BLOGGING ECLIPSE, pt. 1: Two Paths Are Diverging Up In This Bitch

With third books come great expectations. Know what Charles Dickens's third book was? Nicholas Nickleby. Clearly, S. Meyer has a lot to live up to. I've been writing this blog for six months now, and I've got high hopes. This better be good. At the very least, some people better fuck.

Epigraph

Finally, an epigraph I can get behind: Eclipse, the third book in a series that has so far seen fit to quote The Bible and Romeo & Juliet, opens with Robert Frost's bleak little poem, "Fire and Ice." It's about time S. Meyer delved a little deeper into the freshman English curriculum, huh?

[I've retained S. Meyer's center-alignment, even though I think it's wrong.]

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

I've always enjoyed this poem; the first time I read it was also the first time I realized that Robert Frost was not just some twinkly-eyed old New England relic writing couplets about birch trees, a Shel Silverstein for the outdoorsy set. Dude is dark. That's a conclusion everybody comes to about Robert Frost sooner or later, as a consequence of aging and being able to read deeper more than anything, but for me that point on the timeline coincided with reading this poem.

And maybe there's an insufficient gravitas problem with S. Meyer using Frost, but as much was also true of employing Shakespeare last time. To criticize this appropriation is an obvious tack to take - how dare she, etc. - but we'll leave the obvious angles for the obvious people. I'm willing to be enthusiastic about this. Talk about a perfect fit, am I right? Obviously S. Meyer didn't write the Edward/Jacob cold/hot dynamic in order to fit into this poem; Q. Tarantino might pick the opening song before he writes his movies (so the story goes) but for the rest of us this ancillary stuff comes whenever it comes. I usually re-title these posts three or four times before I post them; In my experience, five seconds before you hit publish you always think of the perfect Interpol song title. So to speak.

But it is really quite well suited to our current situation. She could have easily gone with "The Road Not Taken," too; Bella's paths are diverging like a motherfucker. But "Fire and Ice" is more fitting, and short enough that the kids can keep up and (more importantly) get the point. There is literally a mural in a parking garage in Portsmouth, NH that unironically celebrates the fact that good fences make good neighbors. This poem is pretty easy to grasp: there are bad moons rising. Same is true for the book: Bella Swan is stuck between Jacob and Edward - both of whom could potentially fuck her to death. Is S. Meyer intending this poem to be a sexual metaphor? Bella's world could end with fire-dick or with ice-dick? Maybe not, but it works.

"Doesn't sound half-bad! Sign me up for both!"-Alice Cullen

So obviously, this book is going to continue to amp up the Edward/Jacob non-question. Is there anyone out there who thinks Bella is going to choose Jacob? She hasn't gone so far as to say "I'm definitely never going to choose Jacob," but she almost has.

Meanwhile, we've also got the Volturi and Victoria. So I guess the poem isn't a perfect fit. If it was, it would end thusly:

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Or maybe a council of ancient vampires

Would be nice,

If indeed I had to perish thrice.

And if I had to die a fourth,

A red-head would be an acceptable

Way to go.

One would think that of all the threats facing Bella, Victoria's at-bat should come first; Chekov once said that if there's a Victoria on the wall in the first book she needs to kill someone or be killed in the third.

Preface

I'm beginning to question the logic of these glimpses into the future we get at the start of each new installment. Much like visiting a psychic, we get a bunch of vague sentiments that only make sense when they make sense - when they fit somewhere. In New Moon's preface we got a glimpse of Bella running through Volterra, and it only became clear what we had read when Alice, 400 pages later, explained to Bella that she was going to have to run through the streets of Volterra. These flash-forwards have no function in terms of dramatic irony - we don't get enough information for that. And since these books are not exactly aggressively plotted it's hard to even remember what was in the preface by the time you get to the climax. The only reason I remember New Moon's epigraph is because I just watched the movie, which flashes ahead to the Volterra sequence at the start of the film. There, it works. You get all of those red robes which stand in immediate contrast to the blue-and-green cinematic incarnation of Forks, it's slow-motion and devoid of sound, it visually transitions into the opening dream sequence - those are tricks a book can't really pull. The movie also cuts out a significant portion of extraneous bullshit, giving it a little more forward momentum. Momentum toward what exactly is still an open question.

Anyway, the preface describes Bella and some unidentified male (Edward or Jacob) faced by some numerous enemy. Jacob or Edward is outnumbered, and Jacob's or Edward's family will be of no help; they are off fighting someone else somewhere else. Bella is wondering if she'll ever know "the outcome of the other fight," but she probably won't; there are "black eyes" nearby that are "wild with the fierce craving" for her death. Someone is always wild with the fierce craving for Bella's death, so that's nothing new. And then a wolf howls.

So okay, probably Edward then. And his family is fighting someone - perhaps the wolves. Perhaps not. As we get into the first few chapters we'll be able to gauge whether any of it really matters. I'm guessing no.