As I realize with dawning horror that I'm not even halfway through this book yet...
Again, more of the talky-talk. This book has suddenly devolved into chapters of Edward and Bella just talking and talking and talking and having nothing but the most inane conversations. They're both being really guarded, and it's really a drag, because the conversation is just two idiots skirting around the main issue, like it's somehow going to make things silly (too late!) just talking about being a vampire.
I've just never seen the appeal of vampires in fiction. Never. I'm not a vampire guy, I don't dig vampires, and I'm usually surprised if a vampire in a story isn't total bullshit (I never expect them to go as far as "interesting"). I don't get the idea of women in stories like this one being incredibly attracted to vampires, and I don't get where something that's dead has any kind of human appeal (and I especially don't buy that vampires want or need to fuck). Vampires are like sharks to me; they've reached an evolutionary dead end, and all they need is to kill, feed, and keep moving. Sharks mate and make new sharks; vampires do the same by turning people into vampires. I don't know how sex or romance or anything like that would appeal to something that can't really do anything with it.
And Stephenie Meyer does what all vampire stories do now--she just throws out the parts of vampire mythology she doesn't like and dismisses them. Oh, sure vampires can walk around during the day, silly. She doesn't give herself any parameters or limits for Edward's vampirism to run up against, which would have at least created some tension and some drama. Instead, he's just got superpowers she can't think of anything interesting to do with. The only limitation here is Stephenie Meyer's awkward inability to tell a compelling story.
I guess what I'm saying is that Stephenie Meyer has a vampire here. She could do anything with this vampire. And what is the grandest thing this monster/super-being/tragic creature/evil murderer/whatever does with his life? Pretends to be a teenager and goes to school and falls in love with the most self-absorbed teenager in history. Whoo. Epic. I can see why this is 500 pages long, there's a lot to that.
Ugh.
You'll notice I'm not mentioning a lot of the actual story here. That's because it's just more tap dancing, more conversations, more bullshit. If you're going to write a conversation, please, make sure the characters say something. They have nothing to talk about. Edward reads Jessica's mind so that he can find out how Bella really feels about him, and he's pained to discover that she thinks she cares more about Edward than Edward cares about her. Their conversation at lunch is basically three pages of "I love you more" "No, I love you more" "No, I love you more, and I still don't know if I'm going to kill you yet or not, so let's hang out all the time!"
And you just long for something more substantial, like an Archie comic or a Bazooka Joe wrapper.
Bella casually compares Edward to a Greek god in this chapter. That pretty much says it all about the stupidity and lack of talent on display here. Bella, by the way, has made herself completely subservient to Edward. It's depressing, considering how oh-so-pleased she was with her independence and her supposed lack of conformity. Now she's taking orders and letting Edward dominate her like, well, any kind of god. Stephenie Meyer's Mormonism coming through.
This is all just so depressing.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Twilight Summarized by a Smartass, Chapter 10
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2 comments:
Okay, I'll make a hopefully sort of educated guess (of the Too Long, Didn't Read variety) what draws readers to vampires.
If a smart author writes about vampires, they... don't really write about vampires. Humans always write about themselves, we're just self-centered that way. So by taking a vampire, an author might be able to say something meaningful or at least inspiring about the human condition (the key part being, of course, humanity's collective wet dream, immortality).
Sometimes, this works best by making the vampire a metaphor for something, sometimes by making the vampire a little human, which means giving him human feelings and desires. Maybe to see what living forever and as a bloodthirsty monster that can not have morals if it wants to survive would do to a human being; if what one wins through the change is worth the prize. Another example of handling the mythology well by making vampires a little more human is The Interview with a Vampire. It proposes the idea that human beings rarely have the mental abilities to live longer than 'their' decades and would crumble and die inside, even if they could live forever, because they can't keep up with the constant fast changes of the world around them. With all obvious weaknesses this book has, one of them being the main characters Louis and Lestat, this was a good thought.
Of course, Twilight and most spineless, fangless little wannabe-Dracs in vampire literature today are as far removed from anything intelligent as it possibly gets. They're basically just glorified bad boys, with the added fantasy of being the first one this immortal bad boy loves not only in one short lame human live, but in ~*~forever~*~. And thank you so much about going chapter by chapter through this book and ripping it apart in such an entertaining way; my friends bullied me into reading this and it is just awful.
It really is terrible.
You raise a fantastic point about vampires as metaphor for the human condition. I tend to not be interested in vampire fiction because what's especially popular right now is turning them into basically superheroes with a dark side (your description of "glorified bad boys" is spot on). I'm not into the whole "forbidden romance" angle. Or into vampires just being gay best friends for goth girls.
Twilight has been a particularly awful example of vampire fiction. Edward could just as easily be an alien or an angel or even a bear and it would be the exact same terrible book.
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