Oh look, it’s a book: Twilight

“Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer (2005)

Well, I have read the book now and have learned some things I am ready to share:

For one, the name of the author is not Stephanie as I have written in my first blog about the topic (Let’s play Vampyre today…), it’s Stephenie. I apologize for this mistake. For another, the book is just as the movie: bad. Just as bad but on other levels, I guess. I mean, you cannot complain about the acting on the movie, the actors are good, everything else: not so much.

The book has no actors it has characters and they were unconvincing in the movie and are pretty much the same in the book. Maybe they are even more over-the-top annoying which brings me to Bella Swan. She is the first-person-narrator of the book and a real teen (although I cannot be sure if the always complaining voice was intented to be typical). After two pages her nagging had gnawed away my nerves and the rest of the first chapter was just torture. I had to stop for a month or two to get over it (I also had some other things to do like writing an impossible amount of papers for university).

The book does not only have a story that is hard to believe but the writing is actually so bad that it is hard to believe the book(s) got a publisher. It gets better after about 230 pages but I am surprised that a publisher took the time to read that much of it to even come to where reading it is not a constant annoyance. What were you thinking, guys?

Some things about the plot are obvious, with the others you just think: wtf? The characters… oi. I really love Bella’s parents, they are like babe in the woods, especially her mother. There is so much wrong with the book that this is sort of unstructured but I don’t have my notes with me right now (yeah, I actually wrote notes, there was so much to complain about).

For all its faults I still see why it has addiction potential. Strange, huh? I was surprised myself when after finishing it and having read the first few pages of the second book (they were in the back of the first on, very clever) I was actually thinking of reading the second book as well. It is not jus the love-story (if you do not want to call it twisted negation of sexual desires toward someone that is just plain bad for you [I don't necessarily think that bad is a bad thing], i.e. no sex before marriage, guys… or you get bitten!) it is more the obsession-triangle. We already know that Jacob is a Lycan and we want to see how this plays out, too. It is the classic woman-trapped-between-the-desires-of-two-men-19th-century-desaster-story. If it was from the 19th century Bella would end-up pregnant and on the street because the father (Edward) has seduced her and does not want her anymore and Jacob who is desperately searching for her find her dying in a poor-people’s-home and probably takes the baby with him to give her a proper life and education (maybe even to marry her in the end ’cause she looks so much like her mother).

Since this is not the 19th century I expect something else will happen. The question is: am I intrigued enough to walk through the same torture of bad story-telling plus boring story and annoying narrator again just to know? Probably not but I know myself well enough to not make promises.

I can do one thing for you guys out there, though. If you want to read it or have to read it or just will read it, read the persiflage by the Harvard Lampoon, too. It’s called “Nightlight” and had me laughing a lot. I read both at the same time, simultaneously, and Nightlight has the advantage of being well written.

Well, read on, you guys.

Let’s play Vampyre today…

One does not have to look far to see some Vampyre-merchandise or other these days. And it is most certainly not the first time in cultural history of the western world that we confront what makes the creatures of the night so special. It has not been that long since Buffy killed and loved them on TV. Before that it was Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles” and of course, there were several films made out of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and there was “Nosferatu.” Seems, we are quite enchanted, or maybe even obsessed, with the myths of blood-drinking, maiden-biting, and forever-living (for me personally nothing of that is very appealing but I must confess, that even Tom Cruise had an attractive Otherness about him as Lestat).

And now, we have Stephanie Meyer’s series about Edward and Bella. And I have done something today that people who know me would probably think is totally out of character. No, I did not watch the first movie (I have actually done that when I was still in Germany and on DVD – and I hated it), no, I bought the book.

Some time ago, I talked to a friend about the whole fascination about Vampyres. My friend is a Harry Potter-fan (I also like the books and movies but do not really qualify as a fan, I guess) and I was reading Anne Rice’s books at that moment but it was also after Stephanie Meyer’s books came out and I guess around the time that the first movie has come out – but I could be wrong, there. So we talked about it. And I confessed to being intrigued. I mean, I like Vampyre-stories a lot. I am very aware that I am fascinated by the sexual “thing” about the biting… (I have been bitten into the neck once, it is no laughing matter, believe me, there was pain involved). And it is probably not even about the biting alone. The aura of a vampyre is supposed to exude sexuality… very intriguing.

Of course, there is always the implication that everything is fair in a life of a vampyre and that includes sexual “everything.” The implications of a male vampyre biting a man, then the question of who’s playing the next lesbian vampyre on “True Blood.” Yes, the life of the undead include heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, androgynity, threesomes – you name it.

I guess, I strayed a little from where I wanted to go with this. But maybe not because I am very aware that these things intrigue me and I know that most of the sexual otherness is eliminated from “Twilight” since I have already watched the movie. Stephanie Meyer’s story is more of a Grimm’s fairy-tale with the dangers of sex before marriage, sexual desires that better be suppressed and all that. And I did not like the movie at all. So why buy the book? Because I cannot imagine what the actual appeal is. I mean, I know from my friend the Potter-fan that the guy who plays Edward (what was his name, again, Pattenson?) is hot-stuff (according to female and male fans). I cried as much as the next person when Diggory died but I never actually thought him sexy (although I was quite touched about the implicated love-story between him and Harry – or was that only a part of the fanfiction, I forget *smile*). But he cannot be the only reason, can he?

So, I am going to find out, why people are so enchanted by the book and then I come back to you – hopefully with a literary theory, that’s after all my field of expertise.

The next movie is coming out on Friday (the day before my birthday), and I must say that I like the pictures of that other guy (the werewolf, lycan-native-type)… though I thought he looked better with long hair. Well, I guess, I got my work cut out for me as far as Stephanie Meyer’s books are concerned. Enjoy the movie, those of you who are going to watch it!