Hypocrisy Now (Pg. 12-17)

Lionel Hutz once said that there was the truth and then there was the truth. I would like to add to his truths a third “truth.” The accidental truth, and while shaking the head and nodding the head accompanied the previous two, my truth would be given with a shrug of the shoulders. My truth is the one that isn’t meant to be the truth, it’s entirely accidental revealing more than the speaker intended. In today’s section, our narrator/author has revealed something about herself that maybe she didn’t intend. She’s a hypocrite.

Or she’s really, really insightful into the mind of a 16-18 year old girl without actually having been this girl. In our previous entry I discussed the self-deprecation of young Isabella as she felt insecure in her own pale skin even though she lived in the sunshine state.* Nothing really different or revealing here, show me ten 16 year old girls and I’ll show you ten people who think everyone else is the most attractive person in the room.

For the most part this second part of chapter 1, is still about setting the stage. While the school and the location get most of the words the whole thing is about Bella’s difficulty fitting in. Here’s where the hypocrisy sets in: it’s not that she doesn’t fit in it’s that she doesn’t want to fit in. Purposely she sets herself apart and then blames everything but herself for not being able to do it. And no, this isn’t the type of complaint akin to saying that depressed people should just “get over it and be happy.”

Most of the description is bland, not in the writing but in the actual description. Forks is a bland place full of grey and rain. Bella’s worry over her complexion becomes a moot point. Her pale face only stands out because she thinks it ought to, probably why she has it in the first place. What does stand out though is her supreme intellect: “I kept my eyes down on the reading list the teacher had given me. It was fairl basic: Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner. I’d already read everything.”

The only thing missing from the end of that sentence is the phrase, “on my own time.” Or perhaps even some literary commentary from our academic intellectual, “I’d doubt we would read Chaucer in the original English as the modern language doesn’t suffice for his nuance, though I would keep my mouth shut about that I didn’t want to alienate myself more.” I’ve dealt with this type of student before and they are always infuriating because you simply don’t know what do with them.

Not because they are so smart, like an actual talented writer/philosopher/historian, but because they think they are. They think they are smarter than everyone else, which is probably true, but they also think they are smarter than the teacher, which is not true. One of these individuals actually asked me if I thought I was smarter than they, I replied “no, I didn’t think that.” This individual was flabbergasted because no one ever dared question them. Bella is that student and most of the time I was happy to have someone who actually had an opinion, did the reading, and participated. So you have to walk a line with her and dealing with intellectual snobbery is tough, especially when the student is just wrong. Since when is Shakespeare and Chaucer considered “basic?”

Then comes the aesthetic discrimination, “When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.” Bella is real good at making friends isn’t she? I feel like I should cut her some slack, I know this type of person and all the description is missing is a remark about his tee-shirt either contains a large dragon image or Japanese writing on it. The thing is that the guy is already a stalker, he just doesn’t know it yet, perhaps Bella is reading this into the guy and millions of years of evolutionary memory are just screaming at her, “Don’t touch.” Still the attitude in the writing doesn’t need her snideness.

It’s not like Bella is even trying anymore, so it’s hard for me to feel sympathy, “We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she introduced to me. I forgot all of their names as soon as she spoke them. They seemed impressed by her bravery in speaking to me.” Ever notice how prison movies and high school movies have certain things in common? In prison movies the cafeteria is always the place where status is determined, if you have a place to sit and a gang to sit with it meant that everything couldn’t be all bad. Now think about the first time you walked alone into the lunch room in high school? See what I mean. Bella has her gang, she isn’t a super alien but she makes no effort. The other girls at the table are meaningless to her as she omits even the slightest hint of what they look like. Are they attractive? Are they fat? How are they dressed? These superficial details matter because if our character is going to be an outcast, the look of the first table she sits at determines how much of an outcast.

The sweaty greasy guy will wave at her from across the hall. That’s the only clue we have, she’s not at the bottom of the ladder. She’s somewhere in the middle, the forgotten middle–a little above where I was. Without Vampires, she would probably end up as a theater major spiraling into the pit of despair that will either lead her to Rocky Horror Picture Show or, even worse, getting into arguments about Buffy at Denny’s around 3am. She is, though, making the mistake of dissing her newest friends in the lunchroom and if Oz taught me anything it’s that she’s got a shank headed her way.

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*Well not really, but compared to Washington Arizona might as well be. Technorati Tags: twilight readthrough

Cliche and Not Cliche

The beginning of any book is mostly exposition. We need to be introduced to both the main character(s) and the setting, the tone needs to be set and all of this needs to be done well so that we can immerse ourselves in the world the author has generated. Most novels don’t have much of an issue in doing this, being set in the real world with one or two minor changes that we can quickly accept. Twilight is going to be this way as well, it’s a novel about a teenage girl but it has vampires. We just have to learn to accept this to move on. So Meyer’s only real goal in the first chapter is to set up our main character…whose name is “Isabella Swan."

