Chapter 2: Open Book

52 pages in...

[note: I don't have my book with me as I'm posting this; I'll go back in later and add page #s where needed.]

Let's start off with some good old-fashioned pessimism this week. Bella opines at the very beginning of this chapter: "The next day was better...and worse." She takes a paragraph to appreciate that it's not raining, and she acknowledges that she's feeling a little more comfortable in her new group of Forks friends, who have all been welcoming to her. After getting all that lukewarm positivity out of the way, she plunges back into mopefest mode, bemoans various things unimportant to the story and also frets about Edward, who doesn't show up to school. She can't shake the "nagging suspicion" that his absence has everything to do with her.

Nothing much really happens for a while. Bella has a conversation with her father over dinner about the Cullens. He spouts glowing praise of them. The rest of the week passes, Edward still a no-show.

In Edward's absence, Bella begins to feel more comfortable in Forks, but her comfort is short-lived when, the next Monday, it snows. The Pretty Bird HATES snow. Her friends instigate a snowball fight and she retreats inside in disgust. (Really? God help me, this girl is such a limp noodle! Why the hell do people even talk to her?)

But then all hell breaks loose. Edward is back, sitting with his fam in the cafeteria, and he's staring at her. STARING AT HER!

For some reason, he no longer seems to hate her. He says "Hello," in a "musical voice," when he sits next to her in Biology, and then they kick some ass at their biology lab, identifying the stages of mitosis together, because Edward is super smart and Bella has done the lab before (I'm supposed to be impressed, but identifying the stages of mitosis isn't exactly rocket science. If they were calculating derivatives or balancing complex chemical equations, maybe then I'd be more convinced).

Bella notices that Edward's eyes have changed color.

Edward is painfully interested in Bella, initiates a conversation, and they eventually get on the subject of why Bella came to Forks in the first place if it has made her miserable. Here's her reason: her mother has just remarried minor league baseball player Phil and was staying at home while Phil traveled, but Bella saw that this was making her mother unhappy, so she "decided it was time to spend some quality time with Charlie." You'd think Bella would appreciate being able to get this of her chest, but Edward's prying only irritates her, and he has a delightfully cheeky, "You're cute when you're maaad!" moment, after which she grimaces at him. This is not so different from the majority of "first-meeting" scenes in a myriad of chick flicks.

When Bella leaves school, she sees Edward in the parking lot as she's backing up, which causes her to almost hit another car. She thinks she sees him laughing at her as she drives away.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: Bella continues to be a difficult narrator for me to get behind. Any respect that she had for Mike, the one character she seemed to appreciate (and who clearly has a crush on her), has come to naught. She compares him to a golden retriever, no longer finds his advances flattering, and says she is going to have to "do something about [him]." It's a weird response, since Mike comes off as pretty sincere and he's not described as a hideous loser in the previous chapter. Still, she doesn't even give a reason for wanting to reject him.

Bella also reveals why she has sacrificed her happiness to come to Forks, and whether or not you identify Bella as a "selfless" character, as some fans do, may hinge on how you swallow her reasoning: "I wanted to give my mom some alone time with her new hubby!"

I call bullshit. Here's why.

Bella has barely even thought about her mother since she arrived in Forks, despite claiming that they have a close relationship, and she even gets snotty on pg 34 when her mother sends Bella and email, anxious (understandably) to not hear from her since arriving in Forks. Instead of apologizing, Bella's response is incredibly condescending: "Mom, Calm down. I'm writing right now. Don't do anything rash." (We're clearly supposed to see Bella's mother as not having two neurons to rub together; Bella is meant to be infinitely smarter and more competent than her, though I haven't seen much evidence for this.) So far, Bella has thought only about BELLA'S happiness, and we are suddenly expected to buy this spontaneous burst of altruism on her part.

Well, obviously, some people buy it. I don't doubt that there are many teenage girls and even adult women who have the same thought processes that Bella has. Bella is the girl who tries to pass off a passive aggressive, self-absorbed personality as shyness, and I have both known this person and BEEN this person in my teenage life. But the difference between Bella and me is that I've grown to recognize that behavior as counterproductive, because I understand that there are people in the world other than myself. And for those who might think I'm being too hard on Bella, the problem isn't so much that Bella HAS these qualities, but that EVERYONE IN THE STORY FORGIVES HER FOR THEM. Edward responds to her reason for coming to Forks with painstaking sympathy: "You put on a good show," he says, "but I'm willing to bet that you're suffering more than you let anyone see." Oh, I've seen it, Edward. I've seen it, and it is a festering pile of pessimism and self-pity. I've had to listen to Bella's complaints for 49 pages, and now, to add insult to injury, I have to listen to someone VALIDATE all of those complaints, which really just makes it that much worse.

