"That's Where My Demons Hide": Twilight's Edward Cullen

NOTE: For those of you who aren't interested in Twilight, at most I'll be interspersing these posts with book reviews for a few Wednesdays. I've got notes on a fantasy novel I just read and am reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose right now, with a long to-read list in the making, and I don't begin to have energy or time to run an H.P.B.C.-sized tour of Forks this year.

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It's hard to know where to start, especially when I'm not sure where this will end.

Source.

When I first read the Twilight saga, I liked it so much that I read the whole series five times. Five. Almost without stopping. To be sure, that was how I read almost anything I really liked back then, back before I started posting book reviews every week and spending too much time on the internet in general.

But I've loved Twilight, and I've cheerfully defended it from various accusations, including:

• bad writing (it's inexperienced and very uneven, but certainly not uniformly bad)
• passive heroine syndrome (Bella is my favorite character, natch [well, except for Carlisle])
• Creepy Obsessive Stalker Romance (okay, our Ed has his moments—but immortal is not the same thing as aged; otherwise, Arwen Evenstar would be a cradle-robbing cougar [see also: It. is. a. STORY])
• "This book is evil because ________" (I've been a Potter fan too long to have much to say to that one)

Masha recently expressed a hope that reading Tolstoy would have made it impossible for me to go back to Meyer. Now, since Austen and Dickens and Dostoevsky didn't make it impossible for me to read Twilight in the first place, I don't think any one author could stop me taking pleasure in a good story, however imperfectly told.

It has, however, been harder for me to read Twilight this time around. I think the primary culprit behind that is one of my... oh, maybe Theta* readers: he made me a better writer, but he also left me hyperconscious to the point of anxiety about my own word choices. Which made me a lot more jumpy about everyone else's, too.

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My biggest problem with defending Twilight: it means I should think twice before getting snarky at Catholic hymns from the sixties and seventies. (Which I should probably do anyway if I want to keep composing sacred music.)

But the lyrics are so bad.
And yet, so many people love this song so much.

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That said, pop culture successes are almost never academically satisfying—and as long as I'm not looking right at one of Meyer's overblown word choices, I still rather love the story—and I have characters to stand up for and story bits to talk about—so let's do this. Here's some pop culture to get in the mood. Thanks to Laura for this link; the song is just perfect for Edward:



At the moment, I'm planning to work through the story more or less by character, rather than by chapter or plot, because I think the characters have the most conversation to offer.

I never read Midnight Sun, but Edward has always fascinated me as the character who most obviously displays the aspect of being human that the story revolves around: the battle between desires and conscience. Edward's dueling passions for Bella are drawn up against his Carlisle-formed conscience in an intense and prolonged war that only begins to resolve peaceably as he learns the ways of love. And I don't mean romance: I mean good, old-fashioned caritas.

Right now, I'm only halfway through the first book (you know holiday busyness is insane when I can't even get through Twilight in a week)—but I'm seeing that beginning resolution in his understanding that he couldn't live with himself if he ever hurt Bella: an understanding that could easily lead someone with his personality to despair, but which guides him to gentleness and self-restraint. He's got a lot of growth ahead of him, but it's a good place to start.

Art by Eldanis

Edward is depressive, obsessive, pessimistic, and often dismissive of others, all of which have opened him up to criticism. Those are weaknesses—you won't catch me denying it—and it's also true that in the first throes of romance, Bella doesn't see those flaws clearly at all (which may not make for good role modeling, but is certainly realistic.)

But Edward's character, despite his having been a vampire for a century or so, is not so fixed that he cannot learn. Knowing he's a monster and knowing he doesn't want to be, he has practiced to perfection a near-infallible control over his passions, and I respect that. He's also remorseful, and while that tends to manifest in unnecessary brooding, it also changes him: he's gotten good at not doing what he knows he'll regret. And despite occasional severe regressions, he spends a lot of time learning to hope.

Quite apart from the whole vampire thing, Edward is not someone I'd have been likely to fall in love with. The dark-and-broody type doesn't do much for me, and I'm not fond of the guy's gracelessness toward humanity in general.

But I have always loved his battered-but-gritted will to do the right thing, as well as his delight in real purity and goodness wherever he finds it: his reverence for Carlisle, his honor for Seth. And I admire his appreciation for the extraordinary in the unsettled, uncertain, fairly ordinary Bella—because I like Bella, and because half the fun of romantic love is in building a unique and exclusive bond with someone who, to the rest of the world, is just one of the billions.

