The New York Times has posted their interview with author Anne Rice where she talked about religion, her books and vampires. She also talked about the Twilight books and its underlying subject.

Do you have a take on the way in which Twilight serves Stephenie Meyer’s Mormon beliefs?
I don’t know enough about Mormon beliefs to see it in that context. What I saw there was woman’s romance. And I don’t mean that in a denigrating way. I saw the same thing that works in the work of Charlotte and Emily Bronte, the idea of a young and vulnerable young woman falling in love with essentially an older, stronger, mysterious person. InJane Eyre, Mr. Rochester is threatening but he’s also protective and loving, and eventually comes around to be totally subdued and tamed by Jane. And that’s really what I saw inTwilight, in the two movies I saw. Young girl falls in love with this boy who’s capable of killing people, he’s a vampire, but he really loves her and protects her. And it was the same old story. Of course, there’s been a lot of writing in the world about why that particular romance functions. Is it about a young girl and her relationship to her father, as people have argued? Is it about the weaker feminine in love with the stronger masculine? It has a lot of deep layers of meaning, and I think Stephenie Meyer hit on that again in theTwilight books. And she did this stroke of genius thing of having these menacing vampires go to high school. [Laughs.] Which, in a way, I thought wasincredibly ridiculous. Because what immortal would spend his time going to high school over and over like that? Go to Katmandu or Memphis or Rio De Janiero or Rome! But it was a stroke of genius, because it gave great pleasure to millions of kids. So its’ very interesting. But I think what makes it work is that old tried-and-true woman’s romance formula, which is rooted in psychology.

There’s a sort of martyrdom in the Twilight vampires — the good vampires practice this sort of chastity in abstaining from killing and the pleasures of the world. So they become these near-saints, in spite of their nature.
I do think, though, that runs through all vampire literature. Any book about vampires, whether it’s Charlaine Harris’xTrue Blood series on HBO, or Stephenie Meyer or my books, we always have these characters struggling with their desires, abstaining, becoming chaste, that’s what makes them complicated and interesting. And the vampires inTrue Blood try to drink that junk out of the bottle instead of killing people. And we always applaud them, because that’s a metaphor for how we struggle with our own destructive impulses. But I see what you mean. I mean, she does it quite flamboyantly in having that good family so devoted to others and so abstaining and so forth. It’s perhaps done very clearly there for younger readers.

Do you think a vampire story can be told without some kind of aspect of religion?
No. I think the material is inherently about salvation, about damnation, even if your vampires are total atheists like mine, it’s about how do you be a good person, how do you transcend? I could never get away from it; I think it’s built into the material. Even if you take out the magic of crosses and holy water, as I did, and say that doesn’t work, you’re still left with the vampire being a human monster and wanting to be human. My vampires, you might say, were secular humanists, and they were struggling with how to be good on those terms.

To read the rest of her interview, click on the link above.

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