Whether your taste in literature leads your arm in the local Barnes & Nobel towards the classic poetry and stories of Emily Bronte, the period piece romantics of Jane Austin, the forever loved and loathed plays of William Shakespeare, or perhaps something else entirely, I think it can be universally agreed that none of the aforementioned authors nor any others who have eared publishing through true originality and talent have in any way, shape, or form deserved to be branded with the horribly undignified and literarily grotesque stain of the pop-culture conglomeration that is “Twilight”. In short, because the “Twilight” books have mentioned at one point or another Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Romeo and Juliet, new covers for these books have been released. Said covers have been publicized as “Twilight inspired”. Each new cover follows the color scheme of the Twilight books (that is, red, white, and black) and has imprinted on it a simple phrase that related nothing at all to the actual story itself, but to Twilights two main characters Bella and Edward.
What disturbs me most about the decision to allow the covers of these books to be re-invented for the Twilight phenomena is that the actual Twilight books themselves are the biggest waste of perfectly good paper and ink that could be used for continual printing of great books from authors such as Thomas Paine or Ralph Waldo Emerson. It appears to me that Stephenie Meyer turned the final pages of one Anne Rice book or another and thought to herself, “Hey…you know, I could write about vampires too…and, if I make them sparkle, no one will ever notice the blatantly obvious lack of original thought or creativity! It’s brilliant!”
It’s not that I don’t respect Stephenie Meyer for doing whatever any vampire story fan does and write her own version, it’s the fact that her stories are simply that: fan fiction- and poor fanfiction at that. Each book in her series had me envisioning the cast of Interview with a Vampire coated in the leftover glitter from the inside of a kindergarten crafts box. The plot lines had enough holes for my mother to use as a colander to strain spaghetti. Each chapter has enough grammatical errors and typos that I doubt it would pass my eighth grade English class, let alone pass across the table of any able-brained editor. The lack of original thought and the evident-from-chapter-one endings only concludes that any drunk monkey with access to a type writer and a checkbook can get a series of pages stapled together published with the right kind of audience during the right kind of fad.
It truly saddens me that not only are these books praised and worshiped by nearly every tween and tween-wannabe (housewives and cougars alike), but that Twilight has been titled the “romantic story of today’s generation”. What, may I ask, is romantic about a girl so enthralled by a young man that she literally forgets to breathe and passes out on various occasions? That simply does not convey romance so much as it does a severe medical issue that should be checked out. And, perhaps I’m just old fashioned, but I would prefer if a guy tells me I have a nice smile, and not that my blood sings to him. Meyer’s characters will never compare to the passionate emotion conveyed by Catherine and Heathcliff which dares the reader to blur the lines of love and hate. Never are Bella and Edward written to face death instead of living life together as Romeo and Juliet chose. Edward will never compare to Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Ever.
So all I ask is that today’s Twilight culture keep their Robert Pattinson posters and Twilight versions of Monopoly to themselves and leave the rest of good quality and descent literature alone. Allow all the forthcoming dribble of literature to grace the #1 Best Sellers table as you want, just so long as the classics remain untainted.
What disturbs me most about the decision to allow the covers of these books to be re-invented for the Twilight phenomena is that the actual Twilight books themselves are the biggest waste of perfectly good paper and ink that could be used for continual printing of great books from authors such as Thomas Paine or Ralph Waldo Emerson. It appears to me that Stephenie Meyer turned the final pages of one Anne Rice book or another and thought to herself, “Hey…you know, I could write about vampires too…and, if I make them sparkle, no one will ever notice the blatantly obvious lack of original thought or creativity! It’s brilliant!”
It’s not that I don’t respect Stephenie Meyer for doing whatever any vampire story fan does and write her own version, it’s the fact that her stories are simply that: fan fiction- and poor fanfiction at that. Each book in her series had me envisioning the cast of Interview with a Vampire coated in the leftover glitter from the inside of a kindergarten crafts box. The plot lines had enough holes for my mother to use as a colander to strain spaghetti. Each chapter has enough grammatical errors and typos that I doubt it would pass my eighth grade English class, let alone pass across the table of any able-brained editor. The lack of original thought and the evident-from-chapter-one endings only concludes that any drunk monkey with access to a type writer and a checkbook can get a series of pages stapled together published with the right kind of audience during the right kind of fad.
It truly saddens me that not only are these books praised and worshiped by nearly every tween and tween-wannabe (housewives and cougars alike), but that Twilight has been titled the “romantic story of today’s generation”. What, may I ask, is romantic about a girl so enthralled by a young man that she literally forgets to breathe and passes out on various occasions? That simply does not convey romance so much as it does a severe medical issue that should be checked out. And, perhaps I’m just old fashioned, but I would prefer if a guy tells me I have a nice smile, and not that my blood sings to him. Meyer’s characters will never compare to the passionate emotion conveyed by Catherine and Heathcliff which dares the reader to blur the lines of love and hate. Never are Bella and Edward written to face death instead of living life together as Romeo and Juliet chose. Edward will never compare to Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Ever.
So all I ask is that today’s Twilight culture keep their Robert Pattinson posters and Twilight versions of Monopoly to themselves and leave the rest of good quality and descent literature alone. Allow all the forthcoming dribble of literature to grace the #1 Best Sellers table as you want, just so long as the classics remain untainted.
