SOURCE: “Postexistentialism in the Neo-Gothic Mode: Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire,” in Mosaic, Vol. 25, No. 3, Summer, 1992, pp. 79-97.

In the following essay, Waxman explores the confluence of existential philosophy, postmodernism, and gothic fiction in Interview with the Vampire and subsequent Rice novels. According to Waxman, “Rice presents with fervor a profound exploration of freedom, moral constraints and contingency in order to prepare us for the philosophical issues that face us on the darkling plain of the twenty-first century.”

Serious philosophical questioning, ethical inquiry, struggles of individuals to shape their identity and create a meaningful existence are not uncommon in twentieth-century American literature. Recently, however, a writer of “popular” fiction, Anne Rice, has carried these philosophical themes into a seemingly unusual genre: Gothic vampire fiction. In such novels as Interview with the Vampire (1976), Rice is not only chilling readers' spines but drawing their minds into the angst of...