Wednesday , August 26 , 2009

    Posted by:

    Sarah

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So! We're back on schedule (remember that's "schedule" with a capital "sh"). Kent's about to head down shit creek with Elise, making berth at Port Twilight.

It should probably be noted that we here at Fancy That are not, in fact, fans of the Twilight "saga" (and I use that term incredibly loosely). So if you're one who manages to look past Stephanie Meyer's horrendous prose, able to see through to the romance of a 117-year-old man sneaking into the room of a teenage girl to watch her sleep, then maybe you should leave now.

~sjh

    Posted by:

    James

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I wouldn't start off by saying I'm necessarily anti-Twilight, although I certainly have that potential. My approach to Twilight is somewhat like a literary form of agnosticism. I refuse to believe something that horrendous can exist until I see proof of it with my own eyes. Which means that I'm going to have to actually read Twilight at some point. Chances are it will clear up both my literary and theistic agnosticism, probably in the worst possible way. But for now we'll roll with Sarah's understanding of things, as she has suffered through The Movie Based On The Book.

For the record, though, I have read Dracula, and it isn't my absolute favorite book of all time. Mostly because Bram Stoker needed someone to teach him how to use a fucking carriage return. But it does vampires properly and with less of an atmosphere of general angst, and for that I give it rank above Twilight, even prior to my perusal of Stephanie Meyer's magnum opus.

You know how I mentioned my dislike of reality-based stories last time? Angst is a big part of that dislike, because there's an awful lot of it in Literature. Characters who angst drive me mad. Angst is the exact opposite of action, and as a consequence is anathema to interesting storytelling--it is, in point of fact, egregious and deliberate anti-action, a character wallowing in their misfortune while purposefully doing nothing to remedy it, and I think it exists only for lost writers to stall their stories while they try to figure out what happens next. Which is all well and good, but that shit needs to get pruned out before it goes to press. Of course, when it doesn't get cut before then, literary critics get ahold of it and start touching themselves while groaning about things like "immense psychological depth" and "profound character development".

The only writer who has ever gotten away with having characters angst without earning my undying ire? Shakespeare. You know how he did it? He made the angst interesting, necessary, and sometimes even entertaining. And he could do that because he was William Goddamn Shakespeare.

To the astute reader, I may seem bitter. And that is true, to a certain extent. But I shouldn't blame critics. They're only making the best of what they've got. Literary critics nowadays are like convicts who aren't permitted conjugal visits, so all they can do is close their eyes and pretend that Bubba is Nancy from back home.

That is probably the most horrific simile I have set down in a newspost ever, and for that I apologize. "Modern" criticism is only satisfied by books from five decades ago, however, so I feel justified in my assessment.

-James