Ah, but the problem here is that I'm trying to apply logic to a character where logic is pretty irrelevant. So far, Bella has just been whatever Meyer needs her to be at the moment. She needs her to be unhappy in Forks, so she is unhappy without reason. She needs her to be self-sacrificing, so she does so without logic. She needs her to be enthralled with Edward and his family, to be totally turned off by a boy who is not Edward coming onto her, so she just IS, no questions asked. Again, this might be because Bella's not so much a character, but a lens for Edward, and to a reader who hasn't gone into complete brain shut-down, and who doesn't ask questions while reading, everything that is written is the indisputable truth simply because that's what the words say.

Edward, so far, is a "mystery," as I'm sure he's meant to be. Even though I already know he is a vampire (because the back of the book says so), there is something about his presence that is...hm...a little bit tantalizing. I'll discuss that in the What's Working? section.

PLOT DEVELOPMENT: We're fed a great deal of information on each page, maybe about a fourth of which is actually important. The rest is Bella making commentary about mundane events in her day. I'm beginning to think, however, that it's not completely unintentional. Bella thinks and speaks in hyperbole, so to her, EVERYTHING is of equal importance. You NEED to know every event: getting an answer wrong in math class, being force to play volleyball, fixing dinner for her father, reading Wuthering Heights for fun, etc. It's incredibly uninteresting for me, but then again, I do hate volleyball. That much Bella and I can agree on.

One concern I have for the progression of the story is that Bella really doesn't DO much, and when she does do things, they aren't very interesting, like reading, writing emails, cooking, cleaning, etc. All other events in her life are almost explicitly externally created by outside parties, friends, teachers, parents (with the exception of her "decision" to come to Forks, which is hard to buy, as she is passive in all other instances). Even Edward's approach is specifically Edward taking the initiative to talk to her. Really, Bella just sits and responds to him. A character that is so inert is usually the kiss of death for a story, as it drains the plot of causality, which most plots are dependent upon. So far, I'm a little baffled by it.

LANGUAGE: I would bawk at the description Bella provides for Edward on pg 39: "He looked like he was shooting a commercial for hair gel," but honestly, that's probably a comparison that someone Bella's age would make. Even so, the more visceral aspects of Edward's appearance that a teenager WOULD notice continue to be overlooked. He is merely "dazzling" or "flawless," descriptions so vague it's a wonder if Bella is looking at a high school student or the Ghost of Christmas Past. This is more of an invitation for readers to Insert-Dreamboy-Here, which I'm sure they do.

Um...does that mean I can picture Edward as this? Or is that too extreme...

The same language problems persist in this chapter. What's particularly annoying are the dialogue tags. People rarely "say" anything. They always murmur, mumble, mutter, blurt, command, disagree, insist, persist, confide, giggle, intrude, add or hiss it (in this chapter alone!). There's no need to do that, young writers. If you write your dialogue effectively, the reader should know how it's being said without being told.But again, skimming readers most likely ignore dialogue tags, so this may not be an annoyance to them. If I weren't reading the story closely, the same might be for me.

SUBTEXT: There's a moment on pg 32 when Bella considers the Cullens' position as outsiders and comes to believe that "the isolation must be their desire," as they are simply too beautiful to not be able to have whatever they want. Well, I guess this shoots the whole insider v. outsider theme in the foot. If the Cullens are hanging out with one another because they simply consider the people of Forks unworthy to be their friends, they're not having to face any kind of prejudice, and they're not outsiders.

Later on, Bella prepares a meal for her father, sits down and talks about how school has been going. When the Cullen family comes up, she says, "They don't seem to fit in very well at school."

But. But. But that theme...the insider v. outsider theme...it was shot in the foot. Bella herself shot it in the foot. They -- what the -- ?

