Twilight review
So, as you may know if you’ve been following my status updates, I recently read Stephanie Meyer’s megahit novel Twilight. I did so despite multiple warnings from friends who had trodden the path before me. And I made it to the end. Below you will find my thoughts on the experience, should you care to read them. I have attempted to avoid major spoilers in case anyone reading this actually decides to pick up the book and experience the awfulness for herself.
Why did I read Twilight? Mainly because, as a high school teacher, I’ve been listening to my students gush about it for years now. Not that that means I expected it to be any good; I have also endured similar gushing about direct-to-video Olsen twin films and the various iterations of High School Musical. But hey, it’s a pop culture phenomenon, and plenty of people put down J.K. Rowling too. I will say this much: It was not the worst book I have ever read in my life. The V.C. Andrews novels my friends and I passed from hand to hand, furtively, back in middle school were undoubtedly more lurid, and The Bourne Identity was far more boring. But it is surely in the top ten.
Narrator Bella Swan may be the least likable main character I’ve ever encountered (I can’t call her a protagonist; she’s far too passive for that). Her defining personality traits are, for the first third of the book, whining about how miserable she is; for the last two-thirds, obsessing about Edward’s utter perfection and her own hopeless inferiority to him. Oh, and she’s very clumsy, as Meyers, who apparently believes that falling down a lot constitutes a personality, mentions once a page or so. Meyers seems to go out of her way to avoid drawing her character. Once in the novel Bella claims that she really likes Jane Austen, and once Edward finds Debussy in her CD player. Otherwise, we are treated to circumlocutions like “when he saw the name of the band on the album cover, he smiled.” Because heaven forbid that she mention The Beatles or Death Cab for Cutie or ANYONE by name, and cause the 13-year-old reader to think, “Hey, I don’t know/don’t like that band. Maybe Bella is more than just a stand-in for ME!” And even though she’s supposedly very pale and, as she says every five minutes, terrible at all forms of physical activity, she’s wretchedly depressed to have left sunny Phoenix, where she had no close friends except her mother.
It’s hard to even draw a literary comparison. A lot of people have aired their dislike of Holden Caulfield in the last few weeks, in the wake of J.D. Salinger’s death, but Holden’s hypocrisy and negativity are balanced by his nostalgia, his love for everything innocent, and his keen powers of observation. Think of his treasured possession, Allie’s baseball mitt covered with poems in green ink; the red hunting hat; his memories of Jane “keeping all the kings in the back row” during checkers. Not to mention that Holden’s depression can be plausibly traced to his brother’s death from leukemia. Bella’s depression can be traced to the fact that… well, I can’t tell you, because there’s really nothing, except that she’s decided to make herself miserable by moving to Washington, in order to allow her mother to travel freely with the latter’s minor-league baseball player boyfriend, and she doesn’t like rain. She’s instantly the object of adulation for every boy at her new school, and a coterie of generic girls adopt her into their clique. What horrors!
Let's move on to Edward. First, a physical description. He's perfect. Really, really perfect. And exquisite and beautiful and gorgeous. And also perfect. And his breath smells totally delicious, like a really delicious thing. Oh, and he's perfect. Good, now we all know just how to picture him. Wait, what? We don't? What part of "perfect" didn't you understand? With each alleged description of Edward I was reminded of the number of times I have read in a student’s paper that an author is using “very specific” diction. Thanks, that tells me a lot.
I suppose I should note that we do get a few actual concrete details. His eyes change from topaz to black depending on how thirsty for blood he is. His skin is pale and cold, which Bella finds attractive for some reason. (You know when you're in bed and your partner climbs in and he/she is all cold from being outside and puts his/her frigid feet on you? Isn't that just a great sensation?) As you probably have heard by now even if you haven't read the book, he also sparkles in the sunlight.
Edward is nearly one hundred years old, part of an unusual vampire family who abstain from humans and live on animal blood. (It’s a lot like being a vegan – you can stay well-nourished, but you never get to eat anything really delicious.) He and his vampire “siblings” are attempting to hide in plain sight by attending Bella’s high school. Could any sadist come up with a worse fate? Enduring the asinine rules, the insipid teenage drama, the tedium of classes one has presumably taken multiple times -- for decades? And on top of that, forcing themselves to spend six hours a day surrounded by the same tasty humans whose blood they have sworn, for ethical reasons, not to drink? Apparently they’ve never heard of home-schooling.
