Vintage LKH

[recrudescence.livejournal.com]

For all I know, this has been discussed here before, so forgive me if I'm being redundant, but I recently came across this:

VAMPIRES AND WEREWOLVES AND WITCHES- OH MY! How a nice Midwestern girl got caught up in the macabre and developed a cult following

It's an LKH interview that appeared in the Chicago Tribune in mid-October of 1996. It is also kind of hilarious.



Laurell Hamilton was watching Walt Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" at home with Trinity, her 2-year-old daughter. The horror writer panicked: Was Hunchback going to die? "I was thinking, 'Please don't let me have to explain permanent night-night,' " Hamilton groaned.

First off: wow, Trin really is a big girl now. I actually didn't know her exact age, just estimations based on things I read here, but this puts her at at least fourteen. Still, I'm not sure how good a grasp a two-year-old is going to have on life and death. And as a Victor Hugo geek, I'd like to point out that the hunchback actually does die in the book...

If she finds it tough to explain death to the toddler set, it is clear that she is having no trouble explaining the facts of life- and death- to grownups.

Heh. No, she certainly doesn't. Cross-referenced with: multiple baby-daddies, psychological castration, penis envy, blonde-hating, and all that "only as graphic as it needs to be" sex.

Laurell Hamilton has made herself quite a comfortable niche. Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore in Minneapolis put "Bloody Bones" on his 'recommended' shelf. Last month it was the top seller at the mega-store.

Remember this, guys? Back when the series was struggling and starting out and still kind of, dare I say, quaint? Before LKH got too big for her superhigh britches and became a totally batshit bat-shitting tower of megalomania and gawthik-lite?

Dear sweet Jesus, how times have changed. It's interesting to look back this far and try to pick out the warning signs, though. For example:

"You can't arm yourself against a quirk of fate," she said. "We are a dice roll away from disaster for no reason. I find that very hard to accept. The world is so harsh that I prefer to see it through a patina of fantasy and horror, where the monsters are not as savage or grim as the monsters in real life."

Okay. She sounds a little like an emo fortune cookie, but I think I get it. The whole mentality of nothing ever being as terrible as reality, blahblahblah. She actually sounds like she knows what the hell she's saying, which is refreshing, but at the same time it's hard to look at this and not think of the high-and-mighty infodumps of advice she dispenses on her blog these days.

After the family was notified [of her mother's death], Hamilton remembers walking to an uncle's house through tiny Sims [Indiana] with her grandmother hysterically "wailing and keening."

Sucky as this particular situation is, has anyone ever seen LKH say anything positive about the woman who raised her? All I can recall are put-downs and, at best, backhanded remarks.

"When the neighbors asked what had happened, I was the one who said, 'My mommy died on the way home from work.' "

Hamilton's uncle subsequently took the 6-year-old to see the wrecked car. She remembers crawling inside, "touching the bloodstains. No one protected me from that. I did not flinch. I remember all the details."

...come to that, has anyone seen this mentioned anywhere else either? It sounds like the kind of "woe, my bloody childhood made me old and wise before my time!" anecdote that she'd slip into conversation as often as possible.

TRAUMA SHAPED HER

Um. Capslock and bold not mine. The enthusiasm is alllll the interviewer's.

And...well, not to belittle the strain an event like that must have been on such a young child, she's really not the only person who faced tragedy as a kid, and I really wish she'd talk more about working past said tragedy instead of reveling in it like it gives her street cred or something.

The trauma taught her immediately that adults could not protect her from disaster, Hamilton said.

"It made me who I am today. The false sense of safety that all children have, the idea that their parents can protect them from everything, was taken away from me at such a young age. It leaves a hole that is never filled."

Oy vey, this poor-me schtick is older than dirt.

I've worked with foster kids whose relatives would beat them, neglect them, accuse them of causing cancer, and make them shit on the lawn. At least Laurell had what sounds like a loving relationship with her mother and, what's more, also had family members who took her in and brought her up. But that isn't the kind of story LKH likes to glorify.

ETA: The character she created at least in part on her own self-image, is an resilent as Raymond Chandler character and as much of a feminist as Sara Parentsky's V.I. Warshawski- albeit more chaste. Both Hamilton and her character believe sex is best after marriage.

Gah, how could I leave this out? Again, look back and weep. Or laugh hysterically.

Comments

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised that LKH didn't tack on a "he took me out to see the mangled car & then he sexually abused me" story

I don't know. LKH strikes me as someone who thinks that sexual abuse happens to other people.

[naeko.livejournal.com]

I've said it before, but I don't think LKH is actually crazy. I think she has a serious lack of maturity, and I think she needs a reality check in terms of how famous and important she actually is. However, I don't think she's delusional outside of where her fame and the calibre of her writing are concerned.

Granted, the way some of the people in this comm alone talk sometimes, I can see where she and those who love her would think there are people who are so angry about the books that they may resort to violence. If she's gotten wind of some of the more angry, violently-suggestive commets here, her inflated sense of ego likely would turn them from innocent, if innapropriate rantings to honest-to-Diety threats. However I don't think she's in any actual danger. I don't actually believe that anyone's going to assassinate her or break into her house and boil her dogs. I think she should open her eyes and really notice that it's just talk- she doesn't NEED a bodyguard or a gun.

I do, however, believe she really strongly plays to her less mature audience members' expectations, and I think she has an undeserved sense of importance and influence. I will not argue against the suggestion that she believes the nuggets of wisdom she drops in her blog are all-important and highly intelligent. I sincerely believe she believes that people look up to her and want to see her lifestyle mirroring Anita's. I also think she talks about her "imaginary friends" and "muses" like she does because she thinks it makes her look deep and connected to her books. I don't believe that she thinks Nathanial is going to show up in her kitchen and make breakfast one day, but I think she likes to say that she's so deeply involved in her stories that she sometimes "forgets" they're not real, because she thinks this makes her audience take her created world more seriously.