Oh hell. Regardless of the fact that Bella pretty much admitted that the Cullens hang out only with each other because they choose to, (and there has so far been NO evidence whatsoever of the other students actively ostracizing the Cullens), Charlie gets upset and goes on the following spiel:

"People in this town...Dr. Cullen is a brilliant surgeon who could probably work in any hospital in the world, make ten times the salary he gets here...We're lucky to have him -- lucky his wife wanted to live in a small town. He's an asset to the community, and all of those kids are well behaved and polite...that's more than I can say for the children of some folks who lived in this town for generations. And they stick together the way a family should -- camping trips every other weekend...Just because they're newcomers, people have to talk."

Wow. Methinks thou protest too much, Charlie. So basically, the Cullen family is awesome and the people of Forks are bigoted and gossipy. No one brings up that the students at school probably WOULD be asking questions if a bunch of pasty kids sat at the cafeteria not eating, not talking, and staring off blankly in various directions. "What are they, militant anorexics?" would be only the first of many elaborate rumors. Seriously, it's not like the Cullens are being inconspicuous.

What's happening here is that Meyer isn't really paying attention to what she's saying. She's making an attempt to give her story something a little greater than its surface value, but she's not being consistent with it.

MORMON INTERMISSION!

Ah, I didn't want to get into the whole Mormon thing, at least not so early in the book, but those values are already showing through. In Charlie's speech, we see that the Cullens, "stick together the way a family should," as opposed to Bella's own broken family. Dr. Cullen and his wife are worthy of utmost respect while Bella's mother, a flighty divorcee, is worthy of being told off by her sixteen-year-old daughter.

Need I point out also that Bella automatically takes up the apron and the oven mitt, since Charlie isn't a good cook, doing the grocery shopping, cleaning her father's house. When Charlie comes home to find Bella preparing a meal he GOES INTO THE LIVING ROOM TO WATCH TV, and Bella's remark is, "We were both more comfortable that way" (35). Bella, the Complaint Queen, says little more than this about assuming these rather taxing roles. Charlie doesn't even seem surprised to find dinner cooking when he comes home, and he merely asks, "What's for dinner?" rather than thanking Bella for taking the initiative.

Misogynyyy...in the maaaakiiiiiing....

WHAT'S WORKING?: I'd like to add something that I forgot to mention in the previous post, which was that there is something inherently amusing about the idea of Edward "smelling" Bella every time she is around him, which invigorates his vampire instincts and causes him to go stiff and freak out. It's no secret that this is what's happening; the back of the book tells us as much. I also kind of appreciate a reaction to Bella that isn't glowing admiration, even if it's by no fault of her own. I'd like to see more people glare at her with hatred but, of course, Edward's hatred doesn't last long.

There's also something to be said of Bella's passivity in this whole thing, now that I think about it. If I think back to my crush fantasies when I was thirteen, most of them involved being approached by a guy without me having to step outside of my comfort zone or risking anything. I think this is a societal thing. Women are made to think that the best way to go about finding a boy is by waiting for the boy to come to you. And it's of course Edward who comes to Bella, by no action of hers at all. What a delicious idea, simply going about your normal, miserable day and having the beautiful weirdo fall into your lap. And this guy is everything you would like for that person to be: mind-blowingly hot and inexplicably fascinated by all your boring problems, the way you always wished boys would be fascinated by your boring problems.

The thirteen-year-old in me quivers with joy at the thought. But the adult in me groans and rolls her eyes.

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Chapter 3 for next week. It's titled "Phenomenon." I can only hope that the entire chapter is a recap of that shitty John Travolta movie.

Wish me luck,
Jenchilla

Preface & Chapter 1: First Sight

28 pages in...

There are three things I notice right off the bat about Twilight.

1) It’s big. It’s a big, fat, 400+ page book.

2) The publishers used something like a 16 pt Gigantic Palatino Linotype font, which makes the length seem less daunting once you crack this big, fat book open.

3) It’s got a really pretty cover. I would say this has no bearing on the quality of the story, but fans on Amazon.com sometimes list the pretty cover as one of the reasons they like the book. They generally include this point at the end of their review as a kind of afterthought.

AND in case you forget about the cover, Meyer has included Genesis 2:17 as her prefatory quote, in which God commands humans not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, to remind you about the whole forbidden fruit motif. Because there's an apple on the cover, ya'll. Get it?

