Read the Whole Damn Thing

Okay, guys-- let me start with an apology. I put all this blog to the side when I got into the fund-raising season for my team with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and then after that got underway I kind of couldn't figure out where to go next. Then mommy work got in my way, of course. Every parent can sympathize with that... but now I am going to get back to it. Even if I decide not to go back into teaching, I think the side of my world that includes reading and writing and talking about literature deserves some attention. So I'm going to publish the few posts I started last summer and then get back into the swing of it. So here is the first one about what I was reading last summer-- so this was written in July and then edited this weekend:

I finished Twilight last month, one book a week. I am pretty surprised, and everyone I know is usually surprised about this too-- I don't always finish what I'm reading, and often I take a long time to get through each read. Even though I'm an English teacher. But I get bored with a book pretty easily (as I am now with Slaughterhouse Five) and so often I put a book down to come back to it a year later. But on the other hand, perhaps this makes me a better teacher because I can look at a book more critically, instead of just loving everything.

Twilight was one of those books, like Harry Potter or Dr. Seuss, that everyone can find something in. One thing that came to mind over and over as I was reading it was the bridge that it can make to classical literature, because I find this is a good way to build a bridge for my students. Twilight was amass with them-- Frankenstein, Romeo & Juliet (Shakespeare in general, actually) and Bronte... and everything else. I'm sure there are so many others, I can't mention them all. This connection offers a comfort to readers and says, "Hey, you can understand this of course, because you've read it before." We like predictability.

Twilight was an overtly Gothic novel. The setting is outside Seattle (where several of my in-laws recently visited and couldn't stop raving about it-- born and raised Southerners) and the weather is always on Bella's mind, even though it doesn't change often. Whenever we do see a change in the weather, it is always significant. (Obviously-- any novelist wouldn't ever mention a change or a state of anything unless it was significant!!) This is a technique we saw often in Frankenstein. The choice of setting (aside from being a way to explain how the vampires are out in the daytime) was probably because in Washington, if you don't like the weather, you can wait a little bit and then it'll be different.

Now, I know all the people who got sucked into this series had so many different opinions about how the characters changed-- or didn't. I was recently talking to a friend who was trying to explain the plot of the novels very loosely and was discussing how each of the characters was flat or dynamic or how these traits were necessary for the the plot to progress. But this addresses one of the issues literature buffs have with pop lit: even if the work adheres to conventions of lit, and it is relevant to our culture, how do we determine the significance of that work? Yes, Twilight is cheesy chick lit. The movies (from what I've heard) are terrible-- and terribly addicting. But yet we continue to validate the place of these necessary evils in our culture because, honestly, not everyone needs to be an intellectual. Some of us need Bella and Edward, and if it keeps people reading and thinking that's okay in my book.

So I guess I do feel guilty, especially as a person who considers myself somewhat intelligent, for being so easily sucked in to Twilight. But I am also I got it out of my system, and now I have the knowledge of the series to be part of the cultural dialogue that ensues when a fad is born. And also, chicks dig vampires. I'll admit it.