Here's my glass—well, clay coffee mug full of blueberry tea, because I have a cold—raised to Edward Cullen, then: a monster with flaws who is interestingly and likably human. Love you, Ed.

P.S. I wanted to address the matter of his fitting into vampire mythology, too, but honestly, I can't summon up enough energy, possibly because of the aforementioned cold. If I knew vampire mythology the way I know the Bible, I'd probably have developed the same annoyance I felt at Anita Diamant's messing with Genesis details in The Red Tent. As it is, however, I've only read Dracula, and I wasn't offended by Meyer's blowing off that myth; which means, I guess, that I don't have the information to speak to it, any more than the will. This also means capitulation to Masha's much more knowledgeable points on the subject... but this is popular fiction, and if nothing else, I thought Meyer, in mentioning and then discarding the overall mythology, was within reasonable bounds of poetic license for her genre. Feel free to argue with me in the combox.

* I am way beyond having beta readers with the A.D. story... am probably near the middle of the Greek alphabet at this point.

The Modern YA Novelist

It's Reality TV/freebie week over at The Broke and The Bookish, so I'm taking the week off to participate in another internet meme: parodying Gilbert & Sullivan's "I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General" from The Pirates of Penzance. (Warning: particularly vicious earworm. Listen at your own risk.) Without further ado, then:

Mud-Wrestling Pigs and other stories

Reminder: If you read or write novels, and you want to help tornado and flood victims, check out the Help Write Now auction! If it wasn't for charity, I'd be very disappointed that Veronica Roth's Divergent package just went waaay out of my price range. :)

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Hail, Twilight fans and foes! If you enjoy discussing the merit of Meyer's bestselling vampire series from either perspective, check out this extensive conversation between Maria (who critiqued my book) and I. Maria has made some good points that I've conceded, and I think I've made a few that she's done likewise for, and we're still talking. Feel free to join in. I'm going to try to answer her most recent comments this afternoon, if I can get a chance.

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Congratulations to my good friend and critique partner Mr. Pond for getting himself published in a book of essays! Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment, a scholarly work on the world of unsettling fairy tales, is available in bookstores. Well done, sir!

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Maia has discovered how to get on top of the refrigerator. I guess the highest bookshelves are her final frontier.

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Ever since this past year's NaNoWriMo disaster, I've been awfully worried about my ability to complete the book and make it any good. On a burst of inspiration yesterday, I took out a packet of colored index cards and started cutting them up, labeling them with character names, roles, structural units, and potential scenes. I laid them out all over the coffee table. And I wish I'd shot a picture of the mayhem that ensued when Maia discovered I was playing with little scraps of paper....but now I have some outline, several pages written, and a lot more confidence.

I love these paper clips. And the pretty colors. I'm such a girl.

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Writers' link of the week: Jason Pinter on The 10 Commandments of Social Networking for Writers. The piece contains some of the best wisdom I've heard about social networking. Among the great thoughts, "Thou Shalt Not Engage in Flame Wars" includes the aphorism "Never wrestle in mud with a pig—you’ll just get dirty and the pig will enjoy it."

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Music of the week: My friend Jana linked this band on her blog recently, and I enjoyed their music so much that I had to share. This cover of the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby is beautiful. You can also go over to Jana's site and watch their Paper Hats, which I like even better.



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Funny of the week: As someone very fond of decent spelling, I laughed till I cried over these Facebook corrections. There's some strong language—where ignorance and Facebook are gathered together, profanity is in their midst—but oh, the responses are funny. Enjoy. H/T Kelly Sonnack.

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I'm off! To write, to clean house, to make dinner for my husband and get ready for a busy evening. Happy weekend, everyone!

Vampire Dates and other stories

Yesterday got by me, and at 10:30 PM I tried to post and gave up. To make up for that, I have two posts for you today: this one, and my review of the movie Eclipse over at The Hog's Head. (Loved it. I grinned my way through pretty much the whole thing.)

Special thanks to my husband, who not only has never complained about taking me to a Twilight film, but treats it like a date and even enjoys the show. He likes the Pacific Northwest scenery—it's hard not to when you live out here.