Thankfully, Meyer launches headlong into the preface. An unnamed narrator sits helplessly as someone, he’s referred to only as “the hunter,” “saunter[s] forward to kill [her].” There isn’t much explanation about the situation and I won’t spend too much time speculating, as this is clearly the literary equivalent of a teaser trailer. The sauntering hunter is completely off the radar by the next page when we’re suddenly riding through Phoenix, AZ with our narrator, Bella Swan. She’s describing the weather and what she is wearing and after she has gotten this across to us, she explains the harrowing situation she has found herself in, which doesn’t have anything to do with people who saunter.

Bella’s “loving, erratic, harebrained mother” mother is driving her to the airport so that she can get on a plane to Forks, WA, the rainiest place in the country, and live with her dad Charlie for a while. In Bella’s own words, she is “exiling herself,” sacrificing her happiness for the sake of… something—it’s not really made clear—for an indefinite amount of time—that’s not made clear either—an action that she takes “with great horror,” because she “detests” Forks.

She doesn’t show very much fondness for her Chief of Police father either, who shows picks her up from the airport, awkwardly trying to win his estranged daughter’s affection by calling her “Bells” (which I found endearing), and telling her he’s bought her a gigantic 1960s model truck, even though she was planning on buying a car herself. He got the truck cheap from his old friend Billy Black, who’s now in a wheelchair. Bella provides no response to the information about the wheelchair. She doesn’t even think a response to it, which is odd, because she thinks responses about everything. EVERYTHING.

As it turns out, Bella inexplicably loves the truck when she sees it parked in front of the house. 8 pgs in, it is the first time that she has expressed a positive opinion about anything she’s seen, as she continues to be negative about pretty much everything else: the weather, the local foliage, her father, herself, her new room, the bathroom arrangement, pictures of herself that she sees hanging in her father’s house, the people of Forks, and the idea of school the next day, which she knows will go poorly, because she doesn’t believe she relates well to people her age, or, in her own words, “to people, period.” She cries herself to sleep.

At school the next day, Bella is still unhappy. She has few things nice to say about the students and teachers she meets and seems paranoid about their interest in her. Still, people are astonishingly friendly; a boy named Eric comes onto her in English. Bella talks about how she doesn’t care to remember anybody’s name and feels uncomfortable being forced to have conversations with strangers. Nothing particularly memorable happens until lunch time when—OH MAH GAWD! Pretty people-gasm!

“There were five of them. They weren’t talking, and they weren’t eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them.”

BUT WHY WOULD THEY HAVE FOOD AND NOT BE EATING IT!! ARE THEY VAMPIRES?!?

Yeah. It’s the Cullen family sitting in the cafeteria. Meyer takes six very LARGE paragraphs to describe them. Let me sum it up for you: THEY ARE ALL GOOD-LOOKING! They don’t do anything until the smallest girl in the group gets up and dumps an uneaten apple and an unopened soda into the trash can. (Waste not, want not, bitches!)

Bella finds out who the Cullens are, a foster conglomerate of the rich Dr. Cullen, from the girl sitting next to her, whose name she has forgotten (and we know this girl is not worthy of being remembered because she giggles at things). Dr. Cullen adopts kids for funzies, and apparently likes to play matchmaker too, as the whole group (except for EDWARDIKINS!!) is dating itself. Bella then proceeds to watch Edward stare in various directions.

Bella is intrigued by what she sees in the cafeteria. Then in biology, she of course finds herself sitting next to Edward, who turns rigid, leans away from her, looks at her with hatred, and acts as though she smells bad. Bella gets very angry about this. “It couldn’t have anything to do with me,” she huffs. “He didn’t know me from Eve.” After class, Edward shoots out of the classroom as though his butt is on fire and Bella encounters Mike, who asks her if she stabbed Edward with a pencil, as his behavior was unusual. (Mike yet another boy who comes onto Bella; “If I were lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked to you,” he says.) Bella seems briefly appreciative of Mike, but her mind is on Edward, who she later encounters in the office, trying to change his schedule to get out of biology. He fails (because there wouldn’t be a story otherwise), storms out, and Bella is left to slog out to her truck, fighting back tears.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: Christ. Young writers, do I really need to go into the problems there are with essentially naming your protagonist “Pretty Bird”? Don’t do that.

