My favorite part of Lisa’s outstanding reproduction of Anne Rice’s meltdon on Amazon.com, as she responds to her online critics:

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. Getting really close to the subject matter is the achievement of only great art.

Now, if it doesn’t appeal to you, fine. You don’t enjoy it? Read somebody else. But your stupid arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander. And you have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies. I’ll never challenge your democratic freedom to do so, and yes, I’m answering you, but for what it’s worth, be assured of the utter contempt I feel for you, especially those of you who post anonymously (and perhaps repeatedly?) and how glad I am that this book is the last one in a series that has invited your hateful and ugly responses.

Take out the pretentious (Anne Rice? No! No, not… no!) bit about closeness to a character, and you’ve pretty much got an excerpt from any pissed-off, defensive, uppity online journaller who ever had a bunch of people flame them.

You can practically run down the checklist of defensive, superior, insulated dissonance reduction:

  1. Implied stupidity of her critics? Check: “You don’t get all this?”
  2. Identification of her work as something more than merely mortal? Check: “Getting really close to the subject matter is the achievement of only great art.”
  3. Employing the “It’s personal writing, it’s from the heart” argument to justify piddling quality? Check: “I experienced an intimacy with the character in those scenes that shattered all prior restraints”
  4. Telling her critics that if they don’t like her, they don’t have to read her? Check: “You don’t enjoy it? Read somebody else.”
  5. Expressing her disgust at using the internet simply to run someone else down? Check: “You have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies.”
  6. Promptly using the internet to run her critics down? Check: ” for what it’s worth, be assured of the utter contempt I feel for you, especially those of you who post anonymously (and perhaps repeatedly?)”
  7. Huffily walking away from the argument to allow for no response? Check: “How glad I am that this book is the last one in a series that has invited your hateful and ugly responses.”

Say what you will, but somehow I think Anne Rice is more of an Internet journaller at heart than she cares to admit. “Use and enjoy Amazon,” eh, Anne?

Bullshit. Show us your LiveJournal. We know it’s out there.

And the mood is “grumpy.”