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This blog has a new web address: jennasthilaire.com. Don't worry, if you've linked to the old blogspot address in the past, the links will still work. But I've been planning, as part of my writing venture, to set up a professional website. Blogger seems to have realized that Wordpress has been beating the socks off it and it is undergoing vast improvements, offering a lot more options, and... we'll see what I come up with.

The beautiful Dark Forest theme that I've used for just over a year will go away soon, which makes me a little sad. I might take a screenshot just to keep for memory's sake. On the other hand, I do love graphic design and should be able to come up with something pretty. Give me time. If the template reverts to one of Blogger's standard offerings for awhile, never fear--that's just temporary while I try to work things out.

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My grandparents left town Sunday, and I am still catching up on things. The house needs cleaning, I have my old computer booted for some work, my novel needs a lot more revision, and I've got a website to design. It's going to be a busy day.

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Writers, here's a set of links for you. Erin Healy has a great two-part guest piece at Rachelle Gardner's, on knowing and loving your reader:

Who is Your Reader: Part 1
Who is Your Reader: Part 2

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Sweet romantic piece of the week: Unwritten Love Notes by Farmer's City Wife. It's an excellent reminder of how to keep love alive.

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Funny line of the week comes from Denise Roper, talking about an experience at Mythcon:

I also loved this particular prayer of petition: “Remember Charles, Clive, John Ronald, and all who have died in the peace of Christ; remember those whose faith is known to you alone; and bring them all into the place of eternal joy and light.” I thought that it was so lovely that we prayed for the Inklings in this way, but I really think Clive would have liked it better if we had called him ”Jack.”

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I've got to get to work. Happy weekend, everyone!

Learning the Stars and other stories

Though apparently Anchorage got 75-degree days before we did, Bellingham has finally decided to give the clouds a week off and we've had sunny days in the high 80s. This is what I've been waiting for—I love it. Sweet summer! How I long to keep it for the next three months.

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One of Lou's cousins is getting married this weekend, so we're leaving for the east side of the mountains in a few hours. I still haven't decided whether or not to take my laptop or just a chunk of my manuscript and a notebook. Either way, I need to write.

But I'm also bringing China Miéville's Un Lun Dun (can't stay out of the kids' lit...) Sometimes it's just nice to read.

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I need to learn to write when other things are on my to-do list. Most of the time I try to get everything else out of the way first, which never works—if I do succeed in clearing the day's list, I'm too tired to focus, or I get good and warmed up to the story at about 10:00 PM when I should be winding down. Next week's goals include getting some serious writing time in early in the day.

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One of my favorite things about summer weather: I can stargaze without having to guess around clouds to trace constellations. This week I've located Aquila and its alpha star, Altair; Cygnus and alpha star Deneb; most of Scorpius including alpha star Antares; part of the constellation Libra, and the star Polaris. I had trouble with Polaris until I learned that a line drawn through Merak and Dubhe of the Big Dipper points straight at it.

Venus has also been shockingly, beautifully bright above the western horizon at sundown. The first time I saw it, I thought it was an airplane and couldn't believe my eyes when it did not move.

I've also learned this week that the zodiac is the ring of constellations along the ecliptic (the path of the sun.) This might be an appalling display of ignorance, but I never knew the term had a scientific meaning. Interesting.

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Learning the stars' often strange and difficult names makes me think of this:

"If you've been assigned to me, I suppose you must be some kind of a Namer, too, even if a primitive one."

"A what?"

"A Namer. For instance, the last time I was with a Teacher—or at school, as you call it—my assignment was to memorize the names of the stars."

"Which stars?"

"All of them."

"You mean all the stars, in all the galaxies?"

"Yes. If he calls for one of them, someone has to know which one he means. Anyhow, they like it;  there aren't many who know them all by name, and if your name isn't known, then it's a very lonely feeling."

—Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door (Bantam Doubleday Dell, New York: 1973), 78-79

That's one of my absolute favorite moments in fiction, especially in context with the rest of the book. A Wind in the Door is well worth reading and re-reading.

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Lou and I watched the first several episodes of Season 3 of The Office on Monday night. I am still laughing at Jim sending Dwight faxes from Future Dwight, Andy calling Jim "Big Tuna," and Michael's response to a black-lit hotel room.

