I’ve been reading Twilight for the past few weeks and writing about my experience. Naturally spoilers for the book Twilight follow.Previously
Part One (Epigraph)
Part Two (Preface and Chapter 1)
Part Three (Chapter 2)
Part Four (Chapter 3)
Chapter 4: Invitations
Bella has a dream about Edward that is kind of like Tommy Lee Jones’s dream from the end of No Country For Old Men, except where the description of that dream was poetic and bleak and revealing and provocative, this dream is too boring to even summarize.
In this chapter Bella finds herself pursued on all sides by boys—there are copious side characters at Forks High that I have mostly ignored so far—one is Mike, who has been planning a beach trip since chapter one. Another is Tyler, the car crash guy, who is now following Bella around trying to make amends. Another is Eric, who is basically of no consequence whatsoever. They are not particularly well-drawn characters. Whenever someone other than Bella or Edward is mentioned, I just picture a random member of the cast of Saved By The Bell. It works well enough.
Forks High Class of 2007 (Camera Shy: Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen)There are other girls who seem to like these boys, so Bella is playing politician/matchmaker as boys fall all over themselves trying to get asked by Bella to an upcoming dance—one of those “girls ask the guys” shindigs. Bella hates dances (I am you, Bella) so she diplomatically decides to take a trip to Seattle on that weekend and proceeds to suggest new dates as boys awkwardly throw themselves at her.
It’s actually pretty funny. Tyler, he of the motherfucking car crash, tries to hit on Bella. Perfect. It’s been like one day.
There’s still plenty of angst here; it’s not all fun and dancing. Edward is ignoring Bella, sitting facing away from her at lunch. She notices that his fists still occasionally ball up. Does this school have guidance counselors? Will someone please bring this boy to their attention?
Mike makes his aborted effort to take Bella to the dance at the start of class. Edward pretends to not be paying any attention, but I wonder what would have happened if she’d said yes and not improvised the aforementioned Seattle trip. They’d probably have to pick up pieces of Mike all over the school, and everyone would have kicked themselves for not noticing all of those warning signs.
Bella and Edward have a tense conversation in class, in which he tells her it’s “better” if they are not friends, and Bella reveals her interpretation of the whole “don’t know why I bothered” thing, which obviously shocks Edward, and inexplicably pisses him off further. On the way out of class, Bella drops her books.
I sighed and bent to pick them up. He was already there; he’d stacked them into a pile. He handed them to me, his face hard.
“Thank you,” I said icily.
His eyes narrowed.
“You’re welcome,” he retorted. (pg. 75)
That paragraph break between those last lines is Meyer’s own. I don’t know what’s going on there. Maybe someone else’s eyes were the ones that were narrowing? This same dialogue-formatting confusion happens again later, too.
In the parking lot, Eric makes his move; Bella bites her lip. Edward causes a traffic jam waiting for his siblings, and then Tyler seizes the opportunity to knock on Bella’s window like he’s going to offer to wash her windshield. He grins like a dumbass and Bella has to get a hold of herself and let him down easy, rather than, I don’t know, roll up the window on his hand, or punch him in the face, or jam her car into reverse and destroy his front bumper. Those are just a few ideas. If Bella smoked she could put out a cigarette in his face. That would work.
Bella goes home and makes dinner and generally has an internal freak-out when she concludes that her attraction to Edward must be showing—his cold shoulder is his way of letting her know the feeling isn’t mutual. When her father comes home she informs him of her trip to Seattle. He’s basically worries about her going all alone, which is a totally fair thing to be concerned about. I am an adult and I don’t like going on trips alone. But Bella is a teenage girl, and so this makes her angry. Grow up, Bella.
