Musings of a bored librarian

I’m at the reference desk right now. I started learning Japanese this week, so now I can fantasize about using my rudimentary Japanese to save the day during a reference question and thus justify my presence during the nothing else that will happen the rest if the time I’m here.

Eclipse, Ch. 2-3

Chapter 2. Evasion

Bella is at school, and the Cullens are hanging out with everyone else Bella knows at school for some reason. There’s some conversation about nothing, and Alice’s plot detector goes off. That never gets old, does it, Stephenie Meyer?

Bella goes home to write to her mother. Edward suggests they fly out to visit her and Bella is really excited about this even though she rarely speaks of her mother without sounding annoyed. (Edward also observes that Bella has done very little with her birthday presents from last year. Nice of Meyer to remind us of Bella’s contempt for the kindness of others.) Bella asks about Alice’s plot sense, and she’s suprised to find out that it wasn’t about her. At first I thought it was Bella’s typical self-absorbtion, but it occurred to me that as often as Bella causes something to go wrong it’s not unreasonable for her to assume it’s about her.

Against Bella’s wishes, Edward suggests that he and she visit Bella’s mom in Florida. Charlie and Bella argue about this, and Bella eventually tries to visit Jacob. Edward, of course, has no intention of letting Bella make a decision for herself, so he disables her car for the night. As a consolation, he says Bella can lock him out that night if she’s angry. Oh, you know a relationship is screwy if the stalker gives his target the night off as an apology. (It’s not like a locked window has ever stopped him before, though.)

Chapter 3. Motives

After the long flight - chasing the sun westward so that it seemed unmoving in the sky -
it was especially disorienting; time seemed oddly variable. It took me by surprise when
the forest gave way to the first buildings, signaling that we were nearly home. 

"You've been very quiet," Edward observed. "Did the plane make you sick?"

What?! Did we miss a chapter? Did Stephenie Meyer invent a number between 2 and 3? Apparently Edward and Bella went to visit her mother after all. Here Meyer runs into a dilemma, for she clearly wants Bella’s mother to freak out about how serious Bella and Edward are even though she’s been show to have the attention span and cognitive ability of a hummingbird. Her solution? Have Bella tell us how perceptive her mother is. Sorry, Stephenie Meyer, but writing doesn’t work like that.

Oddly, this results in a scene where Bella’s mother notices something else odd about their relationship:

"It's not just him." She set her lips defensively. "I wish you could see how you move around
him."
"What do you mean?"
"The way you move - you orient yourself around him without even thinking about it. When
he moves, even a little bit, you adjust your position at the same time. Like magnets . . . or
gravity. You're like a . . . satellite, or something. I've never seen anything like it."

It’s called an “unhealthy relationship,” and I’d bet good money she has seen one before.

Anyway, Bella and Edward are apparently back in Forks. Jacob has apparently been phone-spamming Charlie for some reason. Bella calls him and Jacob just asks if she’s going to school the next day. And that’s it. It’s so creepy I’m suprised he doesn’t ask what she’s wearing. Bella reflects on this, and we get this painfully obvious reminder of the plot:

Had Jacob really been asking me if I was still human? Making sure that the werewolves'
treaty was unbroken - that none of the Cullens had dared to bite a human . . . bite,
not kill . . .?

Just for fun, try to think of a more natural way to remind readers of that loophole in their treaty.

Anyway, it turns out Jacob just wanted to talk to Edward. Oh, Bella & Edward are apparently at school now. Transitions are for suckers, I guess. We get this bizarre reflection by Bella:

So I'd misinterpreted Jacob's motives last night. Missing information, that was the problem.
Information like why in the world Jacob would want to talk to Edward.

Okay, I give up. Is Bella completely baked here? “I understand now…I needed information! Questions swim in a sea of information! This milkshake is so good it scares me! What if there was, like, another color in the rainbow? Would it look like one of the other colors, or would we have a totally different name for it?!”

