taxing

The Twilight Saga
Stephanie Meyer, © 2005 - 2008
vampire fiction (young adult)

If you haven't heard about Twilight by now you should probably contact Guinness Records to find out if they'll declare you the most out of touch person on the planet. Until this past summer I could have competed for that award. While dating a young woman in a lazy Arkansan town, I first discovered the Twilight saga. It was via her adolescent sister that I obtained my first knowledge of this story of star-crossed teenage lovers. Prior to that particularly warm afternoon in a poorly ventilated Mexican dive, I had never caught so much as a whiff of this vampiric saga. I was peacefully oblivious. As the weeks wore on I began to hear more and more about this "sensation" that was gripping the short, sugar-infused attention spans of female adolescents. I then began to realize that this phenomenon was not limited to overly dramatic fourteen year old girls. Actual adults were being swept up in the mania. I'm never one to dismiss any craze that promotes reading, so my level of intrigue was slowly being ratcheted up by the attention bestowed on the saga.

Despite this, I still had no real plans to read the saga. I was content with ignorantly poking fun. Then a co-worker began reading the first book (on the recommendation of her sister) and suggested I read it when she was finished. About two days later she was. The book sat, slowly gathering dust on my dresser for a couple weeks before I got around to opening it up. It was methodical (a trait I was soon to discover in all the books within the series), perhaps a quintessential example of rising action. The series is built as a formula. Step one, build the character(s). Step two, introduce possible love interest. Step three, build their relationship. Step four, throw a wrench into their bliss via danger. Step five, happy ending. While this formula varies slightly from book to book, the general process holds true (of course, in books 2-4, the happiness that ends the prior book is usually upended to drive the story forward).

What I mean to highlight with the above knowledge is an answer to the rabid popularity. Much like The Da Vinci Code or any number of best-sellers, what is being devoured isn't literature so much as it is suspense. An itching desire to find out what is going on in the story. They seek out our basest emotions. But this "suspense" is just a part of the craze behind the series. Females connect with Bella (the protagonist). They connect with her feelings of uncertainty, inadequacy, heartbreak and deep desire. In many ways she is that "regular girl," nothing overtly special about her on the outside, but she holds a wealth of internal fortitude. She blossoms into something special as the saga advances. The author does a great job of selling this, of throwing out the character bait to the reader. The audience takes it. Every female reader sees a little bit of herself in Bella.

This series is definitely geared to a younger audience. Beyond the actual writing, it is most obvious in the handling of the physical relation between two of the main characters. For the most part the issue was glossed over. Nothing more than kissing ever occurred. It was in the fourth book that true allusions to coitus appear. It was, of course, post marital though and thus, I assume, made it okay for the influential adolescent set.

Most of my complaints about the saga are rooted more in my own arrogant literary predilections than any true qualms with the saga. Though I found it to be quite formulaic and somewhat predictable, it was engaging. While I knew the final outcome would, no doubt, be a happy one, I still very much wanted to know and thus continued to read. Which, I suppose, is a good sign. The series is a bit of fluff, an easy yet engrossing read. I consider it not unlike a Lifetime special movie or some such romantic piece that overtly courts your emotions instead of your head. Which probably goes a long way in explaining its hysterical popularity among so many women. And at least one begrudging man...

Consider It.