Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight

In high school, when I started getting into Japanese manga, I think it was in large part because Japanese pop culture understands so well that what you want in reality and what you fantasize about can be two entirely different things. (Some American fiction does this too--romance novels, for example. But then we throw up our hands and whine about what bad messages they're sending). My high school friend and I once had a discussion about some of the various good-looking men in anime, and how you probably wouldn't actually want them around on a daily basis, washing dishes and mowing the lawn, even if they made great fantasy boyfriends. Japanese manga tend to say "Wouldn't this be awesome?" and leave it at that; the prototypical American fantasy, on the other hand, is The Wizard of Oz, which can't resist moralizing about how there's no place like home.

So this novel has much the same appeal of the lower grade of manga. Or, say, the TV show The O.C., which I invariably end up turning on when I get home from my Thursday evening class, even though I'm under no illusions that it's actually any good.

In this one, Bella Swan has recently moved from Phoenix to a tiny, rainy town in Washington to be with her father, the local police chief. At school, she meets five very strange, very beautiful people...one of whom, Edward Cullen, is especially strange, and especially beautiful, and reacts to her with ferocious love-hate intensity.

Dating a really intense guy with temper issues, who's majorly over-protective, who tells you himself repeatedly that he's dangerous and you shouldn't come near him... bad idea. Bad idea, no matter how hot he is. Especially when he is a vampire. Considering Bella's pathological clumsiness--she seemingly can't go an hour without falling over--and the fact that she actually wants to date this guy, I think she probably ought to go see a doctor and get checked out for neurological damage. But this is not the kind of book where the main character is going to suffer any consequences of her stupidity. She does get rather banged up at the end, it's true, but still--it's not a book that follows through its own implications very well.

If you want a book that Sends A Positive Message, this is not it. Not only does the girl fall in love with the beautiful mysterious protective man who is dangerous to everyone else but her (something that reads as potentially very abusive, anywhere outside the realm of fluffy fantasy), but the book also, like most vampire novels, reinforces the tired stereotype of men as driven by uncontrollable passions and women as gatekeepers of virtue. It also says that infatuation is the same thing as true love and that romantic love is the only thing that matters.

But the thing is, for a lot of women, the beautiful mysterious dangerous man is incredibly attractive, at least as a fantasy; and Edward is incredibly attractive. The prose style is highly ordinary, and even in the most sensual passages I wouldn't exactly call it that good; but it is kind of sexy. I mean, I'm torn. Half of the time I was going, "Hnnnn! Ew!" and half of the time I was going "Hee, hot vampire boy." I partly am nervous about the culture sending very messed-up messages about love and sex. But after much thought I have to say, more power to rich and active fantasy lives, because a rich and active fantasy life is what got me through high school without doing anything stupid. If I can make the distinction, it's not fair of me to assume that other high school kids wouldn't be able to make the distinction; and most of us have not been saved from making bad decisions simply by knowing intellectually that they're bad decisions. I wasn't. And I cannot think that reading fewer manga would have spared me in that case.

This is not a very good book. The prose is ordinary, the beginning drags, and the author has to bring in various kinds of implausibilities to get the right kind of ending. (The middle, by contrast, is much better). "She falls down a lot" is about as much attention as gets paid to characterization. And the book dances superficially around what most vampire romances really are about, on the surface or deep down--the death wish. It would have been a much more interesting book if it had confronted that for more than a sentence. But it's also compulsively readable, joyously trashy, and a lot of fun if you can compartmentalize it as fantasy.

(I'd recommend Annette Curtis Klause's Blood and Chocolate for dark paranormal romance that follows through with its implications much better but has some of the same sensual tone).

So...can you tell I'm procrastinating?