Anyway, Jacob is as much of a jackass as he usually is whenever vampires are involved, and I have to wonder what’s up with Stephenie Meyer’s obsession with unlikeable characters. Jacob wasn’t exactly a deep person before becoming a werewolf, but since he tranformed he’s been nothing but an abrasive loser, and surely it says something that the only excuse for character development in this series is to make one of the main characters more of a jerk. And why is Meyer dragging out this friendship, anyway? Not even the characters seem to care at this point.

Anyway, nothing much of consequence gets said except that Bella realizes Edward got her out of town to protect her from Victoria. This is supposed to be dramatic, I guess, and it would be if they didn’t have the perfectly viable solution of just turning Bella into a vampire. What the hell are they waiting for, Vampire Awareness Day? Considering how much of a danger magnet Bella is, you’d think the Cullens would want her be nigh invulnerable as soon as possible.

“Christ the Companion” — Dorothy Sayers

When I’ve thrown my books aside, being petulant and weary,
And have turned down the gas, and the firelight has sufficed,
When my brain’s too stiff for prayer, and too indolent for theory,
Will You come and play with me, big Brother Christ?

Will You slip behind the book-case? Will you stir the window-curtain,
Peeping from the shadow with Your eyes like flame?
Set me staring at the alcove where the flicker’s so uncertain,
Then suddenly, at my elbow, leap up, catch me, call my name?

Or take the great arm-chair, help me set the chestnuts roasting,
And tell me quiet stories, while the brown skins pop,
Of wayfarers and merchantmen and tramp of Roman hosting,
And how Joseph dwelt with Mary in the carpenter’s shop?

When I drift away in dozing, will You softly light the candles
And touch the piano with Your kind, strong fingers,
Set stern fugues of Bach and stately themes of Handel’s
Stalking through the corners where the last disquiet lingers?

And when we say good-night, and You kiss me on the landing,
Will You promise faithfully and make a solemn tryst:
You’ll be just at hand if wanted, close by here where we are standing,
And be down in time for breakfast, big Brother Christ?

Eclipse, Preface-Ch.1

Well, here we are a again: a new day, a new book in the Twilight series. This is the third one, and that gives me some measure of hope. If New Moon is the Twilight equivalent of Chamber of Secrets, I’m hoping Eclipse will provide the same pleasant recovery that Prisoner of Azkaban delivered. In this case, though, “pleasant” is perhaps the less vital term than “recovery;” I doubt we’ll experience anything like actual pleasure reading through the book. Frankly, I’m okay with that. I’ll settle for merely less unpleasant than the last one. This was, you recall, the book that revealed that what Bella and Edward see in each other is cataclysmic stupidity and a mutual inclination towards suicide at the drop of a hat. I once suggested that Edward was foolish for being smitten by a complete ninny, and I see now I got it backwards: he plumbed the depths of her idiocy and realized he had finally found someone like himself.

Anyway, Eclipse. Let’s begin.

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Preface

The novel begins the same way the others have, i.e., with an action sequence sheared of context. You can probably guess what happens: the anonymous narrator is being defended by an equally anonymous male from unspecified threats. Hey, it’s every Twilight series action scene ever!

Chapter 1. Ultimatum

We see the remains of a note Bella and Jacob have been passing back and forth via their respective parents. I don’t know why they can’t just e-mail each other or write letters, but hey, maybe Bella relishes the added contempt of a handwritten poison pen letter. Bella imagines herself seeing Jacob struggling to write the letter:

If I'd been there, I might have laughed. Don't give yourself a brain hemorrhage,
Jacob, I would have told him. Just spit it out.

If you need something to do today, count the number of times it takes to say this before it starts to sound like believable dialogue. Hint: it’s a big number.

Laughing was the last thing I felt like doing now as I reread the words I'd already memorized.

Apparently Bella was thinking about laughing without feeling any humor at all. Huh. Also, this is a lousy transition.

