BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 1: Vampire Blues

It's been nearly a year. It's been nearly a year since I started blogging about the Twilight Saga, and here we finally are: Breaking Dawn, S. Meyer's magnum opus. My expectations are nothing if not high, though they are also just “nothing.” Oddly, the longer this project has gone on, my unanswered questions have only become more numerous. You'd think I'd have come to an conclusion or two by now, but no. I started by asking, “Why is this series popular?” thinking I'd be able to find an answer very easily. I still have no idea. And now I find myself asking, “What the fuck are these books even about?”

Perhaps Breaking Dawn will offer some answers, but probably not. A few days ago I picked up my copy of Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself To Live, which is about the kind of immortality rock stars end up with when they prematurely die, and whether or not that immortality is a good or significant thing. It didn't occur to me until I'd started re-reading it how appropriate a companion piece it will make for this. But on page 5, Klosterman starts talking about Sid Vicious and I immediately thought of Stephenie Meyer:

The only thing everyone seems to know about Vicious is that he could not play bass at all. Ironically (or perhaps predictably), Sid's inability to play his instrument is the single most crucial element in the history of punk; he is the example everyone uses (consciously or unconsciously) when advocating the import of any musical entity that is not necessarily musical. The fact that he could not do something correctly – yet still do it significantly – is all that anyone needs to know about punk rock.

Is that the answer we are working toward? Is Twilight the rebirth of punk rock? Don't rule it out.

Book One: Bella

Breaking Dawn is subdivided into books, which is interesting. S. Meyer is going to pull out every trick she knows to convince us we're about to read something epic. (By “every trick she knows” I mean this and only this.) The table of contents only leads us as far as chapter 7, which begins on page 118. And Breaking Dawn is a hell of a lot longer than that. Huh.

Until the epilogue of Eclipse, we had no reason to believe anyone would be narrating this story other than Bella, but now there is the looming threat that Jacob could come along and forcibly penetrate our narrative (forcible penetration being his wheelhouse). This development makes that seem a lot more likely. We can only hope the reason Jacob takes over is because Bella dies in chapter seven. Fingers crossed!

Epigraph

Breaking Dawn's epigraph is an Edna St. Vincent Millay quote:

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age

The child is grown, and puts away childish things.

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

Is this some kind of internal self-criticism? All this stuff with the vampires and the immortality is childish and goofy? The Twilight Saga is an infantile fantasy? It seems almost impossible that S. Meyer would include this for that purpose. But it's hard to know why else it would be here. I have a terrifying premonition about why, and it's a stretch, and yet I am almost certainly right. But it will have to wait.

Preface

Can we get to fucking chapter one already, please? Jesus. There's an episode of The West Wing where something is going on with some foreign countries or something (or maybe this is during the President's MS scandal, it doesn't really matter) and President Bartlet says “All of this posturing is a prelude to something.” I really hope that is the case with Breaking Dawn. I'm not just talking about all the extra pages before this book gets started, I'm talking about all the extra pages that comprised the last three books. There's a whole lot of nothing stretched out behind us, like we've been on a long drive through the open plains, and I'm just hoping sooner or later we're going to turn a corner and find some civilization, you know?

It doesn't even matter what the fuck is happening in this preface. Bella does some extremely vague musing about what you should do “when the one you loved was killing you.” So Edward's going to do something dumb, what else is new? NEXT.

Chapter 1: Engaged

Bella is in a car, repeating “No one is staring at you” to herself like a mantra. I wish instead she was saying “How am I not myself?” over and over and having an existential crisis. It's long overdue. Blissfully, S. Meyer seems to be sparing us the usual re-introduction of characters and locations; we get a line about how Bella is stuck at one of three traffic lights in town, but no obligatory paragraph about what a rainy podunk drag Forks is. If you're new to this blog, though: Forks is a rainy podunk drag. Oh, and our narrator is getting married to a vampire.

We seem to have jumped ahead a few weeks from the conclusion of Eclipse; Bella's impending nuptials are only days away, she can hear the clock ticking. Wouldn't it be great if Bella was out right now because she's cruising for dick? We could have started with her drunk- dialing Mike Newton at 3am, using “I'm getting married tomorrow” as her pickup line, Pete Campbell-style. But of course that is not happening; she's just going to the gas station.