Ugh, this is trite beyond trite as she prefers to be called “Bella,” “Bella Swan.” In Italian “Bella” roughly means “Beautiful,” so her name essentially means “Beautiful Swan.” This sets up the obvious analogy to the fairy tale of the ugly duckling and we see one of the main story arcs already. Bella is going to be shy, pretty (but not too pretty–we get to that later), and most importantly–an outcast. She needs to be an outcast because of both the typical audience of a vampire book and because the story would have to be vastly different if she were the popular girl, although that would make for an interesting work itself–a popular girl who exiles herself.

We can place Bella’s age between 16-18 given the information that we have. She’s a junior in highschool so she could have an early birthday or a late birthday which would have given her the odd phenomenon of the late start which would undoubtedly make her very popular in college when she is the first girl that can legally buy booze. Until then, she must remain a pariah. Why is she a pariah? Well it seems that her mom and dad have divorced, not that uncommon anymore but we also know that her mom has some mental issues. This pushed Bella into the role of child adult. She’s an outcast not through any fault of her own but because her mom would forget to buy food, pay bills, etc. Bella had to shoulder these burdens on her own.

Again, this makes all of Bella’s social incompetence not her fault. She doesn’t relate to people her age because she’s been an adult. While her contemporaries were watching cartoons, playing sports, and goofing off with each other she was busy figuring out W-4 forms, telephone bills, and grocery lists. This again is a nod to the intended audience who are typically socially awkward themselves and never believe it’s their own fault. So far, it would seem that I have dated this woman before. It’s not simply a matter of finding the courage to just enjoy life or people your own age, it is impossible for them…well not really. They just consider it impossible. At the same time they both look down on their peers for being immature while at the same time wishing that they could be like that, but the fates will not allow it for them.

Her appearance roughly reflects this as well: “But physically, I’d never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond–a volleyball player or cheerleader, perhaps–all the things that go with living under the sun.

Instead I was ivory skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete; I didn’t have the hand eye coordination to play sports without humiliatin–myself–and harming both myself and anyone else who stood too close.”

We can couple the physical description with her lamentations about her social skills as well, “And if I couldn’t find a niche in a school with three thousand people, what were my chances here?”

All of this is very important because the character has to be two things: an outcast but with the material to not be. This is why she is named “Beautiful Swan” in a non-vampire story she would find a connection with the high-school star male and they would live happily ever after. However the more outcast she is, the more the vampires are going to notice her. It’s a simple rule, look at Mina Harker: she was a feminist before the days of feminism and the Vampire took notice of her. The thing about her character type, and the type of person it most closely resembles is that they are, at worst, phantoms in social settings. You sort of remember something about their presence but that’s where it ends. They simply aren’t noticed unless they choose to be and that almost always ends badly for them. This is our character.

Our setting if the real town of Forks, Washington which exists under “a near constant cover of clouds.” This is not so cliche and I like it. A great place for a vampire because the direct sunlight never exists. While most modern vampire stories take place in L.A., New York, or some other huge metropolis the climate isn’t right for predators that either abhor the sunlight or are destroyed by it. I’m not sure what we are establishing for this particular breed of undead: are they killed by it, does it lessen their powers, does the difference between sunlight and daylight make a difference? But the setting establishes that these are some of the smarter creatures that appear in fiction. They have sought out a place where the hated sun is hidden. I give Meyer credit on this one, the only thing that would make more sense is if this story took place North of the Arctic circle.

Prologue, by the one eye of Odin why is there a prologue?

“I’d never given much thought to how I would die–though I’d had reason enough in the last few months–but even If I had, I would not have imagined it like this.”

I have mixed feelings about beginning a story like this. In one way it sets up a dramatic scene full of suspense right off the bat. It also sets the tone for the story that follows. I can think of a few movies that did this really well. The first is American Beauty in which Kevin Spacey laments: “Remember those posters that said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”? Well, that’s true of every day but one – the day you die.” That quote set the stage for a movie in which nothing is given away, except the almost calm serenity that Spacey’s character has about it. You just know that until that point he viewed his life as a living hell.

The second movie that the opening line makes me think of is a much overlooked but awesome movie starring Denzel Washington called “Fallen.” “I wanna tell you about the time I almost died…” It was a cop movie so you know the mystery is already going to be there. The thing about the movie is that it did something very few movies with prologues actually do, it made you forget about the prologue. It used the star power of Washington and a very interesting and twisted story to make the prologue so integral to the plot that it gives a ‘holy shit’ moment rarely seen in cinema.

Done well, beginning at the end can be very satisfying. Done anything short of that: and its like the trailer to a romantic comedy that gives away the end before you’ve even considered waiting for the movie to show up on TBS in between reruns of Seinfeld.

