I read it first in 1974 in a 5th grade textbook, an anthology compiled by Louis Untermeyer. The same book introduced me to Rudyard Kipling and Guy Wetmore Carryl.

Fond memories.

edited because the man's name is "Carryl," not "Carroll."

I read it first in 1974 in a 5th grade textbook, an anthology compiled by Louis Untermeyer. The same book introduced me to Rudyard Kipling and Guy Wetmore Carroll

In that case, I don't *think* it would be in the Archyology ones.

I hate when the one piece I want is the hardest one to find.

Okay, I'm evil, cause I got this from Fandom_wank, but really. Anne Rice, bless her, responds to her critics at Amazon. Scroll down about half the page: it's the one without paragraph breaks.

Every word is in perfect place. [. . .] You don't get all this? Fine. But I experienced an intimacy with the character in those scenes that shattered all prior restraints, and when one is writing one does have to continuously and courageously fight a destructive tendency to inhibition and restraint.

Sigh. And t bwah!

Oh, wait, this is even better.

And no, I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself. I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art

Because copy-editing is for amateurs.

I wonder what Anne Rice thinks of George Lucas's movies?

when one is writing one does have to continuously and courageously fight a destructive tendency to inhibition and restraint.

Although there's a kernel of truth in here, relating to the school of thought that posits the writer as a cruel/necessary traitor to privacy, generally speaking anyone who calls herself "courageous" needs to take a long walk off a short pier.

Also? Too many adjectives and adverbs in that sentence. So, kind of QED for the second quote.

Dear God, Anne Rice is so unbelievably arrogant.

Anne Rice is so unbelievably arrogant

And popular, so it must work for somebody.

I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art

I like that bit.

And popular, so it must work for somebody.

Yes, well, there are also people who think The Bridges of Madison County is both good literature as well as an ideal to aspire to in one's life. So....

t rolls eyes

If this is the stance she takes, no wonder her writing is so unbearably florid. There's believing in your convictions, then there's narcissistic public wanking. Bah.

For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art

Look, life is a collaborative art. Rice is saying that she's never wrong.

In every situation in which I've worked with an editor, some of the editorial changes have been wrong, and I didn't make them. Some of them, on the other hand, were embarrassingly right. Rice is saying she can't bear any other human being to judge her work; that may be true, but it doesn't mean another human being's input wouldn't improve the work.