But then, I'm also still laughing at Dwight's complaints against Jim from an episode in Season 2. That reminds me of several pranksters I've known—and of the time when some other girls and I put all the youth leader's shoelaces in Zip-loc bags of water and froze them, and lay all fourteen of his boxes of Blueberry Morning breakfast cereal (no, I'm not exaggerating) under the sheets in his bed... haha, those were the days. :)

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Twilight fans, I loved this post—recommended to me by fellow Blogengamot member Arabella Figg—about the power of Eclipse and the Saga in general. I think he's on to something.

Unfortunately, if anyone responded sensibly to his question at the end, it got lost in the hundreds of comments by trolls. But here are my two cents: I don't think it is possible to be pro-woman without understanding that what almost every woman wants is to be loved by someone who is stronger than themselves in some quantifiable way, and to propagate the species. Bella's story speaks to those primal desires. Of course it draws the crowds.

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Funny line of the week, thanks to Tyler Stanton: "To whom it may concern: Please start a blog that consists entirely of pictures of people about to sneeze. This is the funniest face a human can make."

With that strange mental picture—Happy weekend, everybody!

The New Moon Movie

Lou took me to see this a few weeks ago, and as a movie review post tends to take a lot of time to write, I've procrastinated. I did get a short piece up at The Hog's Head celebrating the faithfulness of the movie to the book, but here I'll talk details. Spoilers ahead!

New Moon being my favorite novel of the four, the movie could have seriously bombed for me. It did not. I liked it, and so did Lou. (Lou, good man, likes the Twilight movies better than the Potter movies. So do I, though in a battle of the books, I think Potter will always win for me.)

The four blank chapters in the novel, titled according to the four months they represent, could have been very difficult to communicate in movie format. Weitz and crew did a fantastic job.

The worst part of the movie experience for me: Sitting in front of the sort of girl who gives Twilight fans a bad name. She kept up a steady run of insinuating commentary throughout the film--out loud. 'Really,' I wanted to tell her, 'I know both the leading boys took their shirts off--but I managed to sit through it without swooning. Can't you?'

Though I consider myself firmly Team Edward, I have to say that the movie (and Taylor Lautner's good work in his role) made Jacob seem a lot more relatable than Edward. Not so in the book. That scene in Eclipse where Bella breaks her hand punching Jacob in the jaw? Yeah, I'm right there with her on that.

Favorite scene: The little flash-forward where a transformed Bella runs with Edward through the trees. Kristen Stewart makes a lovely sparkly vampire.

I found all the cinematography quite beautiful, but especially the vampire and werewolf action scenes, which usually happened in the forests. Being from the Pacific Northwest, I love getting to see this area displayed so splendidly on the big screen.

Leaving out Catherine Hardwicke's old-movie-style clips made for a little discontinuity between the films, but New Moon was still too well shot for that to greatly bother me.

Charlie and Carlisle (Billy Burke and Peter Facinelli, respectively) gave flawless performances, as always.

Bella jumping on the back of the stranger's motorcycle made my one big quibble with the movie itself. She rides off with a catcalling guy she doesn't know ... and he brings her back? Hardly believable.

I did miss Carlisle actually stating his belief that he and his family are not necessarily damned. At least Bella said it.

The Volturi scene had too much action in it for me, but Dakota Fanning makes a perfect Jane. My goodness, that girl can act.

Overall rating: Definitely worth the $9 it cost to see it. At least, for those of us who like Twilight. Feel free to add your own impressions in the comments.

#11. The Twilight Saga

[For the Rules, click here.]

I'd had more than my fair share of near-death experiences; it wasn't something you ever really got used to.

It seemed oddly inevitable, though, facing death again. Like I really was marked for disaster. I'd escaped time and time again, but it kept coming back for me.

Still, this time was so different from the others.

You could run from someone you feared, you could try to fight someone you hated. All my reactions were geared toward those kinds of killers--the monsters, the enemies.

When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it?

If it was someone you truly loved?

Author: Stephenie Meyer

Synopsis: Bella Swan has exiled herself to the tiny peninsula town of Forks, WA, which gets as much rainfall as anywhere in the continental U.S. She expects a quiet life with her reserved father, along with a frustrating but hopefully unexceptional last year and a half of high school. On her first day, however, she is confronted by the open and clearly personal hatred of Edward Cullen, who is inhumanly beautiful and somehow set apart from his classmates. Not long afterward, he saves her life under impossible circumstances. Determined to know his secret, Bella finds herself caught up into a strange existence that is half horror story and half fairy tale--a tale that before long she could not escape, even if she wanted to.