Next day Edward is friendly again—or at least predominantly. They have a conversation in the parking lot—in which Bella bites her lip exactly once—where Edward asks her if she would like a ride to Seattle the weekend of the dance. The ensuing fight/flirtation contains the best bon mot so far in this book. Bella is walking to class, annoyed, and Edward is repeatedly catching up to her, explaining that he was planning on going to the city anyway, and that he doubts that her truck will be able to make it all the way there. She counters that her truck works just fine.
“But can your truck make it there on one tank of gas?” He matched my pace again.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” Stupid, shiny Volvo owner.
“The wasting of finite resources is everyone’s business.” (pg. 83)
BOOYAH! ZING! KABLAMO! Edward knocks that one out of the park. Anyway she agrees to go.
I’ve been reading and writing about Twilight for about three weeks now. I’m literally less than a third of the way through the first book. I’m beginning to regret this decision, but a man has to do the things he set out to do. Winston Churchill said that, I think. But he might have been drunk at the time. Anyway, I’m starting to worry about what this book is doing to me.
As I write this, it is 8:45 am on January 1st, 2010. I am listening to “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. I inexplicably love this song. I’m not saying Twilight has anything to do with it; I’m also not saying it doesn’t. I don’t know what is happening with my life. But this song is the jam.
Chapter Five: Blood Type
Bella goes to class after Edward asks her out in sort of a daze. She’s late, but who gives a shit? I felt guilty about being late exactly once in my life.
It was freshman year, so I was attending La Salle University in Philadelphia. My roommate Sam and I had finally decided to upgrade to lofted beds in our dorm room, which would free up a lot of space. So we called building maintenance and it basically works like having a cable repair man come over: they were going to show up sometime between 1 and 5 o’clock. We planned on having to skip English that day—which was at 3 pm. But the lofted bed guys showed up at like 2:30 and were done by 2:35. Confidence inspiring, to be sure, but the point was our justification for skipping was gone. So we could have gone to class. But we’d already been planning on skipping. Never mind that it was a tiny school and we were in an even tinier honors program and we were roommates who sat next to each other in an English class of about nine people so therefore our absence would be INCREDIBLY conspicuous; we were planning on it!
So we spent a long time organizing our room before the guilt overwhelmed us and we went to class something like 45 minutes late. Our professor barely said anything about it, but when we walked in he gave us this look—he was disappointed.
I really admired that professor, for reasons including but not limited to the fact that he was the first teacher I had who started a class discussion about the word “motherfucker.” I didn’t forget that look; three years later I still feel terrible about it. But that was a totally willful decision, which is the only reason I felt bad about it.
Bella’s been swept off her feet by a fucking VAMPIRE, though. You’d think her English teacher would understand.
She gets to lunch, and Edward is not sitting with his family. He is sitting alone, and proceeds to very publicly beckon her over to him. He raises a hand and motions with his index finger. What a dick move, huh? You couldn’t get up and walk over to the girl? You have to gesture with your finger like an abusive husband?
They sit together and it’s weird, but like a good weird. “I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly,” Edward says to her (87). This is the most bizarre appropriation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I have ever encountered.
One of the most famous and moving sections in that book is when Huck decides that he can no longer stomach slavery (and racism in general), despite the fact that he lacks the social awareness to see how slavery could be evil in a macro sense. As far as he is concerned, slavery is the World Order and he is being an apostate for thinking otherwise. Notably, he isn’t persuaded by a speech from an abolitionist or anything like that (a conversion in the fashion of The Jungle, say)—he comes to his own conclusion that slavery is wrong. He understands that thinking this way is sinful. He has no other way of seeing it. Nonetheless, Huck decides that he will have to go to hell, because he can’t live up to society’s interpretation of “good.” It’s a stirring moment because he makes the right decision at the expense of regarding himself as evil.
Inevitably I think of this passage when I read Edward’s line, and I doubt I’m the only one. I’m assuming it is unintentional—because I can’t see where any lines would connect. Bella is Jim, Edward is Huck? God, if Twilight starts to make weird “human is to slave as vampire is to slave owner” analogies I won’t know what to do. Like I said—I’m thinking this is an unintentional parallel, but the sentiment is eerily similar.