I’ve heard about Bella’s annoyingness from anti-fans, even from legitimate fans of the series. Bella starts off in full martyr mode, suffering for some unseen reason, and then she proceeds to endlessly complain about and dramatize her situation, making me question the sincerity of her self-categorized “altruistic” behavior. Bella has a mental response every other sentence, and her responses are mostly negative and self absorbed. (Honestly, I think I could count all of her positive thoughts from this chapter on one hand.) Here are just of fraction of her philosophical gems:

"When I landed in Port Angeles, it was raining. I didn’t see it as an omen—just unavoidable. I’d already said my goodbyes to the sun.” (p 5)

“I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.” [referring to fishing trips she used to take with her father, TEH HORROR] (p 6)

“It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape.” (p 9)

“[Charlie] wished me good luck at school. I thanked him, knowing his hope was wasted. Good luck tended to avoid me.” (p 11)

Occasionally, she does seem to hit the nail on the head without seeming too mopey. This statement about her social abilities actually resonated with me. It would have resonated more had I not had to slog through ten pages of self pity to get to it:

“Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain.” (p 11)

The story seems to be asking me to see Bella as selfless, or at least as a mature, self-sufficient person who makes very adept judgments of people and yet still has some relatable social anxiety. But she’s not coming across that way. She’s full of contradictions. Her cold attitude toward others just seems plain nasty; it’s exacerbated by the fact that she herself is concerned about being judged or ostracized by the people of Forks without acknowledging her own snide attitude. I mean, to an outside observer, Bella has trouble fitting in, not because she’s awkward or anxious, but because she has a huge superiority complex. No one at Forks has yet noticed her aloofness, obviously.

Everyone else we’ve encountered aside from Bella and the taciturn Cullens are cardboard cutouts meant specifically to absorb Bella’s mental barbs. Charlie is by far the most intriguing character here. Bella remarks at one point that he clearly never got over her mother, and yet she doesn’t seem nearly so interested in his life as I am. Shame.

PLOT DEVELOPMENT: This book, despite its popularity, is incredibly slow. We could have met Edward on page 3 and nothing would have been lost. This chapter refuses to move in any way but a linear one, with no real attention to time, and no sense of priorities. We get to know every small detail of Bella’s life from the time she says goodbye to her mother to the end of her first day of school in Forks. We observe her loading her bags into her father’s car, we observe her eating breakfast, parking her truck in the school parking lot, attending each of her classes, moving from one school building to another, and by the time we get to the scene with the Cullens in the cafeteria I’m thinking, We really didn’t need to know any of that shit to be here.

This chapter should have been fifteen pages shorter.

LANGAUGE: Meyer misuses words. I’d heard that she did. She does. On pg 5, Bella talks about how awkward it’s going to be with Charlie: “Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose…” At first I was like, “Verbose…speaking pompously?” Then I realized that Meyer must think that “verbose” means “talkative,” which it doesn’t. A more appropriate use would be, “When you try to show off lot of unnecessary SAT words in your writing, you make your prose sound VERBOSE.”

On top of this annoyance, Bella slips in and out of talking like a 43-year-old tax attorney, and some of the writing is just plain sloppy and unnecessary.

“Once I got around the cafeteria, building three was easy to spot. A large black “3” was painted on a white square on the east corner [really? A large black “3” as opposed to a small white”3”? I’m glad you’re telling me this. I was curious about the “3” painted on the side of building three]. I felt my breathing gradually creeping toward hyperventilation [say that phrase five times fast] as I approached the door. I tried holding my breath as I followed two unisex raincoats [the amazing floating raincoats of the Olympian Peninsula!] through the door.” (15)

I could do this through the whole book. But no…no, I won’t. Still, despite the language misuses, this prose is easy to read (One of the defenses I’ve heard of this book is that it is very “skimmable”). I always know what Meyer is TRYING to say, even if she’s not saying it in the most effective way.

SUBTEXT: With the quote from Genesis, Meyer’s clearly trying to tap into the idea of Edward Cullen being forbidden fruit (oh, he's fruit all right, sparkly fruit), and Bella being Eve (she even refers to Eve in this chapter). Or maybe he’s the serpent, and sex is the fruit, or becoming a vampire is the fruit. Shit. It’s gonna be a bitch trying to apply analytical logic to this tripe.