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I've written about Twilight before, at some length. But to sum up: I had to be talked into reading the series, after laughing out loud at the excerpt on the back cover of the first book (it was meant to be romantic, not funny); once I got going, though, I read all four books four times in five months. How did a teen vampire romance wind up in my top 50? The short answer is that it proved far more than a teen book or a vampire genre story or a romance.

The books are outselling almost everything else for reasons: They are speaking to people on a deeper heart-level than most of what's out there is managing. Without overt religious content, Twilight--like Harry Potter, Narnia, and other great fantasies--offers something to starving souls. Starting with a return of the concepts of mystery and restraint in things that could be called sacred. Then there's a scene in New Moon that expresses what battling agnosticism was like for me so perfectly--but there, I'm getting ahead of myself.

RRR: The Forks High School Professor website. John Granger made a name for himself writing about the Christian hermetic meanings of Harry Potter, and now he's working on (the Mormon-themed) Twilight as well.

Twilight Fans

Check out John Granger's new site diving into the deep literary meanings of the Twilight saga: the Forks High School Professor blog.

Enjoy. I know I do.

A Lion in Love with a Lamb

Thoughts on Twilight

"From causes, which this is not the place to investigate, no models of past times, however perfect, can have the same vivid effect on the youthful mind, as the productions of contemporary genius.... The great works of past ages seem to a young man things of another race, in respect to which his faculties must remain passive and submiss, even as to the stars and mountains. But the writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many years older than himself, surrounded by the same circumstances, and disciplined by the same manners, possess a reality for him, and inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a man."--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It is hard, after spending much time reading a good story, to immediately go out and pick up another book. A good story requires time to process, to settle the effects over one's imagination and philosophy. I experienced this very thing after my latest trip straight through the Twilight Saga, some days ago; as I set down Breaking Dawn again and wondered where to go next, I knew that the immediate answer was "Nowhere." Edward and Bella's story had touched me, and I couldn't just go jump into someone else's.

Stephenie Meyer's vampire series has created a fan following both large and loyal enough to raise comparisons, however reaching, to Harry Potter. It must be admitted that J.K. Rowling's achievements were higher both in symbolic strength and worldwide appeal; still, Meyer's story ought not be written off as harlequin fluff meant only for the titillation of the silliest members of society. It is generally thought that the attraction of her books is due to the weakness of womankind for romance. This is true in part, but not necessarily in the sense in which the epithet is meant.

Meyer's books do, of course, have some things in common with Harry Potter. Besides both being genre-blended fantasy-based stories enjoying great popularity, both deal with ultimate questions without coming across as issue-driven. There are also multiple layers to both stories, and Meyer is getting what Rowling got several years ago: the praise and dismissal of a culture that reads, enjoys, and criticizes almost entirely on the surface level. As much as I value literacy, it is hard to avoid questioning the merit of pushing all of our children to read, read, read without teaching them how to comprehend the meaning of the literary art. The problems that young people inevitably run into when reading layered fiction are exacerbated by a ruling literary class that appears to concern itself almost exclusively with sex, tragedy, and irony.

Starting with the top level: Where were five- and seven-hundred-page novels when I was in my teens? They're absolutely heaven for a bookworm. Others disagree, but I didn't find the length at all burdensome. The Twilight Saga is a mix of impressively painful suspense that kept me up nights reading and a few odd pacing weaknesses that make for something of an uneven reading experience. Its prose is generally graceful, though the descriptions are repetitive, and the editor missed some obvious mistakes such as an occasional mid-sentence change of tense. Actual horror is generally avoided and the books don't read as "dark", but there are certainly a few grotesqueries. The stories are chaste in the sense that the main characters wait till their marriage to consummate their romance, but very sensual in the telling from the first-person narrative voice of a high-school girl.

It concerns me that pre- and early-teen girls are reading these books. People generally take only what they want to from their reading, and girls that age (some don't outgrow this) are naturally prone to silliness about boys and to thinking and fantasizing obsessively about romance. If that is all, or even primarily, what they take from Twilight, then the books are dangerous for them. Even the most clear direction of the books, which is chastity and self-control, is probably beyond the grasp of a girl whose longing to be desired has outpaced her ability to prioritize virtue or character. If a girl's primary response to the books/movie is likely to be "Robert Pattinson!" or "Taylor Lautner!" or even "Team Edward" or "Team Jacob", she is probably not ready for the read.

