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Tag Archives: depression
“I get feelings of total defeat. I get feelings of total nihilism. I get so depressed sometimes that I look at my hands and I think why even lift them off the table…why turn on the computer…why touch the keys…why write anything? But what I do then is write about that. If nothing else, I turn it on and I write about despair, and I try to write my way through it. I think the most important thing, more than anything in the world, is to write, and use any excuse in your mind that you can to write. Don’t ever let despair or depression stop you. Remember this, that if you don’t write it, it isn’t going to be there. It’s that simple. And, if you are really down and out and really sad, look at it this way–decide that you are going to write it, and if you don’t like it, you are going to throw it away. I’ve done that quite a few times, and I’ve never wound up throwing the book away.”
– Anne Rice [6/26/16 X]
The reason I love Only Lovers Left Alive is it shows that a character (Adam) can be severely mentally ill, in this case depressed and suicidal, and still be seen as lovable and capable of being loved and loving in return without being “cured” of their mental illness, and that a mentally ill character can have other attributes aside from being mentally ill while still showing the impact being mentally ill has on his personality.
Adam from OLLA is an extremely important character to me you guys.
Hi there! stumbled upon your glorious blog after started re-reading VC. And let me tell ya, when I first read the entire thing some 13 years ago, it seemed to me so completely different, that I flip through pages now and go ‘wow, that really happened’. AR didn’t loose her touch with PL (which I detest and do not consider part of canon), but it reads more as an ‘audience book’ vs ‘author’s book’ as the previous ones do. And this is exactly what happened with some other novels, which is sad.
Thanks for the compliments! YES THIS THING IS GLORIOUS ♥u♥
So I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at, re: an ‘audience book’ vs ‘author’s book’ but it I do know that AR has always advised to “write the book you would want to read.” She just put up two quotes recently that I think are relevant here:
[May 11, 2016 – X] [May 10, 2016- X]
I had posted recently about the fandom’s general judgment of the quality of VC as a series, and most ppl seem to agree that canon is stronger in the beginning, and it makes sense because those works drew their strength from the emotions she fueled them with at those times in her life.
Unfortunately, I think we generally prefer those books coming from negative places for her, and I think it’s because she spun gold from the misery, she fought her demons through those stories and the product was captivating, clawing into the reader and giving us some secondhand catharsis.
Stories that came from a more positive place for her seemed not to produce that kind of engagement for the reader, but it’s important to remember that some ppl may prefer those.
Either way, she’s given us an incredible gift. The stronger works resonate with us to the soul like only our favorite music and art can, the weaker works are humorous and we can lovingly refer to them as “the vampire crackicles,” but even they still have good moments in which AR has tapped into the old veins (pun intended!) to give us that gold we’ve come to expect from her.
I stand by my previous short answer on this subject: I think AR can still capture that old quality we all fell in love with, albeit in slivers. Which is why I can’t disregard any of the books entirely. It’s still hard for me to accept Prince Lestat as canon, I might never, but there are moments and lines of dialogue in it that are SO VERY GOOD. Moments where I’ve had to pause and smile, because it was as if the old Lestat, from IWTV or TVL, actually graced us with his presence, if only for a moment.
lestat what do you think about depression and or mental illness?
♛I think they are very real and they cause suffering for those who carry them.
Depression is a familiar emotion for me. I saw it in my Nicolas and ignored the signs, thinking I could fill the void he carried within him because he meant absolutely everything to me. He might have even led me to believe I was helping him, but when he could no longer play along, well… that was the end of us.
I’ve known depression. I wouldn’t know if it’s the “normal” amount we’re meant to experience as opposed to the deeper kind Science has discovered; more to do with brain chemistry than anything else… but mine was a sludge that seeped out to greet me whenever I returned home as a mortal boy, to a family that ignored me at best, and physically beat me on a regular basis at worst. A terrible, sinking feeling.
I felt it when I found out about Nicolas’ death.
I felt it when my mother, my only companion, disappeared one night without leaving any way to contact her again.
I felt it when I looked into my daughter’s crystal blue eyes and no longer recognized her.
I felt it when I had been essentially murdered and left for dead. More than once. Physically and psychologically broken, cocooned in a derelict old shelter, barely able to feed, embracing the dust and the moldy floorboards for months at a time. Self-imposed solitary confinement. Prisoners at least have their meals delivered to them.
The road to recovery from all those and more has not been easy. I am still drawn back down that spiral by a phantom Vaudeville hook, always hovering just off-stage for me. Being alone, well, no one can hurt you, no one can leave you. So I understand those who choose to suffer alone.
I’m doing well now. Others in the coven tease me for my materialistic ways, and yes, this is a new pair of sunglasses. It’s less about the ownership of things and more about the ease in going out and interacting with the salespeople, the moving men, the accountants. Being out there amongst people.
Being there when Louis wants to curl up on the Italian silk couch with me under a cashmere throw. The flat screen showing us so much detail that it’s as though we truly are outside in a gondola at the magic hour, when the sunlight slants in diagonally. The waters are blue.