There’s this insider v. outsider theme also. Bella sees herself as an outsider. She identifies with the Cullen family immediately because she sees them as outsiders also. Even though there haven't been any real examples of ostracization to back up this theme, I'm going to keep my eye on it. In case something "develops."

WHAT’S WORKING? Despite Bella’s insipidness, I see elements of my thirteen-year-old self in her. This was a desire to be accepted by everyone, coupled with the belief that you are in some way better than everyone. I wouldn’t encourage anybody to feel this way, not even young teenagers, and yet, I can see why it’s attractive. Bella’s an every-teen-girl. She says things that teenagers and young adults think all the time, and to read about a supposedly intelligent girl like Bella having the same thoughts could be seen as a kind of validation. “I feel like I’m being made to feel happy all the time. I can’t interact with people very well. I wish they’d all just stop staring at me and leave me alone.”

Of course, I’m an adult, so I see many of Bella’s complaints as whiney and illegitimate. I see Bella’s qualities as relatable, but they’re still not positive qualities. Even so, Twilight fans have argued that Bella’s not even the star of this series; the Edward Cullen is. Bella’s not so much a character as she is a lens through which to see Edward and his family. Bella is anybody. Bella is you.

Here’s something to back up that theory. There’s an interesting moment when Bella first sees the Cullen ilk in the cafeteria. Meyers describes each Cullen individually (though a Meyer description of a person generally includes hair-color and, if you’re lucky, a brief reference to whether or not the character is lankly, muscular, slender, or statuesque). Then we get a description of them as a group. They’re all pale, with “purplish, bruise-like shadows” under their eyes, and “straight, perfect, angular” features. Then:

"I stared because their faces, so different , so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful—maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze-haired boy.”

Right, so the Cullens are beautiful. What do they look like? Well, they look like airbrushed celebrities in a magazine. No wait, or do they look like angels painted by an “old master"? Hm. But they’ve also got pallid skin and these bruises under their eyes, so do they look like this maybe? When I first read this, I was confused, but that was because I didn’t realize the POSSIBILITIES. You see, nothing has really been described here. These descriptions are devices by which readers can insert the beautiful-people-of-their-choice according to their own tastes. It’s actually pretty brilliant. I mean, if you wanted Edward Cullen to look like this, just change his hair and eye color, give him the skin tone of Casper, and huzzah! You’ve got your dream-boooiiiii!!

Seriously. That maybe one of the reasons why Edward Cullen is described as being the hottest thing ever. If the physical descriptions are all as generic as this, it would be easy to put anyone’s face on Edward’s rock hard vampire bod.

We’ll see how the story develops and whether or not my theory pans out.

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This was my first round. I don’t think future posts will be as long as this. I think my head is making a funny ringing sound.

Here I come, Chapter 2!

-Jenchilla

Introduction

THE PURPOSE

In my internet adventures, I've come across several blogs where intelligent, well-intentioned people read Twilight and riff on it mercilessly, and while, over the course of this blog, riffing will probably be involved (if only for the sake of my sanity), I'm not as interested in why Twilight sucks, why it's anti-feminist, why it's stupid, or why it fails. Because it hasn't failed. It's been PHENOMENALLY successful. I know smart people, educated adults, who really enjoy this book, or else hate on it obsessively and yet still find themselves helplessly enthralled with it. Why? No one has sufficiently explained to me the quality that this book has that makes people hail it as a young woman's Catcher in the Rye (really?) or the romantic equivalent to the works of Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters. What sort of mesmerizing superpowers would a book with so many narrative problems have to have in order for someone, ANYONE, to make these statements? I want to know. I mean, I really want to know. So I'm going to read it. The whole thing.

THE PERSON

I’m a 23-year-old writer currently getting my masters in fiction and I’ll graduate this coming May. I’m very much into writing. I take it seriously. I have Dictionary.com set as my homepage. Right now, I’m fiction editor of The Greensboro Review, a literary journal that publishes poetry and short stories. I’ve read a great deal of good and bad fiction, but I have never read Twilight (though I have seen the Rifftrax version of the first movie) and this will be my first honest attempt to do so. I’m also interested in going into the editing field, so it’s important for me to investigate what’s going on in the publishing world, what’s getting published, and WHY it’s getting published.