What was surprising was how much each crossed-out line wounded me - as if the
points of the letters had cutting edges.

Bella regrets not using a sans-serif font.

More than that, behind each angry beginning lurked a vast pool of hurt; Jacob's pain
cut me deeper than my own.

That’s one sharp pool!

We switch from this to Charlie trying to microwave a jar of spaghetti sauce with the metal lid on. Charlie needs a teenage girl to teach him how to use a microwave. One wonders whether Charlie’s last name used to be Gordon.

Bella muses on her relationship with Edward:

The word boyfriend had me chewing on the inside of my cheek with a familiar tension while I
stirred. It wasn't the right word, not at all. I needed something more expressive of eternal
commitment.

And by “commitment” I think she means “possession.”

Charlie encourages Bella to spend time with friends other than the Cullens. We learn what Bella thinks of her friends:

Before Edward's return, my school friends had polarized into two groups. I liked to think of
those groups as good vs. evil. Us and them worked, too.

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: I’m glad Bella’s not my daughter. Or friend.

Edward comes over, and we learn that a vampire is killing people in Seattle and it’s time to apply for colleges. Oh, and we get a recap of all the nothing that happened in the last book, so if you did as I suggested at the end of Twilight and skip the second book you’ll be extra good to go. Thanks, Stephenie Meyer!

Bella and Edward discuss Wuthering Heights. As you know by now, classical literature and the Twilight series don’t exactly go together like peanut butter and chocolate, so I’ll skip this part. For my own sanity, if nothing else. They go on to discuss Jacob, and Bella feels sorry for him. Yes, seriously–Bella actually empathizes with other human beings in this chapter. (2) Bella wants to visit him, but Edward cheerfully decides for her that she can’t. Oh, in case you’re keeping score:

Number of decisions Bella has made for herself this chapter: 0

Number of decisions others, specifically men, have made for her: ~3

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(1) It’s here the analogy breaks down, for Goblet of Fire was pretty decent and nobody ever says it’s as bonkers as Breaking Dawn is supposed to be.

(2) For varying values of “human,” of course, since Jacob is a werewolf. But she felt sorry for the vampire murder victims she heard about earlier, so it still counts.

“Evening solace” — Charlotte Bronte

The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;–
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.
And days may pass in gay confusion,
And nights in rosy riot fly,
While, lost in Fame’s or Wealth’s illusion,
The memory of the Past may die.

But there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart’s best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,
Float softly back–a faded dream;
Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,
The tale of others’ sufferings seem.
Oh! when the heart is freshly bleeding,
How longs it for that time to be,
When, through the mist of years receding,
Its woes but live in reverie!

And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer,
On evening shade and loneliness;
And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,
Feel no untold and strange distress–
Only a deeper impulse given
By lonely hour and darkened room,
To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven
Seeking a life and world to come.

New Moon, Ch. 22-Epilogue

Chapter 22. Flight

They fly home. Bella and Edward spend the flight in one big cutesy public display of affection. No mention is made of the poor businessman probably in the next seat trying not to make the situation more awkward.

Chapter 23. The Truth

Uh-oh, I’m not sure we can handle this. <rimshot> Actually, it just turns out to be Bella and Edward’s repeated declarations of love for each other. Think Anakin and Padme, only with less sand. The chapter ends with Bella making a choice for herself for once and putting her potential vampirization to a vote.

Chapter 24. The Vote

Bella and Edward won’t shut up. As they talk, Bella realizes that the Edward-voice in her head was her own subconscious mind’s way of telling her conscious mind that Edward loved her. This is impressive in a couple of ways: it’s impressive for the three people who actually find this terribly romantic, and I’m sure those people are hugging any nearby stuffed animals or patient loved ones with glee. It’s also impressive for everyone who has studied fiction writing, for this is a breathtakingly pure execution of a terrible writing choice. Seriously, could Meyer have picked a less statisfying explanation for a BS plot device? It’s like New Moon fell out of the Bad Writing Tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Anyway, they get to the Cullens and put Vampire Bella up for a vote. The vote passes. Edward persuades Bella to wait until graduation. This would be a good time to remind Bella that she will crave human blood, but nobody does this. Let’s hope Bella the Vampire Sociopath doesn’t have any accidents.