So Edward is suddenly more forthcoming about his attraction, telling Bella that he is sick of trying to stay away from her and all of that. He still has mid-sentence mood-swings, and I mean like every third paragraph. I’m getting sick of cataloging them. From now on, when ever I quote Edward, just imagine him starting every sentence smiling and laughing and ending every sentence sternly with “a hard edge [creeping] into his voice” (pg. 88). He literally does it on almost every page. On page 90: his “mood suddenly shifted.” On page 93 “his face was abruptly severe.”
Bella tells Edward she isn’t sure what he is. He asks for her theories (Trench Coat Mafia Don?). She refuses, and he gets frustrated that she is so unwilling to chat. She calls him on his hypocrisy, since he is apparently Mr. Cryptic, keeping her up at night with weird little mysterious comments. I suppose that’s sort of a fair accusation, but Bella is mostly kept up at night by her own penchant for over-interpreting everything anyone says about anything, ever. She’s going to worry herself to death someday.
Bella’s not eating anything today, which worries Edward. He asks if she’s hungry.
“No.” I didn’t feel like mentioning that my stomach was already full—of butterflies.
Oy vey.
Bella goes to class, but Edward decides to skip. When she gets there she finds out they are doing a blood-type lab, and pricking their own fingers. Literally just typing that gives me a little nausea and makes my fingers get all numb and weird. Bella’s reaction is similar—she almost passes out, and Mike volunteers to escort her to the nurse. This is a good idea—one of my fifth grade classmates got similarly weird over a D.A.R.E lecture about needle drugs and asked to be excused. He started walking down the hallway to the nurse’s office, fainted, and landed on his face. Somebody found him five or ten minutes later.
In the courtyard area between buildings Bella asks to sit down, and Edward, who is apparently the kind of idiot who skips class and then stays on campus, shows up and dismisses Mike. Mike protests, but he’s a pussy and leaves. This is mostly because Edward just picks Bella up like a grocery bag and starts walking. One can imagine Mike heading back to class, tail between legs, silently resolving to work out more.
Edward finds Bella’s whole aversion to blood very amusing (people in glass houses, huh?) but he manages to persuade the nurse to let her out of school for the day.
Edward won’t let Bella drive—when she breaks for her car he literally grabs her jacket and drags her to his. His emotions continue to oscillate wildly, so it’s difficult if this scene is supposed to be played for laughs or what.
In the car they talk about classical music—they both like it. A couple of old souls, these two. I suppose it would have been ridiculous if they’d bonded over Radiohead or something, but personally I’d rather a bunch of teenage girls were buying tracks from Kid A off of iTunes than Googling Debussy. I remember when Kristen Stewart wore a Minor Threat t-shirt to Comic-Con the blogosphere had a minor meltdown over it. I’m totally opposed to that kind of reaction, because I can remember being young and getting into alternative music and being greeted with scorn from older, existing fans. Granted, when I was 13 I was getting into “alternative music” like Blink-182 and Green Day, so maybe they should have worked harder to scare me off. And why were there older Blink 182 fans anyway? I was too old for it at 15. But it was a gateway drug to much better music. I think people should be allowed to like whatever they like. That said, if they were bonding over “Fake Plastic Trees” I probably wouldn’t feel this way. I’d bitch about it for a thousand words or so.
The beach trip is finally happening this weekend, and Bella invites Edward. He can’t go, he and his brother are going camping. Personally I think Bella lets him off the hook a little too easy. This is not a very good excuse. Outdoors is outdoors, right? Why not camp near the beach? It’s very vaguely suggested that Edward is avoiding the beach on purpose. Bella mentions the location and says his eyes “narrowed infinitesimally.” As if eyes normally narrow a huge, measurable amount? What could that possibly mean?