Plus, it's an excuse to write herself into her own fantasy world without putting any real effort into it, but still making money from it. ;)

[pandorasblog]

*nods* You make some really good points. As a fandom, we risk viewing her as a pantomime villainness and therefore extrapolating every small thing she does/says as signs of deep insanity.

Also, I don't find the idea of her being taken to see the wrecked car so unlikely as most people here seem to. You're a grieving family member, in shock... this death has been an accident nobody could predict, everyone is having to cope as best they can... and in the middle of it you have a six-year-old kid to whom you have to somehow get across the idea that her mum is gone, that death is permanent; that it's different from going to work and then coming back later.

I can well imagine that in that situation some adults would show the child the site of the accident because they're at a loss to explain in any other way. It must be indescribably painful to have a young child at your elboy asking, "But why?" every time you try to explain the death. At that age it's a very hard concept for them to grasp. That's why I suspect that, while it may seem bizarre and therefore unbelievable, the story is probably true.

I also don't see the various descriptions she's given of her family's grief as being about deflecting attention onto her... it was a hugely influential thing and it's bound to keep coming up. If any other writer were saying these things people would nod and say, "Ah, yes," but because it's LKH, it gets used to rip her a new one. Not saying we should treat her like a super-speshul snowflake just because her mum died, but the inverse of that is also rather unattractive behaviour.

[easol.livejournal.com]

I often wonder to myself if we're being too harsh with LKH and she's in a position where she can do no right. Then she usually says something totally offensive, bizarre or out of contact with reality -- like the recent "bad guys" post which is really quite alarming.

Re the car thing, I can easily imagine a relative taking a kid to see the car. But I don't believe any sane relative would let the kid crawl inside (extremely not safe!) and fondle the bloodstains.

[novadivine.livejournal.com]

The inside of the car would have been full of glass shards! I once worked for a personal injury lawyer and saw my share of wrecked cars in scrap yards. If it was more than a fender bender, there was almost always shattered glass.

I can't imagine how she could even crawl around in there without getting cut to pieces.

[artemis-rex.livejournal.com]

In the course of my work, I've been to oodles of accidents, and while I can see perhaps an adult trying to use the car as a way of symbolizing the death of someone in a concrete way, there's no way that the cops (on the scene) would allow it, and I can't imagine the operator of a junkyard would be all that crazy about it either.

Did she see the car? Maybe.

Did she crawl over the bloodstains? Hell no.

[kerame.livejournal.com]

"I also don't see the various descriptions she's given of her family's grief as being about deflecting attention onto her... it was a hugely influential thing and it's bound to keep coming up. If any other writer were saying these things people would nod and say, "Ah, yes," but because it's LKH, it gets used to rip her a new one. Not saying we should treat her like a super-speshul snowflake just because her mum died, but the inverse of that is also rather unattractive behaviour."

I think she deserves every bit of critcism since she goes on and on about how her mother's death made her a darkity dark soul, while showing absolutely no compassion for her grandmother's grief.

Everyone should be so impressed with Laurita's pain, while the grief of the woman who raised her (over the very same person!) is treated as an embarrassment and a burden.

Treating everyone else's grief as though it should have no validity while she practically brags about weeping over imaginary characters, certainly sounds like she's using the stories as a way of getting attention, as well as being completely incapable of empathy.

[naeko.livejournal.com]

Your first line is dead on. I often seen the people in this community picking every small thing up as an excuse to bitch or to bash. I think it's almost a mob mentality, or at least the "popular kids clique" mentality that drives a lot of the community.

I'm not saying I approve of how selfish and immature Hamilton is, of course. I see a lot of flaws in how she sees the world and how she handles things. I just don't think she's deserving the viciousness that many people here spew.

Originally the community had a purpose that was not to tear the author to shreds (I believe the rules actually state it's not allowed!), but to talk more about how the series was in steep decline. Back when it started, the only place to talk Hamilton was the Anita_Blake_Fan community, and many of us were sick of getting jumped on and attacked for daring to say that we didn't like the newer books. People would say that Anita's characterisation was perfect and we would deny that, only to be met with mountains of people telling us that we didn't really have a right to be in a fan community if we weren't fans. Obviously we're still dealing with that mentality from outside the group, but the atmosphere here as changed rather graphically since it all began.

*shrug* I still hang out and watch because I like some of the more intelligent discussion and laughing at some of Hamilton's antics and phrasings are definitely worth the price of admission :)

[pandorasblog]

It's similar in the Anne Rice fandom; I actually think that author is sounding a lot saner despite the fact I don't agree with her on everything. But a lot of the time people are criticising her viciously for everything from showing signs of age to being Christian, and I just think the baby got thrown out with the bathwater.

The irony is that in terms of actual, documented author-to-fan bad behaviour, Hamilton is worse than Rice these days.

[orthent.livejournal.com]

I often wonder to myself if we're being too harsh with LKH and she's in a position where she can do no right.

Your first line is dead on. I often seen the people in this community picking every small thing up as an excuse to bitch or to bash. I think it's almost a mob mentality, or at least the "popular kids clique" mentality that drives a lot of the community.

It's probably the "Tigerwolf Effect"--once a person has acquired a reputation for saying remarkably stupid shit, their every utterance gets to be treated as if it were automatically stupid and mockworthy, even when it isn't.

[naeko.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of that! Thanks for pointing it out. I'm going to have to google and read up on it :)