Regarding 'Twilight'

Good writing is all about having the reader relate to your work, so that they can share in your experience. People will take a different experience away from the same work, depending on their respective point of view. If an author can create a book that provides an experience that a very large number of people can relate to, they are a successful author.

This holds true even if the writing isn't that great. A work of literature can be a beautiful creation full of colorful metaphor, word-play, dialogue and gorgeous grammatical construction, but this only means the writer was a very good writer. If readers can't find an accessible experience in the work, or something to relate to on a personal level, the writer isn't a good author.

The author of 'Twilight' is a good author.

I started reading 'Twilight' recently (yes, the sparkly vampire book). I haven't gotten very far, but it is already apparent to me why the book is so popular, and also why many people have a tendency to detest it.

I think a lot of the people who didn't like the book have forgotten what it feels like to be an adolescent (which is most adults). People have a tendency to polarize their experiences as teen-agers; they idealize it as a kind of golden age, or they look back and try to forget. Bella's point of view in 'Twilight' is quintessentially adolescent. She runs hot and cold. She's talented and beautiful but can't believe it. She views her parents as sad incompetents, and alternately tolerates or attempts to watch over them. Her stubborn nature is balanced out by a bottomless sense of melancholy. Her embarrassment at being paid attention to conflicts with her secret need to be desired and noticed.

In sum, she's a sixteen year old girl.

I think that people forget the story is told from her eyes alone. There's no other view in the story except that of an intelligent adolescent, and in my reading so far, it's a very accurately written view. Therefore, to people who find adolescents aggravating, Bella will be aggravating and whiny. J.K. Rowling did something similar with a very angry teen Harry Potter, but her books were not written in the first person. Therefore you never got to see the world through the distorted lens of angry teen Harry Potter; there was always a framework of omniscience explaining the truth. In 'Twilight', you are restricted entirely to Bella's view of what is happening. When reading the book, you should remind yourself of that fact.

Who, as an adolescent, hasn't dreamed of something horrible happening to them, just so people would notice and be awed? Who didn't dream about a perfect mate who you hated anyway? Who didn't suffer the sinking feeling that everyone was staring, that you were the odd one out, the one who was different? And of course, who managed to make it through adolescence without thinking at least once that the adults don't know everything, but you do... or you will. Adolescents thrive on melodrama, because melodrama is intensity; it is feeling, it is validation that they are something more than what they have been.

People complain about Bella being in an ideal dream world, and being an ideal character. I counter with the statement that of course she's an ideal character... in her own mind. Part of being adolescent is trying to believe yourself into who you want to really be, and that process can run so deep that most adults still carry around the facade they built for themselves in those days. Some of them never get out again. Bella's perceptions about people, how they react to her and how they talk should be considered twisted by her own perceptions of who she is and who they are. Note how often her insecurities bite at her.

I have a long way to go before I finish the book, and my opinions may change in the meantime. Of course, I haven't gotten to the part where she explains that vampires are sparkly. Even if I don't like the story itself, I believe that I will still come away from the book acknowledging that Stephanie Meyer is a good author. 'Twilight' is peppered with nice metaphors, but it isn't any profoundly beautiful work of literature. It is, however, a very close look at the process of becoming that an adolescent goes through, from the adolescent's point of view. And that is something that all of us should remember.

More later when I finish the book.