BOOYAH! ZING! KABLAMO! Edward knocks that one out of the park. Anyway she agrees to go.
I’ve been reading and writing about Twilight for about three weeks now. I’m literally less than a third of the way through the first book. I’m beginning to regret this decision, but a man has to do the things he set out to do. Winston Churchill said that, I think. But he might have been drunk at the time. Anyway, I’m starting to worry about what this book is doing to me.
As I write this, it is 8:45 am on January 1st, 2010. I am listening to “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. I inexplicably love this song. I’m not saying Twilight has anything to do with it; I’m also not saying it doesn’t. I don’t know what is happening with my life. But this song is the jam.
Chapter Five: Blood Type
Bella goes to class after Edward asks her out in sort of a daze. She’s late, but who gives a shit? I felt guilty about being late exactly once in my life.
It was freshman year, so I was attending La Salle University in Philadelphia. My roommate Sam and I had finally decided to upgrade to lofted beds in our dorm room, which would free up a lot of space. So we called building maintenance and it basically works like having a cable repair man come over: they were going to show up sometime between 1 and 5 o’clock. We planned on having to skip English that day—which was at 3 pm. But the lofted bed guys showed up at like 2:30 and were done by 2:35. Confidence inspiring, to be sure, but the point was our justification for skipping was gone. So we could have gone to class. But we’d already been planning on skipping. Never mind that it was a tiny school and we were in an even tinier honors program and we were roommates who sat next to each other in an English class of about nine people so therefore our absence would be INCREDIBLY conspicuous; we were planning on it!
So we spent a long time organizing our room before the guilt overwhelmed us and we went to class something like 45 minutes late. Our professor barely said anything about it, but when we walked in he gave us this look—he was disappointed.
I really admired that professor, for reasons including but not limited to the fact that he was the first teacher I had who started a class discussion about the word “motherfucker.” I didn’t forget that look; three years later I still feel terrible about it. But that was a totally willful decision, which is the only reason I felt bad about it.
Bella’s been swept off her feet by a fucking VAMPIRE, though. You’d think her English teacher would understand.
She gets to lunch, and Edward is not sitting with his family. He is sitting alone, and proceeds to very publicly beckon her over to him. He raises a hand and motions with his index finger. What a dick move, huh? You couldn’t get up and walk over to the girl? You have to gesture with your finger like an abusive husband?
They sit together and it’s weird, but like a good weird. “I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly,” Edward says to her (87). This is the most bizarre appropriation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I have ever encountered.
One of the most famous and moving sections in that book is when Huck decides that he can no longer stomach slavery (and racism in general), despite the fact that he lacks the social awareness to see how slavery could be evil in a macro sense. As far as he is concerned, slavery is the World Order and he is being an apostate for thinking otherwise. Notably, he isn’t persuaded by a speech from an abolitionist or anything like that (a conversion in the fashion of The Jungle, say)—he comes to his own conclusion that slavery is wrong. He understands that thinking this way is sinful. He has no other way of seeing it. Nonetheless, Huck decides that he will have to go to hell, because he can’t live up to society’s interpretation of “good.” It’s a stirring moment because he makes the right decision at the expense of regarding himself as evil.
Inevitably I think of this passage when I read Edward’s line, and I doubt I’m the only one. I’m assuming it is unintentional—because I can’t see where any lines would connect. Bella is Jim, Edward is Huck? God, if Twilight starts to make weird “human is to slave as vampire is to slave owner” analogies I won’t know what to do. Like I said—I’m thinking this is an unintentional parallel, but the sentiment is eerily similar.
So Edward is suddenly more forthcoming about his attraction, telling Bella that he is sick of trying to stay away from her and all of that. He still has mid-sentence mood-swings, and I mean like every third paragraph. I’m getting sick of cataloging them. From now on, when ever I quote Edward, just imagine him starting every sentence smiling and laughing and ending every sentence sternly with “a hard edge [creeping] into his voice” (pg. 88). He literally does it on almost every page. On page 90: his “mood suddenly shifted.” On page 93 “his face was abruptly severe.”
