I read Interview with the Vampire at the urging of a couple of friends, and finished it feeling somewhat unclean, though I had to admit that it was skillfully written. I hold Anne Rice personally responsible for the modern rehabilitation and romanticization of the vampire, and the vampire role-playing subcultures, and Twilight and its progeny and imitators. I am sick to the back teeth of vampires.
I was--foolishly, I suppose--hopeful at the news of Rice's return to Christianity, not seeing things as a paradigm-shifting literary celebrity like Rice would see it: that the Church was just one more paradigm that she felt that she was able to shift, 'cause, like, people looked up to her and junk, 'cause she was important and popular, and she imagined that the Church was (or ought to be) a grassroots-run organization whose dogma and policy were determined by popular vote as informed by an information medium largely hostile to the Church--and which had (perhaps coincidentally) been largely responsible for her own success and fame, as well as her world-view and her view of the Church (or what she thought of as the Church).
Imagine her surprise and dismay, then, to discover that the two-thousand-year-old Church would not give way to a writer of vampire best-sellers, and that "the people in the pews"--among whom she was certain to have fans--weren't as pliant as she had hoped, and might have other reasons for being there than to be in the sort of church that she insisted on if she were to condescend to return to it.
but she need to shut the h*ll up. Or grow the h*ll up: either one will suit.
Excellent post #23.
Well put!