They say you never forget your first vampire love (particularly when you keep the journal containing the unabashedly Mary Sue-ish your-eyes-only fanfic in which you are his very reason for living, which you tell people you can’t very well throw away because it’s bound in leather and cost a lot of money, not to mention penned in calligraphy because you had a lot of free time back then so it’s practically collector-grade art, but really you keep it because it’s an enduring fantasy and damn well written, if you do say so yourself every time you sneak it off the shelf and reminisce). They’re right, for a change. I re-read recently and was just as seduced by Lestat as I was the first time, when I was but a tender adolescent.
Name: Lestat de Lioncourt
Classification: Supernatural stud
Subclass: Bloodsucker
Found In: Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles (everything to follow comes specifically from his “autobiography,” The Vampire Lestat)
Introduced In: Interview with the Vampire, as narrated by Louis, undoubtedly Lestat’s most annoying creation. There’s a reason Louis got only one book to narrate—namely, he’s a whiny, spineless, self-pitying douche, the original emo posterboy. I couldn’t stand him even in his own telling and recognized Lestat as the true figure of interest even then. Here’s the abridged version of Interview: ”Lestat is so mean. I wish I was as cool as him. The end.”
The Pretty: (Forget the movie, which only reinforced my existing dislike of Tom Cruise.) Even as a mortal, Lestat was beautiful. His looks were a large part of the reason he was chosen to receive the Dark Gift. He’s kind enough to describe his own magnificence at the start of his story.
I’m six feet tall, which was fairly impressive in the 1780s when I was a young mortal man. It’s not bad now. I have thick blond hair, not quite shoulder length, and rather curly, which appears white under fluorescent light. My eyes are gray, but they absorb the colors blue or violet easily from surfaces around them. And I have a fairly short narrow nose, and a mouth that is well shaped but just a little too big for my face. It can look very mean, or extremely generous, my mouth. It always looks sensual. But emotions and attitudes are always reflected in my entire expression. I have a continously animated face.
My vampire nature reveals itself in extremely white and highly reflective skin that has to be powdered down for cameras of any kind.
And if I’m starved for blood, I look a perfect horror—skin shrunken, veins like ropes over the contours of my bones. But I don’t let that happen now. And the only consistent indication that I am not human is my fingernails. It’s the same with all vampires. Our fingernails look like glass. And some people notice that when they don’t notice anything else. [p. 3]
Yes, of course he’s vain, but better that than one of those pretty people who blush and stammer and insist they are nothing special to look at, which invariably leads to more of the compliments they claim not to want (yeah, right). Some people have every right to be proud of their appearance. More power to them for being honest about it, I say.
Upon seeing his reflection as a vampire for the first time:
He could have been an angel, in fact, this creature, except that when his tears did rise, they were red, and the entire image was tinted red because his vision was red. And he had these evil little teeth that he could press into his lower lip when he smiled that made him look absolutely terrifying. A good enough face with one thing horribly, horribly wrong with it!
Darling, there is nothing unsightly about fangs. Be glad you don’t have beaver’s teeth.
He’s always ashamed to be seen when he’s not looking his best (disheveled, scarred, starved), as if being gorgeous is his gift to the world and he’s delivered it wrapped in a Hefty bag and looking like it’s been run over by a garbage truck. This, I think, is not so much vanity as his belief that beauty is a universal good and therefore insults against it must be inherently evil. Although he embraces being an evil creature, he clings to the remnants of his humanity and his need to be good.
Endearing Qualities
- He’s a rock star (musician = swoon)
- He’s on a murderer-only diet (and when he cheats on his diet, it’s only the ill and elderly who are going to die soon anyway, honest)
- Even after 200 years, he maintains a childlike sense of wonder and enthusiasm about all things new
- He dreams big and then lives the dream—even when he was mortal, he set his sights on an impossible feat and proceeded to do it
- He’s a daredevil—I get a charge from those bold enough to do what I consider too reckless and unsafe and insane to attempt myself
- He’ll forgive anything of those he loves, including abandonment, betrayal, and attempted murder
- He’s a people person, and not only because they’re a food source—he takes pleasure in watching them, talking to them, being among them, and being adored by them
- He’s a book addict, even if he doesn’t take proper care of them (the water damage—the horror!)
- He has a marvelous sense of humor and absurdity
And my worst problem was laughter. I would go into fits of laughter and I couldn’t stop. Anything could set me off. The sheer madness of my own position might set me off.
This can still happen to me fairly easily. No loss, no pain, no deepening understanding of my predicament changes it. Something strikes me as funny. I begin to laugh and I can’t stop.
It makes other vampires furious, by the way. [p. 125]
- He quickly embraced his change of circumstances as a vampire in his typical dramatic and grandiose fashion. To hell with slinking around graveyards and living like ghouls, as the Parisian coven insisted was tradition.
“It is a new age. It requires a new evil. And I am that new evil. … I am the vampire for these times.” [p. 228]
Handy Skills
- Possesses “breathtaking sums of money,” which he spends with abandon (saving up a fortune is a skill, I say!)
- Makes the world a safer place and reduces prison overcrowding and the burden on the judicial system by relieving vicious criminals of their lives
- Can leap moderately tall buildings (four stories) in a single bound
- Can effortlessly bend iron bars (hey, wait a minute… holy shit, does this mean Superman is a vampire?!)
In Lestat’s Words: Well, they’re all his words and therefore witty and insightful and amusing, but here is a selection of my favorites that don’t require a lot of context to be fully appreciated.
Well, it has been great fun pretending you will be this vampire creature, I thought, wearing these splendid clothes, running your fingers through all that glorious lucre. But you can’t live as this! You can’t feed on living beings! Even if you are a monster, you have a conscience in you, natural to you… Good and Evil, good and evil. You cannot live without believing in— You cannot abide the acts that— Tomorrow you will… you will… you will what?
You will drink blood, won’t you? [p. 105]
“I don’t know how to be bad at being bad.” [p. 336]
“You sense my loneliness,” I answered, “my bitterness at being shut out of life. My bitterness that I’m evil, that I don’t deserve to be loved and yet I need love hungrily. My horror that I can never reveal myself to mortals. But these things don’t stop me, Mother. I’m too strong for them to stop me. As you said yourself once, I am very good at being what I am. These things merely now and then make me suffer, that’s all.” [p. 355]
Oh, Lestat, you deserve everything that ever happened to you. You’d better not die. You might actually go to hell. [p. 501]
Get Your Hands on Lestat: These are the only books of which I have multiple copies: hardcover and two sets of paperbacks, one in pristine condition and one with highlights and scribbling in the margins and dog-eared pages, abuses I have never before or since inflicted upon a book.
The Vampire Lestat
The Queen of the Damned
The Tale of the Body Thief
I obviously have little enthusiasm for Interview. I know I read Memnoch the Devil, but since I can’t remember a thing about it, it’s clearly not a rush-right-out-and-get-it-now book. I didn’t read any further because, if I remember correctly, the next book was about Armand, whom I dislike even more intensely than Louis, and Rice then proceeded to mix her vampires and witches together, which was too great a violation of my expectations for me to get on board with it. I suppose it’s an indicator of stand-aloneability that I don’t feel left hanging after stopping mid-series.
9/30
11/4
11/4
11/25