To be honest, though, I find that my sympathies like squarely with her. She does have the right to answer her critics.

And unlike her critics, she DID write about 21 books, quite a number of which were best-sellers and she DID achieve some literary status at the time when her Vampire Chronicles were very popular.

Have any of her critics–those she had “ranted” against–achieved something similar?

When she says:

“I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art.”

It doesn’t sound stupid to me. It may seem egomaniacal and narcissistic, but she’s an author. To be the author of anything requires the presumed capacity that you know what to do with the work you author better than anyone else. Could someone else have painted a better Mona Lisa? Maybe–but that someone else didn’t do it. It was Leonardo Da Vinci and he alone deserves the credit.

When does an author get the status to overrule her editors? Never? Wouldn’t that be putting too much faith in editors? After all, if editors knew better than novelists, why are they editing and not writing the novels themselves?

When she says writing a novel is a virtuoso performance, I think she’s quite right. Only a virtuoso, that is someone who exercises a “virtue” or talent or skill to an exceptional degree, can create a successful novel, a successful musical performance, etc. And Anne Rice did succeed with her novels.

I think her point was simply this, “I wrote the novels. I put in the hard work required to bring these books into existence. Therefore, I know things about the novels that no one else could know. And people who believe they know better than me have to make very good arguments about it, have to prove they have the intellectual resources and the intellectual integrity to support their belief.”

I just think that readers have to know the basis for their comments. If they’re just voicing out their opinions, then it’s fine… after all, aren’t opinions the second-cheapest intellectual currency? The cheapest being hindsight.

But what Rice was making a stand against–as I understand her “rant”–was the presumption of some “critics” who really did not do any clear or proper thinking before they made their comment; the presumption that they know better than the author. Such remarks hurt her because, well, she is the author of those novels and she understandably feels a sense of ownership towards them. And can you really blame her for believing she knew best what to do with her stories and characters?

If you still blame her, then maybe you should try writing your own novel.

I just think that the way some people dismiss certain books and certain authors–or the reactions of authors about criticism for their work–betray not only a lack of respect towards artists in general but have a naive, uninformed notion about what an artist or author actually does.

Anne Rice’s reaction to the Amazon.com comments may seem unjustfied, as unjustified as Christian Bale’s rant at the set of his latest movie (A Terminator film, I believe)after a member of the crew, the cinematographer, distracted him during a scene.

But I think both Bale and Rice were justified in their response. Most people may think they have no right to go “batshit” because they’re rich and famous but then, most people are not authors and not actors, and have no idea what being one or the other is like–and therefore are ignorant about what Bale and Rice went through during those incidents.

And being rich and famous does not take away their right to respond. You may not like their response, but they have the right to make it.

(sigh) Someone else giving authors a bad name.

I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art.

You mean there’s another one?