. I haven't. A girl from the first section (the brainy class) lent me her paperback copy.

Back in high school I would've done anything to fit in. I'd be the class clown, the one who strived hard for good grades, not only for my teachers' approval, but also my classmates', for I often showed them the answers to my homework in exchange for camaraderie. Belongingness was very important to me.

This was a trait I carried to much of my adult life. (Isn't it obvious? I want to jump into the Prince Lestat bandwagon? I want Anne Rice to post a link of my glowing review on her Page.) But it also showed in a lot of other ways. My most honest boss once told me that I sway too easily to popular opinion, and that I should learn to stand by my thoughts because they were, too, valid and sensible.

One may think that wanting to belong is normal for human beings, and it is. I think maybe the reason I push it over the edge is because I didn't quite receive it when I was young, at least not from my parents. I grew up knowing I have to be at my best for people to like me, and that my friends are my friends not because of who I am, but because of what I do and how well I do what I do.

Auditions terrify me. When I don't pass the rejection bruises me. In confrontations, I tend to back down, listen, try to see what the other person's point of view is, try to win the other person, at the argument.

As an actor and as a writer, I am haunted by this fear always. That I am not really part of the crowd of real actors, real writers--that something is missing in me. A certain knowledge, a certain look, a manner.

I feel an outcast. Even in my own church. Is this universal? Do all human beings feel this way? Did Jesus feel like an outcast, too?

So reading Interview now, I am astounded that I could feel more empathy towards Louis than I ever did. This feeling of being cutoff from light and the living and all innocent happiness.

Interview also begins with death. One very excruciating one that will echo throughout the many deaths in the book. The death of Louis's brother, Paul. Knowing what I know now about Anne from her memoir, I suspect Paul symbolized the death of her Catholic faith and devotion growing up. I never really trust a novel now that does not mention death in any way. Death is a fact of life, something we all have to face sooner or later. Paul's death was devastating for Louis, and he blamed himself for it. Does Louis pay for that guilt every dawn as he retreats into his coffin?

Louis's world was full of concerns about plantations and managing it. Paul's world was the spirituality, religious fervor. And when Paul wanted to be a missionary, to live like a saint sworn to poverty, Louis refused. It was because his world as he knew it would be greatly affected if he agreed that Paul's visions were real. I believe a lot of us would have behaved as Louis did, to dismiss another person's spirituality not without egotism.

It is hard not to dismiss other people's beliefs when the affect our own, or go against our own. I think the day we all could just breathe together and cherish each other's presence and humanity is the day religion dies.

But now let me talk about egotism and the need to belong. When I was fifteen I belonged to a group of artists I would have gladly stormed the gates of hell for, and with. I felt invincible with them. I felt loved by them. And yes, I was often admonished for my youthful lack of taciturnity and tact, but I saw these admonitions as to be done in love and in my own best interest.

The leader of this group I looked up to as a brother closer than any friend I ever had. I believe a lot of us in that group of teenagers and young professionals in their 20s felt that way, too. He was a great spiritual leader and model. But then that leader began to make sexual advances towards me. In the fear that I might disillusion the other members of the group if I spoke out. I was fearful, too, that it was my fault. That I inadvertently attracted the man's attention and warranted his abuses. And I was afraid to lose the friendship and belongingness I enjoyed with the leader, and the group.

So I shut up. I valued being part of a group, and will not say anything that might threaten the integrity of the group nor its leader, even though I was being hurt.I wonder now, too, if that martyrdom was nothing but egotism.

I bookmarked my reading just before Lestat enters Louis's life: which was at a point he was so devastated and wanting to die but lacked the courage to kill himself. I'll read some more tomorrow.

A hardbound wish

I cannot recall now specifically. The first hardbound Anne Rice I owned was Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. I walked out of the bookstore holding this wonder, this volume. It was a sharp departure from all the other Anne Rice titles I owned. It was heavier. It was in hardcover.

At that time I had a full-time job. When I first began reading Anne I read mass market paperbacks. I was a student. I needed to economize.

And then, in 1998-1999 I had dropped out of college. I wasn't ready for it. Or, I clearly disliked the teaching style in UST. Professors would come in with a microphone and a portable speaker. They would talk into the mic for an hour. None of them sought to engage us students in a meaningful way. I was bored to death. High school was more fun. We had more creative teachers. What was this?

I found a Christian theatre group called YESHUA, or the Young Evangelistic Heralds' Union of Artists. I was floating, an out-of-school youth with too much energy and free time and no sense of self. All I knew was I had this mad love for reading, for Anne Rice's books, and for writing my own stories by hand in notebooks now lost.