THE PROCESS

I’m borrowing a copy of the book (not purchasing it), and I plan to read a chapter every week and post a summary with commentary. I’ll divide my commentary into five basic categories:

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: People have told me that the selling point to Twilight is its characters. So I plan on getting to know these characters. Really. Really. Well.

PLOT DEVELOPMENT: Or whatever semblance of a plot there happens to be.

LANGAUGE: Mrs. Meyer is an English major. So am I. I’m assuming that all English majors love and respect language as much as I do. (This category will also deal with issues of editing.)

SUBTEXT: Subtext IS there, whether the author intends it or not. That’s why we write fiction. A fictional world is always one person’s reflection of the actual one.

WHAT’S WORKING? This category, I have a feeling, will mostly revolve around potential emotional reactions to the story. It’s not necessarily my “Say something nice about the story” category. More my, “Come back to reality” category. As in, the “I’m aware that not everybody reads into things the way that I do, and so I have to be more objective” category.

Twilight is twenty-four chapters long. If I start this week, it means that this project will go on well into August, if I’m religious about it. So. Here’s to that. ::drinks a shot::

THE POTENTIAL NAYSAYERS

Twilight has fans. I’m aware of this. It has rabid fans. It has fans that may very well see what I’m doing as a kind of desecration. I want to make clear that my purpose here isn’t to make fun of Twilight or its fans, really (even if that ends up happening). My purpose is to understand. Here’s what I have to say to potential naysayers.

IT’S OBVIOUS WHY TWILIGHT WORKS! IT’S JUST AWESOME! YOU’RE WASTING YOUR TIME!

It’s not obvious to me. It’s not obvious to a lot of people. Unless you’ve been living in a box, Twilight is pretty divisive. Plenty of people hate it.

YOU’RE NOT IN THE TWILIGHT DEMOGRAPHIC, SO OF COURSE YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND IT!

I’m 23. I may be a little bit older than the typical fan, but this doesn’t explain the many mothers and college educated young women in their twenties I know who enjoy the books as well. EVEN SO, I’m going to try to withdraw myself as I’m reading. I’m going to try to ask: “If I read this book at thirteen, would I like or not like it?” I mean, that makes a big difference. I was not a very mature thirteen-year-old. I’ve watched my share of Pokemon cartoons. So I’ll consider that as I’m reading.

Someone may also argue that I’m not part of the demographic because I don’t typically read fantasy/romance/YA/vampire fiction. This shouldn’t matter. Good books are good books, regardless of genre. I’m totally on board with the Harry Potter series (it has its flaws, sure, but I can still see the talent and care that goes into it). I love Phillip Pullman, Terry Pratchett, Lewis Carroll, Madeline L’Engle, Robin McKinley, etc. So I think I “understand” the YA genre.

ANALYZING TWILIGHT RUINS THE EXPERIENCE OF READING IT! YOU’RE JUST A CYNICAL, BITTER PERSON!

Nonsense. I get great enjoyment out of picking things apart to see how they work, so I plan on having a great time doing this blog. Let me enjoy books in my way, and I’ll let you enjoy books in your way. Besides, it’s not really a selling point for a novel if the only way to enjoy it is by shutting your brain off.

YOU’RE JUST PICKING ON TWILIGHT BECAUSE IT’S POPULAR!

Um. Yeah. I mean, it’s important to look closely at a phenomenon like Twilight, since it’s having a huge influence on popular culture right now, and on the writing world…which happens to affect me personally. The fact that it is so popular is the reason why it needs to be analyzed.

YOU’RE JUST JEALOUS OF STEPHANIE MEYER!

Sure. She’s a billionaire. Doesn’t mean I’m jealous of her talent.

YOU HAVE NO LIFE!

All right, person who does extensive searches for blogs he/she doesn’t agree with to post “you have no life” on every single one of them.

OMG, EDWARD IZ REEL AND HES GONNA FUKING KILL U!! EDWARD + BELLA LUV EACH OTHER! THEIR LUV IS PURE & TRUUUUUU!

Get the hell off my blog.

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IN CONCLUSION!

Everything I post in subsequent months will be my own personal opinion. I’m not a genius by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m pretty sharp. I like to understand things, so that’s what I’m going to do. By the end of it, I’m going to figure out why Twilight works. Either that or I’ll spiral into a madness from which I will never escape.

Wish me luck,

-Jenchilla