(This is long, but neither Harry Potter nor twilight readers will mind because they are accustomed to vast length).
My lovely friends in the master’s program are big Harry Potter fans. (Now that you see them, can you believe they are smart AND beautiful?) When they were planning an afternoon movie outing, they asked me, “Are you a big Harry Potter fan? Do you want to go with us?”
“No, I’m not a big fan of Harry Potter,” I answered, “but I do happen to be a big fan of YOU. So yes, I want to spend the afternoon at the movie with you.” Some in our program chose not to go along because they were not Harry Potter fans. I batted my eyelashes in their direction and said, “But aren’t you big fans of US?”
Apparently not. (Really, they are not fans of paying $12.50 for a matinee).
Though I’m not a fanatic where Harry Potter or twilight are concerned, I DO have opinions about the authors. Does this surprise anyone?
First, a disclaimer. You must know that, though I express my opinions, you do NOT have to agree! Disagreement does not hurt my feelings. For instance, one of my opinions is that jean jackets are a classic wardrobe staple, but people should be very careful to wear jean jackets ONLY when they are NOT wearing jeans. Wearing jean jackets concurrently with jeans is what we all did in the early ’90s, and now it looks like we were wearing denim unitards.
That said, you are free to disagree! Wear your jean jacket any way you wish. Don’t change into khakis on account of me.
The Harry Potter Opinion: J.K. Rowling is an imaginative thinker and a fine writer who deserves accolades both for her ability to tell a unique story and for her poetic craft, which are two different things. It’s brilliant to make a cymbal crash for the reader in one book. It’s a stroke of lyrical genius to do it again and again. (I’ve only read the first one in the series, but I definitely want to continue when I have time).
Now (deep breath) what I am about to say will have some people out for my blood.
The twilight Opinion: Stephenie Meyer is in need of a new editor. If you are walking around telling people that she is your favorite author of all time, that statement is going to bring you about as much credibility as walking around telling people that Boone’s Farm is your favorite wine. Your friends are going to start hinting that you should get out more. Meyer can tell a SOMEWHAT interesting story, but all of the narrative elements are borrowed from other writers. And as far as craft goes, she makes me uncomfortable — similar to the way I feel when someone is giving a speech behind a clear plastic podium with his zipper down or is flirting with a cute friend of mine and has an entire black bean stuck on his bicuspid. Somebody should let Stephenie Meyer know about her zipper. Someone like an editor.
Twilight is similar to a grocery store bodice-ripper starring minors. I feel creepy and voyeuristic spying on the secret things teenagers do in their free time. Or the secret things teenagers do at school, for that matter (because they ARE doing it at school, just so you know. Sometimes a teacher accidentally walks in on the “secret”). It is one thing to write FOR adolescents, and another to write AS an adolescent. Rowling has mastered the former. Meyer — I just have a sense about this — is stuck in the latter.
These are some valuable narrative components in twilight:
1. The hunter’s chase. Very suspenseful.
2. Edward’s abililty to speed. Cool detail in his personality. When he ran through the trees at 400 mph carrying Bella on his back, I wished she were me.
3. The romantic scenes. I loved it when Edward would kiss her or smell her skin so closely and then have trouble controlling himself because he suddenly had the urge to … DRINK HER BLOOD! (scream) Daaaangeroussssss!
The rest of it is not imaginative. There’s nothing new in it. The sweet girl/risky boy thing is so old it’s become stale: Grease, Beauty and Beast … on and on. Meyer’s story is just about Temptation with a capital T, as the gorgeous cover art indicates. That’s an easy one. People are always going to devour books about temptation the way they would devour a polished apple. We all know that Bella will give in and become a vampire in the end so that she can be with Ed forever. I didn’t need three more books at 500+ pages a pop in order to figure it out. So I quit at book one and started reading something by Amy Tan. I couldn’t imagine that the sequels were going to be any different.
The reason I think all Meyer’s books should be censored, is not because they are about seductive vampires. Vampires are not a new idea. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897 while suffering from a mean case of syphilis … but vampires were around even before 1897. I don’t think vampire books should be censored; I taught Dracula in my high school class (If you are going to read it for fun, I advise just going for the beginning and end. Skip the middle, because after a while it begins to “Drag-ula”). No, I think Meyer’s twilight series should be banned from public schools because they are poorly written, and I don’t want that kind of sloppy writing to rub off on a student who might grow up and write for a living one day. Meyer should KNOW that you can’t use the word “ochre” more than once in a single volume. It is unique. It has energy. It stands out. She also should know that you can’t write, “His eyes were smouldering,” AT ALL, because it is a cliche, and yet, she manages to work that one in about a dozen times. I was ready to pitch a glass of ice water in Edward’s smouldering ochre eyes by the end of the third chapter. Put the fire out, buddy.
Lastly, I am just going to write one word here, and I don’t ever want to see or hear this word from anyone again, because Meyer has used up the verbal quota of the entire global population in one book. Yes, she used up YOUR turn. Now you can’t say it.
Flicker.
The lights flickered.
He flicked the hem of his trenchcoat.
His smouldering ochre eyes flickered.
The stars flickered.
The flickering streetlamp went out completely.
She picked some strands of grass and flicked them from her fingers.
He saw the drop of blood and flicked it off his forearm.
She felt her own heart flickering.
“Flick” — in all forms — was fine until Meyer single-handedly ruined it. “Chortle,” on the other hand, was never fine. The word “chortle” is ugly on the page, ugly in your mouth, and describes an ugly action. No writer in her right mind would have the handsome leading man haul off and chortle! Come on! The Hunchback of Notre Dame chortles. Igor in the Frankenstein movie chortles. Lurch from The Adams Family chortles. A good-lookin’ vampire should NOT chortle. If some dude came up to me and chortled, I would peel away from him in a dead sprint, I don’t care how hot he was. Yet Bella still has a thing for Edward, in spite of his incessant — and by incessant, I mean, on every page — chortling. I don’t get it.
Here’s another thing I don’t get: It seems like an author who is “makin’ the green paper” like Meyer would be able to insist on a better editor, who would point these things out. I bet her books would be stellar then. Everyone needs an editor with a trigger finger on the pencil. Everyone.
There. I said it. Don’t bite me!