Our mentor in YESHUA disapproved my reading of Anne Rice. He thought her books detrimental to my faith. I was to read instead Christian non-fiction. Max Lucado was all the rage those days. So was Harold Sala. And Dobson. I didn't like their writing. I encountered Philip Yancey, the doubter, the faith seeker, the investigative writer who wrote to plumb the depths of his heart: not to provide answers to the reader as in a sermon, but to show he, too, was searching for a God to believe in. I forsook Anne for Philip. In a "Christian" ceremony of severing ties with the occult, I was to burn my Anne Rice pocketbooks. I had no heart for this. I put them in a plastic bag. I left them out on the street. Perhaps another reader, a book lover, would encounter them and bring them home. I was hopeful.

I was chastised for that action. Why did I not burn the evil? How dare I pass on the curse to another person? I would pay somehow the consequences of my disobedience.

I soon found myself in a university that fostered individual thought: the University of the Philippines. There, the professors challenged me to find my own mind, to nurture it, and to express it creatively. Soon after I found jobs, here and there. I was earning my own money.

Little by little I began to acquire back my lost friends, the Anne Rice books. I would find a hardcover edition in Book Sale. I would buy it. I would peruse secondhand bookstores in my free time. I would buy what I could afford. That's how I acquired Lasher, Taltos, Memnoch, Body Thief. That's where I found in Trade Paperback The Mummy and Cry to Heaven. I went on to purchase Violin. I rummaged bookstores. I had to get these books back.

I no longer believed I could go to hell by reading Anne. I no longer held a small view of God. God was not a puny, insecure man. God is Radical Love, boundless with Amazing Grace. Why, God must love Anne, too!

So when I walked out of the bookstore carrying Christ the Lord, I knew it is my true heart's desire to complete my collection of hardbound Anne Rice titles. If I had a camera, if I had the sense for it, I could have made a documentary of this. How I would spend at least an hour going through badly organized bookshelves in Book Sale. How, when Typhoon Ondoy consumed our basement level apartment, it was my books that we first salvaged. Never mind the TV, the refrigerator, the microwave. The books were more important.

And how, in the advent of the Internet, and Facebook, people now sell previously-"'loved" books online. You wire them payment, and they either meet up with you or ship the books to you. How I acquired my hardbound Interview and Armand from a bookseller in Baguio! Now there's a reason to climb up there and get the books!

How I would make reservations for the more recent titles since Christ the Lord so I could purchase them on the first day they became available in local Manila bookstores. The Songs of the Seraphim, The Wolf Gift Chronicles. I acquired them on the first day of release. And also how there was a mad scramble for Prince Lestat, that Fully Booked ran out within 24 hours of its release, and one had to wait for weeks for National Bookstore and PowerBooks to receive their shipment. And how when those bookstores got their copies, the books rarely touched the shelves. They were gone within hours, too.

I was fortunate to have a friend in the book industry to reserve Prince Lestat for me.

I am still in the process of completing my collection. This is my hardbound wish. And once my collection is complete, I shall begin to read all of Anne Rice's books in the order they were published. And to post here the meeting of our minds.

Natalie Goldberg, bestselling author of Banana Rose, described reading as a meeting of minds: the reader's with the writer's. She said, "When we read we not only take on the author's mind and its structure, but we are also actively using our eyes, deciphering words and connecting these words to our imagination, visualizing the scene we read. Though from the outside we seem to be sitting still, a book opened in front of us, all our mental machinery is roaring away. Our brains are becoming fully alive" (Thunder and Lightning, Bantam, 2000).

I want to meet the mind of Anne Rice.

Naturally I will read other novelists, not just Anne, for this year, or the years to come if it takes longer than that. But now I will deliberately read Anne at a slower pace. Trying to see what she sees, trying to understand what the characters think and feel. If there's a word I do not understand, there's google. If there's flowers and trees I'm not familiar with, there's Google Images or Wikipedia. It should be easier these days to read novels because of technology.

Wish me luck. And if you ever find these books in Hardbound, please, let me know!

• The Feast of All Saints
• Cry to Heaven*
• The Vampire Lestat*
• The Queen of the Damned*
• The Mummy*
• The Witching Hour
• Vittorio, the Vampire
• Blackwood Farm
• Blood Canticle
• Beauty Trilogy*

* I already have these titles in some form: mostly satisfying trade paperback. But I still am hopeful that a hardbound edition surfaces.