Bella tells Edward she isn’t sure what he is. He asks for her theories (Trench Coat Mafia Don?). She refuses, and he gets frustrated that she is so unwilling to chat. She calls him on his hypocrisy, since he is apparently Mr. Cryptic, keeping her up at night with weird little mysterious comments. I suppose that’s sort of a fair accusation, but Bella is mostly kept up at night by her own penchant for over-interpreting everything anyone says about anything, ever. She’s going to worry herself to death someday.
Bella’s not eating anything today, which worries Edward. He asks if she’s hungry.
“No.” I didn’t feel like mentioning that my stomach was already full—of butterflies.
Oy vey.
Bella goes to class, but Edward decides to skip. When she gets there she finds out they are doing a blood-type lab, and pricking their own fingers. Literally just typing that gives me a little nausea and makes my fingers get all numb and weird. Bella’s reaction is similar—she almost passes out, and Mike volunteers to escort her to the nurse. This is a good idea—one of my fifth grade classmates got similarly weird over a D.A.R.E lecture about needle drugs and asked to be excused. He started walking down the hallway to the nurse’s office, fainted, and landed on his face. Somebody found him five or ten minutes later.
In the courtyard area between buildings Bella asks to sit down, and Edward, who is apparently the kind of idiot who skips class and then stays on campus, shows up and dismisses Mike. Mike protests, but he’s a pussy and leaves. This is mostly because Edward just picks Bella up like a grocery bag and starts walking. One can imagine Mike heading back to class, tail between legs, silently resolving to work out more.
Edward finds Bella’s whole aversion to blood very amusing (people in glass houses, huh?) but he manages to persuade the nurse to let her out of school for the day.
Persuasion Eyes, ACTIVATE!
Edward won’t let Bella drive—when she breaks for her car he literally grabs her jacket and drags her to his. His emotions continue to oscillate wildly, so it’s difficult if this scene is supposed to be played for laughs or what.In the car they talk about classical music—they both like it. A couple of old souls, these two. I suppose it would have been ridiculous if they’d bonded over Radiohead or something, but personally I’d rather a bunch of teenage girls were buying tracks from Kid A off of iTunes than Googling Debussy. I remember when Kristen Stewart wore a Minor Threat t-shirt to Comic-Con the blogosphere had a minor meltdown over it. I’m totally opposed to that kind of reaction, because I can remember being young and getting into alternative music and being greeted with scorn from older, existing fans. Granted, when I was 13 I was getting into “alternative music” like Blink-182 and Green Day, so maybe they should have worked harder to scare me off. And why were there older Blink 182 fans anyway? I was too old for it at 15. But it was a gateway drug to much better music. I think people should be allowed to like whatever they like. That said, if they were bonding over “Fake Plastic Trees” I probably wouldn’t feel this way. I’d bitch about it for a thousand words or so.
The beach trip is finally happening this weekend, and Bella invites Edward. He can’t go, he and his brother are going camping. Personally I think Bella lets him off the hook a little too easy. This is not a very good excuse. Outdoors is outdoors, right? Why not camp near the beach? It’s very vaguely suggested that Edward is avoiding the beach on purpose. Bella mentions the location and says his eyes “narrowed infinitesimally.” As if eyes normally narrow a huge, measurable amount? What could that possibly mean?
1 comment:
Haha! I literally said "oy vey" when I read that part of the book too! I'm more similar to you, Zachary Little, than I am to Bella...even though you somehow relate to Bella at times. Our similarities end there though, because I couldn't make it half-way through the 2nd book and I assume you have done so by now. The two movies I have seen gave me mild depression. Your blog has given me the window into Twilight and the notes that I wanted, without having to do the dirty work myself. Thanks for writing this blog!
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