Edward is also telepathic. So you can add to the Sisyphean awfulness of his pose as a high school junior the appalling idea of having to listen not only to his classmates’ conversations but also their thoughts. “Dude, I can’t wait to go home and get high.” “OMG I can’t believe she’s wearing those pants with that shirt.” Whatever stupid crap you spent most of your teenage years thinking about.
So now we come to the sources of Edward’s attraction to Bella. First, we’re told, she smells really good to vampires. As in, really good, like really good food. Deliciously good. Impossibly-difficult-for-Edward-to-be-in-the-same-room-with-her-and-not-rip-her -throat-out-good. Thus, as so often happens with vampires, we open the door for lots of sexual symbolism, but as not so often happens with decently written novels, we also open the door to an interminable conversation about how Edward is endangering Bella by being close to her, but is just too crazy about her to leave her alone.
Secondly, for some unknown reason, Edward is unable to read Bella’s thoughts, and, also for some unknown reason, this drives him to the point of mania. He eavesdrops on her friends’ thoughts to find out what Bella has said to them recently. He follows her around without her knowing it, repeatedly appearing from nowhere to save her from the dangers she has a remarkable tendency to encounter. He quizzes her for hours on her every taste: favorite color? TV show? movie? type of music? (Again, Meyers resorts to amusing contortions to avoid answering most of these questions.) Eventually we learn that he comes to her bedroom window and WATCHES HER SLEEP EVERY NIGHT so that he can listen when she talks in her sleep. How romantic! Don’t you wish you had your very own obsessive stalker? Of course, the thing that makes this obsession farcical, rather than merely disturbing, is that Bella never has a single thought worth hearing throughout the entire novel. In five hundred pages of first-person narration, she never makes an original observation. Hell, she hardly ever even gets beyond her morose navel-gazing to make an unoriginal observation.
And there we have the central problem. Edward’s love for Bella rests on the premise that she is so intriguing, so original, so gosh-darn special that he could never bring himself to give in to his carnal lust – oops, hunger – and harm her. Whereas nothing we read throughout the book makes this premise seem remotely plausible. Compared to this basic failure of character, the rest of the novel’s faults (a plot that moves and has holes like the proverbial molasses and truck-driving accommodations) are insignificant. In case you’re wondering, I have no plans to read the sequels.
Why did I read Twilight? Mainly because, as a high school teacher, I’ve been listening to my students gush about it for years now. Not that that means I expected it to be any good; I have also endured similar gushing about direct-to-video Olsen twin films and the various iterations of High School Musical. But hey, it’s a pop culture phenomenon, and plenty of people put down J.K. Rowling too. I will say this much: It was not the worst book I have ever read in my life. The V.C. Andrews novels my friends and I passed from hand to hand, furtively, back in middle school were undoubtedly more lurid, and The Bourne Identity was far more boring. But it is surely in the top ten.
Narrator Bella Swan may be the least likable main character I’ve ever encountered (I can’t call her a protagonist; she’s far too passive for that). Her defining personality traits are, for the first third of the book, whining about how miserable she is; for the last two-thirds, obsessing about Edward’s utter perfection and her own hopeless inferiority to him. Oh, and she’s very clumsy, as Meyers, who apparently believes that falling down a lot constitutes a personality, mentions once a page or so. Meyers seems to go out of her way to avoid drawing her character. Once in the novel Bella claims that she really likes Jane Austen, and once Edward finds Debussy in her CD player. Otherwise, we are treated to circumlocutions like “when he saw the name of the band on the album cover, he smiled.” Because heaven forbid that she mention The Beatles or Death Cab for Cutie or ANYONE by name, and cause the 13-year-old reader to think, “Hey, I don’t know/don’t like that band. Maybe Bella is more than just a stand-in for ME!” And even though she’s supposedly very pale and, as she says every five minutes, terrible at all forms of physical activity, she’s wretchedly depressed to have left sunny Phoenix, where she had no close friends except her mother.
