/lit/ - Literature

Bump.

i liked some of her erotica but i only skimmed to the good parts

She's a pulp author, but some of her stuff is about as good as pulp gets.

>>6061696

>pulp author

What exactly does that mean?

Anne rice is a boss. She reapplied her own hatred an mistrust of Catholicism and turned it into a metaphor for vampires. Her work with lestat revived an entire genre of horror an supernatural writing. She accurately encapsulates the loathing and loneliness a mortal feels when faced with immortality either for the first time or through introspection. There's the joy the characters find in one another and knowing they'll live forever and there's the pain of losing one of their own kind or confronting obstacles created by their elongated lifecycles. Start with the vampire books then move onto the witches. Good stuff. If not for her, vamps wouldn't have gotten the shot to the arm needed to make them as dominant in late 90's-2000's pop culture. Poppy z Brite came after and introduced a homoerotic, gothy, splatter punk take on the topic. Dead Souls is worth a read.

>>6061797
Lost souls I mean.

>>6061793
Someone who writes cheap fiction intended purely for entertainment, usually their books are kind of trashy, and usually they have some sort of schtick or genre that they almost never stray from. The types of books you find in an airport or supermarket, basically. You can spot them easily at a glance because they've all published hundreds of books that are all about the exact same thing. Tom Clancy, etc.

Anne Rice's stuff is about as good as pulp gets though. Definitely not bad at least.

>>6061804

Oh, okay.

>>6061804
That was pretty narrow and unfair definition. 'Pulp' can be far better than 'literary' fiction.

>>6062155
It can be more enjoyable, in the same way that watching a mindless big budget action movie can be more enjoyable than watching a Tarkovsky flick or whatever.

That doesn't necessarily make it "better" though.

>>6062493
No, I meant it can be better.

>>6062643
I know that's what you meant and I'm saying you're wrong.

>>6062646
No you're not, you're arguing semantics.

>>6062717
No I'm not, I literally said you're wrong that pulp is or can be better than literary fiction.

You are wrong. It can be more enjoyable to some people, but enjoyability does not equal quality.

The movies were pretty gay, anyway

>>6062803
>but enjoyability does not equal quality.

>>6062890
It doesn't. Millions of people enjoy Michael Bay films, does that make them good?

>>6062897
It's a shitty analogy because not all pulp can be described as Michael Bay tier, and you're a fool if you think it can. You're argument also seems to imply some mutual exclusivity between enjoyability and quality.

>>6062935
>It's a shitty analogy because not all pulp can be described as Michael Bay tier, and you're a fool if you think it can

Some pulp is better than the rest, but anything that actually has literary quality ceases to be pulp and becomes just that, literary.

Anne Rice is a pulp author though.

>>6062949
Conan the Barbarian is better even in a strict literary sense only, let alone overall, than 95% of the shit on a literary fiction shelf at a book store.

>>6062970
Wrong, you enjoy Conan the Barbarian more, that does not mean it is in any way better.

Just because you really fucking love Transformers 2 doesn't mean it's better than Citizen Kane or whatever man.

>>6062980
>Wrong, you enjoy Conan the Barbarian more, that does not mean it is in any way better.
Read through this sentence again very carefully.

>>6062998
You're saying it's better in a literary sense solely because you enjoyed it more.

It is not better though. If it were better it would not be considered "pulp" in the first place.

She has elegant descriptions and beautiful characters - however, her plots are incredibly sloppy and her books include incredibly stupid shit like her main character Lestat raping a woman while in another man's body and then later thinking "whoops! Sorry I did that!" in passing, not to mention another book where she includes a full-page description of a 1,000 year old mummy's erect penis.

Her erotica is even sillier and is less boner fuel than unintentional comedy.

>>6062970

Allow me to attempt to write a typical passage out of Robert E. Howard:

"That blue eyed Cimmerian, his muscles bulging in fury, hefted his mighty sword above the hulking negro's head, cleaving the midnight black thug in twain." I don't have anything by him on hand but that's a typical Howard sentence. Now imagine reading an entire book full of that nonsense.

>>6063037
But you made that up, anon.

>>6061802
>>6061797

I like Poppy Z. Brite but you have to admit her writing reads like a really ridiculous piece of fanfiction.

>tfw gay vampire incest

>>6063057

Nevertheless it is a perfect imitation of Robert E. Howard's style and attitude.

>>6061797
>>6060945


When it comes to vampires, you can do a lot worse. The quality fluctuates from book to book. The other vampires are much more interesting than her hero, Lestat. Her erotica is all right. Try something of her vampire prose. At least it tries to simulate the mind voice of a really really old guy.

For the witches, the first book is all right, the second is wobbly, and the rest a snoozefest. To be fair, my interests were shifting, so I find the older stuff more palatable.

>>6063075
You sure think highly of yourself.

>The Vampire Chronicles

First book is a great metaphor for two gay men in love and gay adoption, but everything goes downhill and keeps getting worst starting with the second and third books which are about Lestat confronting a female villain who wants to kill all but a few men because men and patriarchy suck.

>>6063026

You forgot about the scene set in ancient times where royalty have their servant rape a pair of twins as punishment and then the twins forgive their rapist because he's supposed to be a good guy for literally the rest of the book except that scene

>>6062980
Not even that guy but your blanket statement goes a bit far. If a pulp novel can engage the reader better than a literary novel then yeah the pulp /can/ be a "better" book. It's all a matter of opinion but I hesitate to call something better just because it's trying something that may be more literary, that's not a mark of quality it's just a sign of a specific type of aspiration the writer has for their story. Quality comes from the book itself.

Plenty of high quality classics were just stories hacked out for a quick buck that ended up standing the test of time far, far better than most of the literary bestsellers of today most likely will. Those stories are often better books by most definitions.

>>6063131
He's obviously trolling, don't waste your time trying to make him understand.

>>6063026

Her erotica is probably written for vaginas, so you're not going to find much boner fuel, unless her homoerotica meets your approval.

>>6063194

Homoerotica is perfectly fine and I get turned on by it just as much. However Anne Rice's overblown style of writing erotica doesn't do much for me besides make me chuckle.

>>6063067
Lost souls was bonkers. Here kid, run away from home and start blowing everyone you meet, to include your dad.

>>6063245

The scene where he gives a random homeless dude a blow job was weird and fun as fuck to read

>>6063245

I like the scene where he literally breaks into his favorite rockers' house like a total creepo, and one of them gives him shit about it but later on they become friends and it's no big deal

Also the scene where the one guy rapes his girlfriend or ex girlfriend or whatever and the author treats it like fucking nothing was.... kind of fucked