Clifton Snider: Clifton Snider is the author of eight acclaimed books of poetry, including “The Age of the Mother” (1992) and “The Alchemy of Opposites” (2000). He has published three novels: Loud Whisper (2000), Bare Roots (2001), and Wresting with Angels: A Tale of Two Brothers. A specialist in Jungian and Queer literary criticism, his book of criticism, “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On”, was published in 1991. He teaches writing and literature at California State University, Long Beach.
When Christopher Rice's first novel, “A Density of Souls,” was published in 2000 (incredibly when the author was just 22), it received a lot of attention, no doubt in part because his mother is Anne Rice, author of “The Vampire Chronicles.” That Anne Rice has a devoted gay following and Christopher is openly gay, coupled with the fact the central character, Stephen, in “A Density of Souls” is also gay, guaranteed a lot of coverage in the gay press, including a cover story in “The Advocate.”
Generally suspicious of best sellers, I put off reading the novel until over four years after its publication. Waiting this long allowed me to see if Rice's success was just a flash in the pan, so to speak, or whether he has literary staying power. The answer is the latter. “A Density of Souls” has been compared to Bret Easton Ellis. It is far better. Whereas Ellis's debut novel is about shallow, drug-obsessed Southern California characters portrayed in staccato bits of prose suitable for the attention span of an MTV generation, Rice's novel set in contemporary New Orleans and environs is carefully plotted. It would make a far better movie than the one spawned by “Less Than Zero.” Actually, until the novel turns into a thriller, Rice's teenaged/young adult characters are a little like those in the movie, “Cruel Intentions,” only they live in and near New Orleans. Although “Density” has moments of melodrama, both in action and dialogue, it is also a vivid southern gothic thriller and a coming-of-age/coming-out testament to gay love, with healthy doses of friendly, filial, and maternal love as well. In short, “A Density of Souls” has a moral and spiritual core that transcends its more flashy elements.
Four friends, three boys and a girl, enter high school and soon clash severely over issues of status and sexuality. Their bitter conflicts, punctuated by dead bodies and ruined minds and souls, are not resolved until they reach young adulthood. Although it is the 1990's, Stephen has to endure high school homophobia more usually associated with an earlier generation. Indeed, the gay community of New Orleans is attacked in a manner violently reminiscent of earlier decades. Rice uncannily anticipates the homophobic venom of George W. Bush's radical right bullies that currently mar our national landscape.
Rice's omniscient narrator introduces a second set of characters, the parents and other adults, who have their own unsavory issues and secret histories. They are initially difficult to tell apart, which probably accounts for the frequent repetition of their last names, along with those of the younger characters. Their culture is that of the Old South, with its class prejudices, its heavy drinking, and its demented characters (the last is a feature of virtually every southern fiction I've read). The prose is perky and the sense of place convincing. Rice knows his territory. Gay readers, and perhaps others, will identify with Stephen's loneliness and need for love, his passivity, his sensitivity, his fantasies, and his perseverance in the face of oppression and loss that could easily have made him as demented as some of the other characters. “A Density of Souls” is a good read and a remarkable first novel, vital and accessible.
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