That doesn't mean that I've come to terms with the questionable writing or the cartoonishly angsty teenaged characters, but I am beginning to enjoy myself despite myself. But this wouldn't be a Swanson blog without my typically arrogant, Snarky McSnarkerson, Stiffly Stifferson commentary, so I will try to not disappoint. This is, after all, a culturally elitist blog (Thurston Howell has nothing on me).
As noted, I completed the first book a few days ago, and am now well into the second. My newfound sense of urgency is partly related to my wanting to finish all four books while Breaking Dawn, Part 2 is still in theaters, so I can say I sort of took part in the movie sensation while it's still around. Kristen Stewart has been making the talk-show rounds lately to promote On the Road, and I'm beginning to anticipate how she may have portrayed the character of Bella in the movie series. I must say I'm intrigued. Stewart's personality seems to be not unlike Bella, and it's not hard to see why she was given the role. As for Robert Pattinson, his pretty boy take on Cedric Diggory never seemed particularly appropriate to Harry Potter, but I can see it working perfectly in the role of Edward Cullen in Twilight. I'm actually excited to start watching the movies, and that is a big reason for my accelerating reading.
Much to my surprise, however, most of the reason for my increasingly eager consumption of this literary celebration of all that is youthful ants-in-the-pants is that I'm actually enjoying it. We were all teenagers at one time, and it's not hard to get dragged back into that mindset from reading Twilight. Now that I'm a 32-year-old, married, professional symphony musician it can get all too easy for me to forget about how the pain of lost love feels to a young person, but Bella's emotional agony at the (presumably temporary) end of her relationship to Edward Cullen uncomfortably brings me back to that time of life. On reading of this development in her story I began to actually feel some sympathy for Bella.
Then I came to the part of the story where Bella is (for some bizarre reason) given two non-functional motorcycles and takes them to her friend Jacob Black to fix up without her father knowing (he disapproves of motorcycles). This is her forward-thinking way of accomplishing this:
"'I've got some money saved. College fund, you know.' College, schmollege, I thought to myself. It wasn't like I'd saved up enough to go anywhere special - and besides, I had no desire to leave Forks anyway. What difference would it make if I skimmed a little bit off the top? ... As we skulked back to the makeshift garage, I contemplated my luck. Only a teenaged boy would agree to this: deceiving both our parents while repairing dangerous vehicles using money meant for my college education. He didn't see anything wrong with that picture. Jacob was a gift from the gods."
Yeah.
My sympathy for Bella now? Not so much. Throughout the first book I felt that Bella simply wasn't a good person, and now it's even harder for to find any sense of agreement with her decision-making ability. I guess a person's overall character and her decision-making are not necessarily the same thing, but Bella's choices have consistently left my jaw hanging (and a hanging jaw is not a good look for me). She's using money from her college fund to fix up motorcycles? Since when did 18 become an acceptable age to have a midlife crisis?
And yet, despite this, I continue reading, and I'm okay with that. My sense of inner chagrin is getting less pronounced every day. I anticipate being 100% chagrin-free by the end of 2012. Maybe it's a good thing that, if the Mayans are right, we'll never live to see that day.
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