In the Shadow of the Vampire: Reflections from the World of Anne Rice

by Jana Marcus, Katherine Ramsland (Introduction)

Anne Rice has single-handedly re-popularized the vampire genre for a massive international audience of every age and social class. In The Shadow Of The Vampire offers a close up view of her devotees and disciples, fangs and all. Over 100 photographs from Anne Rice's Memnoch Ball in New Orleans as well as other events serve as a portrait of this growing subculture. The photographs illustrate the themes the readers relate to in their fantasies and everyday lives and the extremes to which they will go to be close to their mentor. The subjects of the photographs, the fans themselves, explain in accompanying interviews their spiritual relationships to romance, eroticism, loneliness, bloodlust or outsider status of the characters in the book. From the people who sleep in coffins to the teenage Goth-rockers to the HIV-positive man who found a deep allegorical comfort in the vampire Lestat, their responses range from the burlesque to the sublime.

Genres: Vampires, Nonfiction, Horror

140 pages, Paperback

First published November 22, 1997

About the author

Jana Marcus is the author of two photodocumentary books, "In The Shadow Of The Vampire: Reflections from the World of Anne Rice" and "Transfigurations," which received the Gold Award for Best LGBT Non-Fiction Book of 2012 by the Independent Book Awards of New York. She is a multi-award-winning photographer based in Santa Cruz, CA. For more information please visit www.janamarcus.com.

Marcus' first non-fiction true crime book, "Line of Blood: Uncovering a Secret Legacy of Mobsters, Money, and Murder" will be released July, 2020.

Reviews

[Harnoor Singh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kkdks

[Bryan Whitehead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easily the hands-down winner for most unintentionally funny read of the year. This is a book of interviews with and photographs of Anne Rice devotees. Though the author seems to be trying to advance their cause, it’s awfully hard not to look at the vast majority of them as a giant pack of pathetic losers, almost worse than Trekkies. Really, it’s a sad parade of B&D buffs, role playing nuts, assorted lifeless geeks and goths. Lots and lots of goths. One expects every successive turn of the page to reveal Chris Kattan in his guise as Asrael Abyss. The result is better if taken in small doses, because these folks get real tiresome real fast. In fact, the best plan of attack might be to just read a handful of the entries rather than the whole book. They’re all more or less the same, and they don’t have a chance to get old if you limit your consumption. Also, I noticed that the vast majority of the folks interviewed were either women or homosexual men. I’m not sure that I make anything in particular out of that, and if I did I probably couldn’t fully develop the thought in a capsule review. So I’ll just note it in passing.

[Titus Hjelm]

Potentially interesting, but turned out to be a collection of 'conversion' experienes about how Anne Rice changed people's lives. There's bad marriage, alcoholism, racism, HIV, you name it. OK, I'm not saying that books can't have an effect on people, but surely _someone_ reads the novels just for _fun_.

[Aldrea]

This was given to me as a gift. I skimmed through it. It was interesting.

[Sehaj Kaur · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't even read this book cuz it doesn't allow me to there is no read button :(

[Reza Sweet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is soo interesting