![]() ![]() Throughout her career, Rice was emphatic that her writing be read as serious literature instead of pulp fiction, and although certain critics challenged this, those of us who steeped ourselves in her stories never wavered in our belief that she was a writer of high literary merit and aptitude. There was the sense that the characters, in their supernatural nature, existed on the margins of society and therefore embodied the outcasts as well as the feral – and Rice, who died Saturday at the age of 80, treated both with a seriousness that couldn’t yet be found in the real world. ![]() The world-building and the dark nights of the soul explored therein were too earnest and ultimately thoughtful for that. ![]() Yes, the books played with tone and camp, but, to me, they were not themselves campy. As a queer person myself, I was immediately aware of its queerness, the strange, sometimes caring, always volatile relationship between Louis and the vampire who turned him, the lothario Lestat. My parents didn’t know to keep it out of the hands of a 12-year-old reader once I had finished it and returned it, I bought a cheap paperback copy from the Waldenbooks at the mall and read it all over again. ![]()
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