Twilight hole

I fell into a burning ring of Twilight...

You may recall my dithering about whether to allow the Older Child (perhaps I should now refer to her as Eleven?) to read Twilight. Even though I lost that battle and she already read it, I decided to try reading it out loud to her. I couldn't do it. The dialogue was so painfully bad that I couldn't read it without being sarcastic. The chuckling! There is so much freaking chuckling in the Twilight books. Now tell me, how often do you run into chuckling in this day and age? And how often do teenagers chuckle? Please. And then there is the smirking. So much smirking. Yes, teenagers probably do spend half the day smirking, but I think the fatally sincere Edward is found smirking far too often. As my friend Linda said, "There is nothing worse than a writer who can't just stick to "said." "

I gave up on reading Twilight out loud and decided to skim through it to make sure it wasn't totally inappropriate, which is a little like closing the barn door after the cows have gotten out, but whatever. Four hours later it was 3:00 in the a.m. and I couldn't put the damn book down. I have no idea what happened.

I spent all of Memorial Day weekend in a disoriented Welbutrin start-up haze ignoring my children and reading the first two Twilight books. I had to skim through much of the books to avoid chuckle-induced nausea, but I still couldn't stop reading. However, I am a wee bit concerned that the Welbutrin fog may mean the books have indelibly imprinted on my soggy brain, much likes the werewolves and their mates.

After I finished the second book, on Sunday, I put out an all-points Facebook bulletin seeking Book Three (I know they all have names like Crescent Moon or whatever, but I think of them as Twilights 1 - 4), but no one came to my rescue. I trekked over to Target on Monday. No Book Threes. Then I realized I couldn't purchase a paperback version and I really wasn't willing to shell out for a hardback.  Eleven came to my rescue! She borrowed the copy her teacher had made available to her combined fourth and fifth grade class! Yay! Also, WTF? I guess her school is even less interested in censorship than I am.

While I was impatiently drumming my jittery (Welbutrin start-up side-effect) fingers waiting for Book Three, I needed another teen-age angst fix. We have a lot of books in our house. A LOT. Some might say TOO MANY. However, very few of them have anything to do with teen angst. I was reduced to reading Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse, which was nicely full of angst, not to mention sex and the Riviera, but probably would have done well to have a few vampires thrown in.

It was also around this time that a friend linked to this SHOCKING EXPOSE of the cultural Mormonism in the books. Warning, the link is very funny, but also kind of a buzzkill. I enjoyed the books more without getting any of the unsubtle Mormon subtext. I wish I hadn't read that blog until after I finished the book. It's fascinating, but the writer really hates the books and I don't. Although I am rather embarrassed that I enjoyed them so much.

I still don't get it why I fell into the Twilight hole. The books are poorly written. But I found the characters engrossing (I keep thinking about them!) and the pacing brilliant. Or perhaps brilliant is to strong a word, because I did keep wondering how a writer who doesn't seem all that smart could write books that I couldn't put down.

This lead to a whole discussion, mostly in my head, of literary vs. middlebrow vs. lowbrow books. When choosing fiction, I tend toward the literary. Not the super extra literary, more like the upper middle brow. Again, Linda came to the rescue in defining my literary tastes, when I go outsider the mildly literary realm, "what I like is kinda-trash written by really smart, literate people." And Stephanie Meyers just does not seem like a smart literate person-- to me. I know that's terribly snobby, but I don't care. I just don't get why these book had such a hold over me.

A nice side effect of my Twilight hole may be a renewed interest in fiction. I've spent the last ten years reading much more non-fiction, mostly essays, than fiction. Which seems strange to me as my entire literate life until recently had been spent deeply immersed in fiction. I still think of myself as a fiction reader, even though I often go months without reading anything that isn't online or the New Yorker. I would like to get back to what still seems like my real life, being engrossed in novel after novel. If it took a few weeks of being a Twilight junkie to get me back on the lit wagon, well, I owe a big thank you to the vampires.

Comments

[Steph]

I had the same reaction, as you know. Maybe the books are magic. Maybe Stephenie Meyer made a deal with the devil. Do Mormons have a devil?

[Cate]

I'm sure mormons have a fleet of devils.

Great piece, mary -- nice analysis of how books snatch us up. I'm the same as you about thinking of myself as a fiction reader but floating off it for a long time.

[hush]

Delurking to say what a great post. I read an article somewhere about the bizarre appeal of the series having to do with the innocent, smart, non-blonde/tanned/cheerleader, intellectual young woman in high school's fantasy of being adored, just as she is, by the gorgeous, unattainable prom king. Which we all know never really happens, so the story satisfies (heals?) in us the sad longing for romantic love many of us high-falutin' literary snob types experienced as high schoolers.

I also like the deal with the devil theory.