The real problem with this prologue isn’t the fact that it sets us up for a main character in intense danger. It’s this segment, “though I’d had reason enough in the last few months.” This removes any sort of tension from any of the dangers that our (so far) nameless main character will encounter. We now know two things: that she is going to be in grave danger a couple of times in the novel and that each time she’s going to get out of it to face this oncoming danger.*

More interestingly is that we have to remember something about the author’s Mormonism, a distinct sect of Christianity that some Christians don’t even regard as being a part of the same religion, and opening the entire book as a preface before the prologue is Genesis 2:17 which reads, “But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; though shall not eat of it, for in the day that thou shall eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” Coupling that with a quote from the prologue, “I knew that if I’d never gone to Forks, I wouldn’t be facing death right now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to regret that decision.”

This is a pre-Christian, almost pagan worldview. Not because it welcomes death but because it welcomes death without the thought of afterlife. It is welcoming the end to a life that has been lived accepting of the good decisions along with the bad. I could write 3000 words on this concept alone tying in Roman/Greek/Norse religious views and the Existential problem of the eternal recurrence. Which is basically that if you were told that you were going to have to live your life over and over again to infinity would you lament or celebrate? Our main character seems to pick the latter which Nietzsche would think impossible from someone beholden to the slave morality of Christianity. Even I have some surprise.

The Norse often come to mind in this attitude not because of the recurrence, but because all of their gods die in the great battle. The mindset of the Vikings to worship their gods, to sacrifice for them, to sing their songs even though at the end of it all those receivers of worship, sacrifice, and praise would die themselves is what gave them the lust for life that lacks from the modern religions where this life is merely a rest stop before the eternal one. I commend our author on this point at least: she has my interest.

A commenter explained that the mysterious apple on the front cover of the book is representative of the forbidden fruit of the tree in Eden. What, however does it represent in light of the new context: does it represent the forbidden love between human and undead as her link to wikipedia indicates? Or does it represent the forbidden knowledge of good/evil or life/death that the character must now face? The first question is probably the more likely but the second is possible and what be much more interesting to me since it is less cliche. Maybe though it is neither and just a provocative cover.

Putting aside the theological and philosophical thinking the author has set a high bar for herself. She now must spend the rest of the book either tying in the tone of the prologue ala American Beauty or writing into the plot ala Fallen. Those are the only two good options left to her. No matter what, though the first actual chapter is going to be a let down as it necessarily must be a break in tension.

*Which then we know she will get out of because the book is part of a series.

Introduction Post

So I decided that since I like writing both series posts and stoking the fires of nerd rage I decided to borrow a page from my Wiker series and tackle another book. The choices were many and since this is the second time I am doing this books on my list of things to read were kind of out. It might be interesting to walk through chapter by chapter Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War but I would also like to finish this series sometime in 2010. That book also suffers as being the second history book in Western Civilization and all i could legitimately compare it to would be Herodotus.

I decided to lower the bar a little bit and take something that nerds hate, I am rather indifferent to, but that I am also curious about. I also thought that I could pander to the hoi polloi by making it something popular and maybe drive up some readership. For good or ill I decided that since I already defended the phenomenon earlier I might as well take up the first book of Stephanie Meyer, Twilight.

Some people out there may think, somehow, that this is beneath your humble blogger’s scope. I assure you that it is not. Next to Philosophy my interest has always been in pop-culture, which kind of explains why I have three publications in the Pop-Culture and Philosophy series. Right now, love it or hate it* Twilight is the big thing. So every Monday I am going to write about a section of the book that I have read, kind of like an assignment. I should note, although it should be obvious, that I will do this in chronological order and though it is possible that I skip sections in the writing I will not in the reading. This is because if the book has long descriptions it isn’t worth reflecting on here unless they are either extremely good or shockingly bad.

If anyone wants to follow along I will be using the paperback copy of the book that has the pale hands holding an apple (I wonder if this is symbolic or not), as my guide. I will list the page numbers of the parts I have read, or in cases where it is an entire chapter (my feeling is that since any narrative has to spend a certain amount of time describing the setting, the main characters, etc. that the first two chapters will go like this) the chapter number.

Yes, yes this is a lot of instructions and needless prattling about what I am going to do for what I assume is an intelligent audience, but this is the internet and you never know what kind of special idiot you can attract. So let’s take a look at the cosmetically and write out some initial impressions:

Ugh, this book looks to be almost 500 pages, with a whole bunch of pages in the back that are unnumbered, oh wait this is a paper back so I’m betting those last pages are the opening for the next book/current movie and I’m right.

The aforementioned cover is an odd choice. My thought is that unless these vampires or the main character have a liking for apples this is probably symbolic. One of the very few things that I know about the author is that she is a mormon with a degree from (surprise!) BYU (which as a side note the only Notre Dame football game (because all good Irish Catholics make the hajira there at least once in their lives) I ever saw in person was against BYU and the Irish won by landslide). Unless this book takes a complete metaphorical journey into the Garden of Eden I’m going to hazard a guess and say that it is supposed to be about desire. If that be the case then the book is going to have to reflect that in some fashion, or else this is the oddest cover for a book that I’ve seen in a long time.

Next time: Chapter 1…no wait there is apparently a prologue, so next time: the Prologue.

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*Because Pop-Culture doesn’t care which one you partake in.