Bella returns home and gets into an argument with Charlie. It basically doesn’t change anything, so I won’t bother to summarize it.

Epilogue. Treaty

Jacob shows up with Bella’s motorcycle, apparently in an effort to get her in trouble. Remember that subplot? It looks like Stephenie Meyer didn’t, either. Anyway, he tells Edward and Bella that the deal between vampires and werewolves is off if Bella becomes a vampire. I have no idea why the Cullens don’t plan to move up to Canada or something, for the werewolves aren’t exactly the best neighbors. Really, it’s not like they have anything keeping them in Forks. Sadly, Stephenie Meyer isn’t interested in solutions reasonable people would consider, so I’m sure one or both of the two remaining books will draw upon this situation for angst.

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Well, here we are at the end of another Twilight series novel. I’ll get the good out of the way: the prose isn’t as purple as in the first one. And…yeah, I’ve got nothing else positive. Sorry, but I tried. New Moon puts us in the mind of an unlikeable girl experiencing a drawn out breakup of a relationship that never made sense to begin with. Plot “twists” are predictable and contrived, and it’s hard to imagine that anyone other than Stephenie Meyer herself is impressed by all this. Those of you who thought there wasn’t much to Twilight will be even more annoyed by New Moon: the characterization is as flat as a steamrollered pancake, and there isn’t any plot to speak of. Simply put, New Moon feels like a collection of deleted scenes from other books in the series rather than a story in itself. Note that we’re basically the same place we were at the end of Twilight, and when it takes 300 some pages to achieve absolutely nothing, readers might justifiably ask why they should bother. Let’s hope something actually happens in Eclipse.

New Moon, Ch. 19-21

Chapter 19. Hate

Alice and Bella are on a plane to Italy. We check in with Alice’s plot sense to make sure they aren’t too late. If you guessed they aren’t too late, congratulations, you’re thinking farther ahead than Meyer expected you to. We learn that Alice is getting sick of all this crap and has considered just turning Bella into a vampire to be done with this. Bella’s response:

"Oh, Alice, do it now! I could help you so much–and I wouldn't slow you down. Bite me!"

Must…resist…too…easy…

They steal a car and drive to Volterra. Yes, that’s all that happens in this chapter.

Chapter 20. Volterra

Alice bribes her way into the city with a thousand-dollar bill. The guard asks if this is a joke, and I’m not surprised: bills of that denomination haven’t been issued since the 1940s and look  different enough from modern dollars to attract a lot of unwanted attention. Long story short, they get into the city and Bella catches up with Edward before he can annoy the Volturi and get himself killed. And like so the big conflict hinted at earlier dies, not with a bang, but with a whimper and Bella calling Edward “beautiful” one more time. But hey, at least the decontextualized passage that made up the Prologue is actually in the book this time.

I’d like to tell you that Edward realized he can’t live without Bella, Alice turns Bella into a vampire, and they all live sparkily ever after, but I think you realize by now that we aren’t that lucky. It turns out the Volturi were watching Edward, and now they want him to see the big boss one more time. Stephenie Meyer seems to have learned from other novels that conflict is important, but she hasn’t learned why or where to put it.

Chapter 21. Verdict

Bella and the Cullens are brought before Aro, the head guy. He’s suprisingly affable, though he seems to think Edward should just eat Bella and be done with it. Hey, I like the guy already.