But for those ready to retrieve more from a story, there is more to be found, and it is the deeper things that took me through all four books three times in three months--why I'm still re-reading. Perhaps the simplest way to start understanding the deeper meaning is to begin loosely with two very common ciphers: read the vampire parts as symbolic of sexuality, and the romantic parts as symbolic of the relationship between human and divine. Stephenie Meyer is a committed, devout Mormon and a student of literature; both of the above ciphers can be reasonably assumed. Her symbolism is not plain allegory, meant for direct representation (Edward, for instance, is hardly a perfect deity). Rather, her stories offer powerful images of human life and love.

As a story of self-denial and the worth of such practice, Twilight and its sequels have a lot to say to our culture. We are so used to granting ourselves whatever we want and sulking if it proves beyond our reach; we have much to learn from Edward, whose twofold desire for his beloved (for her body and her blood) is kept under rigid control. Edward is a member of a vampire coven that abstains from human blood, living off of animals. When confronted with Bella, he resists at first only barely, running away from the temptation to kill her and her classmates in order to satisfy his vampire thirst. Later he loves her, and his love protects her life from his own need and desire. "And so the lion fell in love with the lamb ..." (Twilight, p. 274) He has grave sins on his conscience from his past, but the one law he has not broken has been that of chastity; he, the male, "protects her virtue" and his own and asks her to marry him. True, he eventually caves on that--fortunately just in time for her to finally understand and make the choice for purity herself.

It is true that Edward and Bella set a lot of bad examples. Despite powerful self-control, unmarried couples staying all night together is a bad idea even when fully clothed. The strength of the books is not always in the strength of the characters, however. Stephenie Meyer didn't go to much trouble to hide the point of her story; the entire series might be summed up in the words of Garrett, a new "convert" to the lifestyle chosen by Edward and his family:

"I have witnessed the bonds within this family--I say family and not coven. These strange golden-eyed ones deny their very natures. But in return have they found something worth even more, perhaps, than mere gratification of desire? ... it seems to me that intrinsic to this intense family binding--that which makes them possible at all--is the peaceful character of this life of sacrifice."¹

Meyer's claim--without dropping a syllable about her religion--is that of morality: Self-denial is necessary to family life, and the gains far outweigh the price; its direction is toward peace and harmony and deep bonds. Further, the stories express the ultimately self-sacrificial nature of love through Bella's offering up her life for someone she loves in every one of the four books.

"My stories are about life, not death," says Meyer; they're about "love, not lust."² Her intentions came through clearly, I believe. And I think that the primary reason Twilight is so immensely popular among women (not just young girls; TwilightMoms.com, for instance, includes a very active forum) is because of that last point. A girl of any age knows the difference between being loved and being used. She may not be able to express it or to see the failure of the males in her own life; she may be so jaded that she almost prefers usage herself; but she is drawn to Edward because Edward passes the one test that proves the difference. Edward's love protects Bella's life and purity from his own desires. A man like that is almost as rare a creature as a vampire in today's culture.

The weakness of womanhood for that kind of romance is such that only the very jaded can toss such a story aside and imagine themselves unaffected.

As a reader and writer, I return to Meyer's books for the understanding of her expression of "life, not death" and "love, not lust". I find something of a writing-hero in her for that. My husband and I have had a quiet weekend at home; I've read Chesterton and L'Engle, Meyer and Dante. And to great historical works like the Commedia, I must 'remain passive and submiss'. To the work of Chesterton I kneel as an apprentice to her master, and I look to L'Engle for the wisdom of a teacher. Stephenie Meyer is also my teacher. But I feel as if I could sit across a couch from her, once I got through being starstruck, and talk over meanings and morals and influences and favorite works and the joy of storytelling.

Till she has time for that, I'll make do with reading her books, discovering the connections to the various great works on which she based her books (Wuthering Heights and Romeo and Juliet, among others), tracing the Garden of Eden retelling that John Granger has noted, and trying to settle the question of whether she intentionally used literary alchemy as a structural device or whether certain references, such as color use, are merely coincidental. She may have written her books simply, but she certainly left detective work enough for the serious reader.

¹ Meyer, Breaking Dawn. Little, Brown and Company: New York, 2008, 717-718.
² Horng, "Will New Bestseller 'Eclipse' Harry Potter?" http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3499052, accessed April 23, 2009.