Life, in almost any form, is worth living, as bad as it can seem. It’s worth the effort.
Can we talk about… how Louis repeatedly has visual/auditory/tactile hallucinations, episodes of dissociation and depersonalization, and panic and anxiety attacks all throughout IWTV but these things are never really touched upon again in the series… like these are all possible symptoms of very severe depression, which I guess Rice alludes to Louis having throughout the series, but like honestly Louis was barely functional in IWTV and that’s never really been demonstrated again… in the later books Louis is always described as being calm, quiet, morally exceptional, conveniently kind, and romantically “sad.” I’ve always felt like the others’ perception of Louis was completely different from Louis’s perception of himself in his own account, and I wonder what ever happened to that intensity in his character in IWTV. I think if it’s touched upon later at all, it’s in Merrick? A little? Still though, it feels like Louis was conveniently stabilized and made static in the narrative in order to make him an easier character to sideline lmao
Very much so…..
//Frankly, this is an astute observation. And I think a lot of the changes in Louis’ character came, frankly, from his author no longer wishing to associate with him. Anne made it quite clear that she hated Louis’ voice and never wished to write in it again–and it took her almost forty years (39, to be exact) for her to be able to write in it again (I’m referring to the Epilogue in Prince Lestat).
ooc; I agree with @devilsfool re: Anne. I believe she was actually quoted at one point after writing Merrick saying that she didn’t want to ever write in Louis’ voice again??? Or something like that. She definitely expressed not caring all that much for his character.
But I can agree with what you’re saying too, because ultimately, IwtV was the only first-person narrative from Louis until the last chapter of PL. I’ve always felt Louis to be this intense perfectionist that can’t tolerate his own downfalls, and I definitely agree that he shows numerous symptoms of depression. He’s his biggest critic, and I think that shows a lot in IwtV.
I feel like IwtV would have seemed a lot different if told from Lestat’s perspective? Because while Lestat may get really, really angry with Louis sometimes, his descriptions of Louis are the most glorified in the books. He’ll talk about Louis moping around, but he paints a general picture of Louis being a very strong person that is dedicated to his convictions. Louis is literally his emotional rock, and really, I don’t believe Lestat would actually ever openly write of any breakdowns Louis may or may not have had. And I feel like if Louis was to have a bad bout of depression, Lestat would be the one to know, above anyone else.
Then you have Khayman’s description of Louis, where he flat out says that Louis can’t exist without Lestat. And Armand’s bit about Louis in TVA paint him as very melancholy, imo.
I also look at where Louis was when he gave the interview. He’s a very careful, private person, and he had his reasons for giving the interview in the first place (which can be debated in itself; I’ve always thought it was a cry out for Lestat and/or suicidal recklessness). He’d been alone for years and felt he’d nothing left. He was infuriated that Daniel didn’t see his story as despairingly as he himself viewed it to be. Louis felt down on everything at that point, and I don’t know that he’d really be that open with his experiences and feelings on any other night?
Idk, I’ve always felt that for as emotional as Louis seems to be, he still sucks majorly at actually dealing with his own emotions. Which is how I reason his major breakdown(s) in Merrick.
/writing this at 1am and hopes it makes sense lol
#YES #THIS #this post cannot be improved upon
Gonna add 2 things anyway.
1 – AR wrote IWTV after the loss of her daughter. Louis was pretty much AR herself, dealing with that grief, questioning a God as to why he had to punish her so much. What did Louis do to deserve a life-in-death living hell? What did Claudia do to deserve eternal imprisonment in that little body? What did AR’s daughter do to deserve dying so painfully at such an early age?
In the end, Louis (and the readers) draws his own answers and has to come to some kind of peace in order to move on. Lestat has his Savage Garden, in which peace lies in the fact that there is no explanation, bad things just happen to good people. The most we can do is try to do Good and help eachother survive the slings and arrows, try not to be the slinger of arrows, and if we are, to do it for the sake of Good. We’re all imperfect.
2 – Louis’ voice is pretty damn hard to write, when done well. My guess is that AR didn’t see a need to revisit his POV, especially with the intensity of focus it required. @annabellioncourt had some excellent points on this awhile back:
“Louis is more along the lines of the Oscar Wilde’s era of the very late 19th century, which is what most people think of today when they think “Victorian writing.” Similar in voice (though not subject) would also be Matthew Arnold (read some of his essays, and tell me that’s not how Louis talks), Wilkie Collins, and Henry James.
”…Louis is not so much involved in human goings on, he’s aware of events and films, but still speaks in the language of the century where he spent the most time communicating with others–also he would not have lost his speech patterns over those decades with Armand because Armand was mostly isolated in his language circles. So we can look at all of that as to why Louis talks the way he does.“
“Louis does show a HEAVY influence from the French symbolist poets (the school that Charles Baudelaire was from).”
And of course Louis would express himself in the language of the writers he enjoyed. OF COURSE HE WOULD. We all know he’s basically a big ol’ bookworm w/ fangs.
I-want-my-IWTV 