We’re introduced to another…Voltur? Volturo? What’s the singular for “Volterri”? Anyway, his name is Marcus, and he can sense relationships. Alice can see the future, Edward can read minds, and this guy senses…relationships. Not every superpower can be a winner, I guess. Anyway, he says Edward and Bella have a really strong relationship. I’ve really got to hand it to Stephenie Meyer: most authors would try to show us a strong relationship, but look at how much less work it is just to invent a character to tell us what she wants us to think! Brilliant.

Anyway, they’re annoyed that Bella knows about vampires, but Edward gets her off with a vague promise to turn her at some point. Apparently the Volturi work by the honor system, for that’s good enough for Aro. Just as they’re getting ready to leave they pass a large group of tourists who are implied to be lunch. And I have to wonder just how the Volturi have kept out of sight for millenia if groups of forty tourists go missing on a regular basis. Wouldn’t somebody less likely to attract lots of international scrutiny make a better target?

New Moon, Ch. 17-18

Chapter 17. Visitor

Bella walks into her living room to see Alice. It turns out Alice is there because she caught a glimpse of Bella jumping off the cliff and thought she was dead. Well, there’s another great reason not to attempt suicide: it gives your clairvoyant supernatural friends a real scare. They catch up for a bit, and fortunately Stephenie Meyer summarizes the situation with Victoria and Laurent this time. The writing isn’t even within throwing distance of good yet, but it’s getting better.

Alice goes out for a quick snack, and once she returns her eyes are once again described as “liquid,” the ISO standard adjective for eyes in the Twilight universe. We also find out that Alice’s visions don’t extend to werewolves.

Chapter 18. The Funeral

Jacob arrives and makes it clear he doesn’t like that Bella has vampire friends. Ah, fantastic racism at its finest. Maybe after this he’ll edit the “Vampire” page on Wikipedia to redirect to “bloodsucker.” After a tense conversation, he goes in for a kiss, but with perfect soap operatical timing the phone rings and spares Bella from having to decide whether to let him. For some reason Jacob answers the phone, acts like a jerk to whoever called, and then hangs up. Wow. Apparently one of the side effects of being a werewolf is a total disregard for phone etiquette.

Alice shows up and her plot sense is tingling in regards to Edward. Jacob naturally comes unglued, and he and Bella summarize the phone conversation. Now it’s Alice’s turn to flip out, for the person on the phone was not Carlisle, as Jacob had thought, but rather Edward. And since Jacob’s brief excursion from human/werewolf/vampire decency briefly mentioned the funeral that Charlie is at(1), Edward now thinks that Bella is dead. Well, there’s another great reason not to let your supernatural friends act like jerks: it gives your non-clairvoyant supernatural friends a real scare.

But wait, there’s more! Remember Bella’s painful meditation on Romeo & Juliet a few chapters back? It turns out the novel isn’t done screwing with us yet. It looks like we’re seeing Stephenie Meyer’s hideously unsubtle take on intertextuality, for Edward has immediately resolved to drop out of contact with everyone (even throwing away his cell phone) and attempt suicide-by-Volturi. Bella and Alice must now travel to Italy to stop him. What’s that, readers? You studied Romeo  & Juliet as freshmen in high school, too? In that case you must be feeling the same pain I am at being hit over the head with “literary” comparisons.

But we’re not done with the stupid just yet. Oh, no. You see, I’m going make a wild and crazy guess that Bella and Alice will get to him in time to stop him. It’s risky, I know, but it’s a risk I’m comfortable with. So let’s say they prevent the plot from following Romeo & Juliet to its tragic conclusion. This means that Stephenie Meyer is trying to write a tragedy with a happy ending. (2) Seriously. How, Stephenie Meyer? How is this supposed to work? You can’t staple wings to a mole and expect it to fly. Just because Romeo & Juliet is a famous love story doesn’t mean it is an appropriate template for your novel.

