It is the year 2025 AD, and I, a fifty-one-year-old woman, have read Twilight by Stephanie Meyer for the very first time. It should also be noted that I have never seen any of the films based on this series. Any prior knowledge I had of this book and its characters comes from memes.
When Twilight was published in 2005, I was juggling 2-year-old twins, barely remembering to shower. I experienced a tragic dry spell in my fiction reading for over a decade. So I missed the cultural conversation surrounding this novel, which is not to say I would have read it back then even if I had found the time. I’m not a vampire girlie (though many of my friends are), and I find the whole idea silly. But, in an attempt to fill in some of the holes in my knowledge of the the early 2000s cultural zeitgeist, I picked this up this year and read it.
I’ll start by stating what everyone else already knows: the writing in this book is awful. Distractingly bad. As an aspiring novelist working on my debut, I would like someone familiar with publishing to explain how Twilight got sent to the mass market with what appears to be little or no editing. Personally, I’m not a ‘great’ writer, just a decent one. I’m also very forgiving of artistic expression and don’t believe in “high art.” But I would be embarrassed to hand this manuscript in to an editor.
Then, there’s the nauseating portrayal of the main character, a ‘plain’ girl who suffers from self-esteem issues and who is inexplicably the object of desire of one of the hottest guys she’s ever seen. The two of them are engaged in this Mormon ideology-infused drama that attempts to treat their mutual physical attraction as something loftier than a couple of horny teenagers driven insane by their desire to fuck and their inability to do so outside of marriage. It’s transparent. It’s annoying. It’s also gross on multiple levels.
This book is terrible. I can’t recommend it. My eyes rolled constantly while I was reading it. I get that it’s supposed to be fun and geared toward a younger audience, but I was once a young reader, and I wouldn’t have given this book the time of day.
But here’s the thing:
I finished it. I read the whole thing in 3 days and was interested to find out what happened in the end. It was easy to read, emotionally low-stakes, silly, and predictable. And, I was entertained.
After finishing Twilight, I started thinking about what makes a good book. Again, I’m writing my debut novel, and I often compare my work to that of other ‘esteemed’ writers, many of whom are not household names. Those writers whose books are reviewed in The New Yorker or who are guest columnists at Lithub. So reading Twilight was a bit of a mind-fuck, and I think this might be why it gets so much hate. Not because it’s poorly constructed, a product of fanfic message boards, lacking sophistication, but because, despite all that, it enjoyed spectacular success when so many other “better” books have not.
Writers today have weird, fetishized ideas about what it means to be a storyteller, but storytelling is innate to humans. It’s an essential part of how we communicate. Stories have been handed down for generations, told around ancient campfires, and those storytellers didn’t have MFAs and agents. They engaged in a primal activity that brings them and others joy. They invited their listeners (as most of human history storytelling was oral) to forget themselves for a while and become immersed in an imaginary world. Ultimately, a book is culturally successful (which I consider far more important than financial success) when it offers people this same opportunity.
Does writing that isn’t deemed ‘great’ deserve to be read and appreciated? As a writer with an objective view of my deficiencies, I have no choice but to say yes.
So, if you love this book, good for you. I did not. Yet, I still found value in it. Twilight was entertaining enough for me to finish despite not being its target audience and having zero interest in vampires. I can respect that.