Tuesday, January 12, 2010

BLOGGING TWILIGHT, pt. 6: I am Team Jacob

For the past month or so I’ve embarked on a bit of an experiment. Having no real knowledge of the Twilight phenomenon outside of its existence as a phenomenon, I decided to investigate the series by reading all four installments. So far I have read more deeply than I probably originally planned—this series is rapidly approaching the 10,000 word mark and I have barely overtaken page 100 of book one, Twilight. Previous installments can be found here.

Chapter 6: Scary Stories

So finally in this chapter we meet Mr. Jacob Black, a character I understand to be very important. I know this from seeing the hysteria at places such as the New Moon premiere, where middle-aged women professed their (seemingly sexual) attraction to a fictional character who is fifteen years old. More on that later, I’m sure.

Bella finally goes on Mike’s beach trip—he greets her ecstatically when she arrives, much to the chagrin of the other girls. The Bella-hate among the female population of Forks has been gradually building, apropos of basically nothing. The undying affection of Mike and Tyler (he of the “Sorry I almost murdered you would you like to go on a date?” school of flirtation) is probably the biggest factor, which is a little crazy. These girls don’t have better boys to chase? They carpool from Mike’s parents’ store to the beach (at least they are environmentally conscious) and basically nothing happens for a long time. The prose in the (eventual) romantic scenes better sweep me off my feet because I’m not feeling particularly moved by Stephanie Meyer’s description of nature. To wit:

The water was dark gray, even in the sunlight, white-capped and heaving to the gray, rocky shore. Islands rose out of the steel harbor waters with sheer cliff sides, reaching to uneven summits, and crowned with austere, soaring firs. The beach had only a thin border of actual sand at the water’s edge, after which it grew into millions of large, smooth stones that looked uniformly gray from a distance, but up close every shade a stone could be: terra-cotta, sea green, lavender, blue gray, dull gold. The tide line was strewn with huge driftwood trees, bleached bone white in the salt waves, some piled together against the edge of the forest fringe, some lying solitary, just out of reach of the waves.
There was a brisk wind coming off the waves, cool and briny. Pelicans floated on the swells while seagulls and a lone eagle wheeled above them. The clouds still circled the sky, threatening to invade at anyyyyy;oanPD WFCUwqe (pg. 114-115)

Sorry, I just died of boredom trying to type the rest of that out. It’s like a sixth-grade writing prompt: “describe the beach, using as much florid language as you can muster.” I read that section like ten times to see if there was anything in it. It’s the literary equivalent of static on a TV screen. If I had a Kindle I’d be looking for the tracking button.

I will give Meyer credit for utilizing the “list-of-items-sans-conclusive-and/or” (I'm sure there's a better term for that) in the middle of the first quoted paragraph, which gets her out of having to literally list “every shade a stone can be.” I’ll tell you there are definitely more than five shades.

It’s not that I have a problem with florid descriptions, per se, it’s just that it really ought to be in service of the story, you know? JK Rowling gets away with endlessly describing Hogwarts because we’re experiencing it through the wonder-struck eyes of Harry Potter. I’m not buying Bella’s wonder-struck-ness here. It just feels like the book needed some padding.

Speaking of padding, the first half of the beach trip goes like this: blah blah blah girls are mad at Bella blah tide pools blah beautiful blah blah Bella is clumsy blah blah Mike blah Jessica jealous blah something something a bunch of Native Americans show up.

Bella doesn’t catch all of the Natives’ names (they all look the same, right Bella?) but she picks up on one named Jacob who shows a flash of recognition at Bella’s name when it is Mike’s turn to introduce the white people. It’s a strangely formal introduction: one male per ethnic group introduces everyone else. Apparently this Indian reservation has a lot of rules.

Jacob eventually fills Bella in on another rule, but that’s later, after he introduces himself and they get to talking. Turns out he knew Bella when she was young—his father is the one who sold Charlie her truck. Is Jacob’s father the Chief, do you think? Since Charlie Swan is the chief of Police, you know? Is that why they are friends?

For some reason that sort of thinking reminds me of being in Kindergarten—my friend Tad used to always insist that my name, Zachary, was a composite of two names: Zack and Arie, another student in our class. I guess he figured my parents were indecisive. It’s not as bizarre an accusation as I thought at the time—I had yet to meet any Mary-Beths or Mary-Louises.

I like this Jacob fellow. He is funny and flirty, and not flirty in the Edward Cullen “I’m going to kill you or maybe fuck you but probably kill you” style. This is probably why Bella is immune to his normal, not-vaguely-threatening charms.

Bella, in turn, lays it on thick with Jacob when he accidentally lets slip that the Cullens are not allowed on the reservation and then clams up. Bella’s subsequent self-conscious attempts at hair-flipping and seductive chatter are genuinely funny. She manages to awkwardly sex-up Jacob enough that he tells her an old Indian legend about “the cold ones,” who apparently came to town and arranged a tense peace accord with the Natives many moons ago. But check this shit out: Jacob’s ancestors made the accord with “the cold ones,” but the “cold one” signatories he speaks of are literally the same ones living in Forks today! Their last name is Cullen, Jacob, not cold one! Clearly this is like getting your myths via the telephone game. I kid Jacob, I kid. He explains that these cold ones were not like the other cold ones. (Am I the only person who feels like a cold one right now?)
The Cullens, according to the myth, do not feed on humans, but rather animals, which is part of why Jacob’s people made the peace agreement. So it’s difficult to tell what the problem is. Jacob later mentions that some of his people no longer go to the hospital because Dr. Cullen works there now. That seems kind of silly! This is a weird grudge they have. I guess that’s always been the case. What did the Hatfields have against the McCoys again? Or the west coast rappers against the east coast?

One time I wrote a poem called “Juliana Hatfield” and posted it on an older iteration of this blog. After that I started getting spam comments from someone apparently offering Juliana Hatfield’s services as a prostitute. It was weird. Anyway, look for that in the comments in a few days, maybe.

So Bella is all shook up by Jacob’s story. As they leave, Jacob picks up on the weird jealousy mess that is Mike, and deliberately taunts him with his (Jacob’s) new found closeness to Bella (they wandered off alone as part of Bella’s seduction strategy). I am definitely Team Jacob. Plus, on page 123, he bites his lip! Soul mates, these two.

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