It’s hard to even draw a literary comparison. A lot of people have aired their dislike of Holden Caulfield in the last few weeks, in the wake of J.D. Salinger’s death, but Holden’s hypocrisy and negativity are balanced by his nostalgia, his love for everything innocent, and his keen powers of observation. Think of his treasured possession, Allie’s baseball mitt covered with poems in green ink; the red hunting hat; his memories of Jane “keeping all the kings in the back row” during checkers. Not to mention that Holden’s depression can be plausibly traced to his brother’s death from leukemia. Bella’s depression can be traced to the fact that… well, I can’t tell you, because there’s really nothing, except that she’s decided to make herself miserable by moving to Washington, in order to allow her mother to travel freely with the latter’s minor-league baseball player boyfriend, and she doesn’t like rain. She’s instantly the object of adulation for every boy at her new school, and a coterie of generic girls adopt her into their clique. What horrors!
Let's move on to Edward. First, a physical description. He's perfect. Really, really perfect. And exquisite and beautiful and gorgeous. And also perfect. And his breath smells totally delicious, like a really delicious thing. Oh, and he's perfect. Good, now we all know just how to picture him. Wait, what? We don't? What part of "perfect" didn't you understand? With each alleged description of Edward I was reminded of the number of times I have read in a student’s paper that an author is using “very specific” diction. Thanks, that tells me a lot.
I suppose I should note that we do get a few actual concrete details. His eyes change from topaz to black depending on how thirsty for blood he is. His skin is pale and cold, which Bella finds attractive for some reason. (You know when you're in bed and your partner climbs in and he/she is all cold from being outside and puts his/her frigid feet on you? Isn't that just a great sensation?) As you probably have heard by now even if you haven't read the book, he also sparkles in the sunlight.
Edward is nearly one hundred years old, part of an unusual vampire family who abstain from humans and live on animal blood. (It’s a lot like being a vegan – you can stay well-nourished, but you never get to eat anything really delicious.) He and his vampire “siblings” are attempting to hide in plain sight by attending Bella’s high school. Could any sadist come up with a worse fate? Enduring the asinine rules, the insipid teenage drama, the tedium of classes one has presumably taken multiple times -- for decades? And on top of that, forcing themselves to spend six hours a day surrounded by the same tasty humans whose blood they have sworn, for ethical reasons, not to drink? Apparently they’ve never heard of home-schooling.
Edward is also telepathic. So you can add to the Sisyphean awfulness of his pose as a high school junior the appalling idea of having to listen not only to his classmates’ conversations but also their thoughts. “Dude, I can’t wait to go home and get high.” “OMG I can’t believe she’s wearing those pants with that shirt.” Whatever stupid crap you spent most of your teenage years thinking about.
So now we come to the sources of Edward’s attraction to Bella. First, we’re told, she smells really good to vampires. As in, really good, like really good food. Deliciously good. Impossibly-difficult-for-Edward-to-be-in-the-same-room-with-her-and-not-rip-her -throat-out-good. Thus, as so often happens with vampires, we open the door for lots of sexual symbolism, but as not so often happens with decently written novels, we also open the door to an interminable conversation about how Edward is endangering Bella by being close to her, but is just too crazy about her to leave her alone.
Secondly, for some unknown reason, Edward is unable to read Bella’s thoughts, and, also for some unknown reason, this drives him to the point of mania. He eavesdrops on her friends’ thoughts to find out what Bella has said to them recently. He follows her around without her knowing it, repeatedly appearing from nowhere to save her from the dangers she has a remarkable tendency to encounter. He quizzes her for hours on her every taste: favorite color? TV show? movie? type of music? (Again, Meyers resorts to amusing contortions to avoid answering most of these questions.) Eventually we learn that he comes to her bedroom window and WATCHES HER SLEEP EVERY NIGHT so that he can listen when she talks in her sleep. How romantic! Don’t you wish you had your very own obsessive stalker? Of course, the thing that makes this obsession farcical, rather than merely disturbing, is that Bella never has a single thought worth hearing throughout the entire novel. In five hundred pages of first-person narration, she never makes an original observation. Hell, she hardly ever even gets beyond her morose navel-gazing to make an unoriginal observation.
And there we have the central problem. Edward’s love for Bella rests on the premise that she is so intriguing, so original, so gosh-darn special that he could never bring himself to give in to his carnal lust – oops, hunger – and harm her. Whereas nothing we read throughout the book makes this premise seem remotely plausible. Compared to this basic failure of character, the rest of the novel’s faults (a plot that moves and has holes like the proverbial molasses and truck-driving accommodations) are insignificant. In case you’re wondering, I have no plans to read the sequels.
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