Anne Rice Has Died At 80
Anne Rice, the legendary novelist whose books were the bridge to adult fiction for myself and many others, has gone to the great beyond. Anne Rice died last night after suffering from a stroke. She was 80 years old.
Anne Rice’s son, writer Christopher Rice, delivered the sad news last night in a tribute to her. Christopher writes that his mother died almost 19 years after her husband of 41 years, painter and poet Stan Rice, died on December 9, 2002. At the time of her death, Anne was with her family, including Christopher and her sister Karen. There will be a celebration of Anne Rice’s life in New Orleans next year.
Earlier tonight, my mother, Anne Rice, passed away due to complications resulting from a stroke. She left us almost nineteen years to the day my father, her husband Stan, died. Below is a statement I posted to her Facebook page moments ago. pic.twitter.com/g2VAK2XZjc
— Christopher Rice/ C. Travis Rice (@chrisricewriter) December 12, 2021
If you were a teenage mall goth like me (read: not that authentically goth at all), then the news of Anne Rice’s death may have made you want to pull out the black lace mourning veil you kept tucked in the pocket of your nylon coffin backpack from Hot Topic (yes, I had one of those) and place it over your face. Because not only was Anne Rice my first taste of adult fiction, but also one of my first tastes of gothic culture.
Anne Rice was born Howard Allen Frances O’Brien in New Orleans, LA. There are two different versions as to why Anne’s parents, Howard and Katherine O’Brien, named her Howard. One is that Anne’s mother was a free-flowing bohemian and loved the idea of naming a girl Howard, thinking it’d give Anne an advantage in life to have a man’s name. The other version is that Anne’s father came up with the idea of naming his daughter after him. Whatever the case may be, Anne didn’t want to be named Howard and on her first day of Catholic school, she told a nun her name was “Anne” since she always thought it was a pretty name.
Anne’s mother Katherine died of alcoholism when Anne was just 15 years old. Her father remarried and moved the family to Richardson, TX where Anne graduated high school from. After Anne dropped out of North Texas State College, she moved to San Francisco. While visiting her family in Texas, Anne rekindled her love with Stan Rice, who she met in high school. They got married in 1961. Stan returned to San Francisco with Anne. She got her B.A. in Political Science, and later her M.A. in Creative Writing, from San Francisco State University. Anne and Stan’s first child, daughter Michele, was born in 1966. Michele died at age 5 from Leukemia. Christopher was born in 1978.
After the death of Michele, Anne says that her debut novel Interview with the Vampire “poured out” of her and she wrote it in just five weeks. The character of Claudia was inspired by Michele. It was published in 1976. Interview became the first book of thirteen in The Vampire Chronicles and it was followed up by The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned. Anne wrote the screenplay for the Interview movie, which as everyone knows, starred Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Kirsten Dunst. The Queen of the Damned was also made into a movie starring Aaliyah and Stuart Townsend. An Interview with the Vampire TV series for AMC is currently in the works.
Interview with the Vampire wasn’t even the first Anne Rice novel I read. At the top of this post, I said that Anne Rice’s books were a bridge to adult fiction for me. Well, I kind of lied. Because the first Anne Rice book I read wasn’t a “bridge” at all. I jumped right in. When I was on a vacation with my family as a teenager, I went to the gift shop of our hotel to see what books they had. I saw a novel about Sleeping Beauty and picked it up without really knowing what it was about. The gift shop also should have sold me a pair of pearls because I clutched a pair of invisible pearls hard while reading The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. I was SCANDALIZED and my brain ate up every scandalous bit of it in a day. Anne wrote the Sleeping Beauty series under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure and it was a BDSM fantasy series inspired by Sleeping Beauty. At the time, I hated life and struggled with sexuality in general, so I embraced the escapism of it. To say that E.L. James could never is an understatement. Speaking of fanfic….
Anne Rice was not a fan of fan fiction. Anne asked her fans to write their own original stories instead of stories about her copyrighted characters. Anne even got her lawyers to shut down fan fiction of her works. Later on, Anne loosened up a little about fanfic, and said that it still makes her uncomfortable but it’s easy for her to avoid “so live and let live.”
In the aughts after she moved to Rancho Mirage, CA, Anne, who was raised Catholic, wrote a series of novels about the life of Jesus. But in 2010, she quit the church for good, writing on Facebook that she’s committed to Christ but she can’t be a part of a religion that’s anti-feminist, anti-gay, and anti-science.
Anne Rice’s other works include Belinda, The Feast of All Saints, Lives of the Mayfair Witches, and Exit to Eden, which was turned into a comedy movie starring Rosie O’Donnell and Dan Akroyd (an idea that still boggles my mind). Anne wrote over 30 books and sold more than 150 million copies of her book worldwide. And like her non-sparkly vampires, her works will live on forever.
Rest in peace and thank you, Anne Rice.
Pic: Wenn.com