Ironically, in attempting something like this New Moon is actually mirroring a passage in another Shakespeare play, Love’s Labors Lost. The main difference is that that play intentionally plays this for laughs: Don Armado, a nobleman with more ardor than brains, asks his servant to tell him about other great men who have been in love. His servant, a boy with more classical knowledge than reverence for his master, suggests Samson and Hercules–two great men who were destroyed by the women they love. Don Armado, of course, fancies the comparison, and the audience gets a laugh at his expense.

Well, that’s why you don’t try to improve upon Shakespeare, I guess: your clairvoyant and non-clairvoyant supernatural characters aren’t up to the task.

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(1) Of the Quileute man who had the heart attack–see Chapter 16, Twilight fans! –ed.

(2) It also means, apparently, that Meyer has found a way to screw up an ending where everyone dies. I didn’t think there was much ambiguity about how that’s suppose to work, but apparently one person was unclear.

Men have no Fitzwilliam Darcy

Laura’s post on men in BBC adaptations crystallized for me something that has flitted about in the back of my mind for a while now: there is no female character that men as a community are aware of and find as appealing as Mr. Darcy. This is true for most of Jane Austen’s male characters, but Mr. Darcy seems to occupy the top spot. Try as I might, I can’t think of a female character every man is likely to be aware of, much less find romantically appealing; in fact, I can’t think of any female characters universally appealing to men purely on the basis of mere physical or sexual attractiveness. I suspect this might explain the general bafflement that men often feel when women talk about how more men should be like Mr. Darcy or how many times they’ve seen the miniseries. That characters like Darcy exist, we understand. What we don’t understand is why he is what he is to women.

I have no explanation for this, and it bugs me. Darcy and all he represents are quite culturally powerful, and, being the sort of hack sociologist that I am, I wonder what the absence of a male equivalent means. I don’t think this absence is necessarily a problem, but it occasionally does give the nagging impression that in practice men simply end up attracted to women who settle for them instead of the kind of men they really want. That’s certainly the most pessimal interpretation, and I don’t think that’s how it really works. I know, too, that by some definitions there is no gap: goddess of the hearth, girl next door, and, in Japan’s case the yamato nadeshiko have all been put forward as stereotypical constructions of the ideal woman by somebody. I don’t think these are the same kind of thing, for all of these have been A) largely discredited, and B) mostly existed as “ideals” in the sense of “idealized concepts” rather than actual prototypes for femininity. Mr. Darcy and the other Austen heroes haven’t experienced a similar fall from grace, as far as I can tell.

One possible explanation: men have traditionally written and published more than women have (and have been allowed to), so they write more from a male perspective and consequently haven’t developed any female characters as universally appealing. One possible objection to this explanation: if men have dominated literature and publishing for so long, how come they haven’t made more progress creating an ideal female character? Like I said, I have no solution that really works, but I’m pretty sure I’ve found an interesting problem.

I don’t normally ask for comments, but I’d really appreciate any thoughts people have on this. What should we make of the Darcy gap?

Twilight: The movie

Well, here we go. The Twilight movie. Let me open with a compliment: it’s not bad. It’s better, in fact, than the book, and not many movie adaptations can say that. Having real flesh-and-blood humans playing the roles does a lot to flesh out characterization that can charitably be described as spartan. This cuts both ways, though, since a lot of the menace that was described (albeit poorly) in the book is reduced to zoom pans of  actors glaring at the camera, and this doesn’t make me think of “menace” so much as of Derek Zoolander’s “blue steel.”

There are other improvements as well. There are a few nice touches, like the mural of graduation caps on the wall at the Cullens’ house and the scene where the Cullens quickly try to cook for Bella (though now that I think of it, they’d probably remember from their human days). Bella is more likeable, for they’ve written her to be reserved instead of merely cold, and she no longer contemplates running people over all the time. Edward comes across as more uncertain or awkward than stiff and in control. It’s just more believable, and while I’m normally leery of attempts by a movie to “improve” upon a book(1), I’m okay with it here.

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(1) See Starship Troopers, or, better yet, don’t.