A Visit with Anne Rice

The President of the I-Hate-No-I-Love-Tom-Cruise fan club holds informal and quite amiable court in this Interview With an Author. Viewers expecting to be lashed with plugs for Rice's books (the latest of which, Pandorra--out this month--is getting some good early reviews) will be happily disappointed as the woman in black shares her love for New Orleans, collecting saints ("I have scored St. Teresa"), and allows the camera to peek inside her historic New Orleans homes/properties. Whether talking about the draw of Mardi Gras, religion New Orleans-style ("we are not a puritanical people," she says of New Orleans Catholics, in one of the all-time great understatements), or the American reluctance to face death ("I've gone to California memorials where the dead person's name isn't even mentioned"), Rice is consistently interesting and always conversationally engaging. And, yes, fans will be rewarded with a little insight into her novels towards the end. Although I confess I haven't read an Anne Rice novel since Interview With the Vampire (which I thoroughly enjoyed years ago...just before post-graduate work in literary criticism pretty much took a blowtorch to my love of popular fiction), I found A Visit with Anne Rice to be an entertaining and very personable hour spent in darn good company. Recommended. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)