Bella's trying not to focus on the possibility that people are staring at her, but when she looks out her window someone's mom is, in fact, gawking (and that's not a euphemism for anything, it's really the mother of one of her friends). Bella comforts herself with the fact that her new car's windows are tinted, but then is upset by the thought that she has a new car. That's our Bella: always upset about things normal people are pleased by!

A while ago, we hear, Edward got Bella to agree to let him buy her a new car when the truck died. Not long after, the truck died. Well played, Edward. (Does the death of the truck mark a symbolic break with Jacob and the Black family? No, it's just a long set-up for a joke.) The light turns green and, being accustomed to her truck, Bella stomps the gas.

Engine snarling like a hunting panther, the car jolted forward so fast that my body slammed into the black leather seat and my stomach flattened against my spine.

That's an admirably constructed sentence coming from S. Meyer, but I'd imagine a hunting panther would take care to not make noise. Bella pulls up to a gas station and self-consciously gets out. We learn that she's carrying around a fancy Cullen-family credit-card now – I wonder what the limit is on that fucker, and if Alice has reached it yet. (Not enough is made, by the way, of the fact that Alice is the Cullens' primary source of income. Edward didn't buy Bella that car. Alice did!)

Bella's approached by two tourists who are interested in what kind of car she's driving. Brand name watch:

“Um, a Mercedes, right?”
“Yes,” the man said politely while his shorter friend rolled his eyes at my answer.

Dudes! Always so interested in cars! The man asks if it is a Mercedes “Guardian,” which abruptly prompts Bella to go off on a four paragraph tangent about her continuing discomfort with words like “fiance,” and “husband.” Okay, so forget what I said about us being spared backstory.

(I hate how S. Meyer so frequently structures chapters around reveals that nobody gives a fuck about. Is it a Mercedes Guardian or is it not? We'll have to wait a few pages to find out! I'm on the edge of my seat.)

Bella is getting married, and she's worrying What Will The Community Think about that. She also suspects rumors about her “mysterious acceptance to an Ivy League school.” Once again, I'm sure Dartmouth enjoys being depicted as corrupt as fuck, as easy marks for vampire con jobs. (What S. Meyer should have done is alluded to some kind of vampire-only secret society at Dartmouth. That would have been a kind of inspired jab at the ridiculousness of REAL secret societies, but but why am I writing this book for her?) But the “delicate ring” on her finger is the big problem. It's bugging her like she's Frodo gassing up at the base of Mount Doom.

This is the problem with Bella's wedding anxiety: it isn't going to amount to anything. She and Edward are still going to get married, duh! Later in this chapter we will learn that Charlie and Renee have BOTH given Bella their blessing. If there is a scene where Bella gets cold feet and bails, it will be one chapter long and then she'll come back and all will be well. Bella's continued misgivings seem like this weird, vestigial expression of S. Meyer's guilt over marrying off her 18-year-old narrator to a 109-year-old man. Own it, both of you! I'm sick of reading about how much this weirds you out.

Anyway, the bros want to take a picture with the car, so Bella gets in and waits for them to do what they will. They chat and she listens and we learn that this car is not supposed to be available in America yet. It's apparently for Middle-Eastern diplomats, mostly, and has – get this - “missile-proof glass.” MISSLE PROOF GLASS! They wonder aloud if Bella is like, Benjamin Netanyahu's daughter or something while she slumps in her seat.

(The car, I have read, is based on the Mercedes S-Guard, which is BULLETPROOF and can withstand small explosions due to a "self-sealing" gas tank. That is very different from MISSILES, S. Meyer.)

Edward has told Bella this car is a loaner, and that he has to give it back after she's been vamped. So Edward has friends in the Israeli government or something. How does a Christian bigot like Edward make in-roads in the Middle-East? Did Ted Haggard introduce him to someone? That would be a hell of a scoop for Julian Assange, by the way!

There's apparently a whole other (unarmored, presumably) car Bella will get after the transformation, which is another source of anguish for our narrator. I know, what is worse than a new car? TWO NEW CARS, obviously. What's with all the car talk? Is S. Meyer hoping to get some new fans who are going to wait with baited breath not to find out if Bella and Edward have sex but rather to find out what kind of car Bella will get in a few weeks?

Anyway, Bella laughs bitterly about Edward buying her a missile-proof glass-equipped car as the dudes finish taking pictures of themselves humping the engine block or whatever, then she zooms off in the Benazir Bhutto-mobile and heads home.

In the ideal cinematic depiction of this scene, Neil Young's “Vampire Blues” would be playing. Listen to it, you will realize how right I really am.