Maybe this is just between me and Edward. Maybe I’m just jealous. Why can’t I be that sensitive? That capable of seeing beyond a chubby, self-loathing exterior to the exclusively inner-beauty that lies beneath? That capable of superhuman strength and prowess whilst outwardly appearing ever the limp-wristed anemic?

Or maybe I’m just jealous of Meyer, positive that I am a better writer, but just as positive that I will never achieve what she has because I could never stoop that low or take that risk of pouring out my heart and soul only to have it trounced upon by jaded cynics like myself.

No wine for me, thanks. No, for me, relief comes only through the self-flagellation of a workout more severe and excruciating than anything Edward could ever dream of. He may be able to make women swoon with his sparkling (and millennia-of-vampire-lore-contradicting, btw) skin and colossal, heterosexuality-defying self-control, but he couldn’t rip through a deck of cards with a blow torch in one hand and a chain saw in the other, and in that I find my solace.

Boris

If I was generous, it’s because I’d rather have people reading something than reading nothing. Some people, for whatever reason, only read Twilight. That’s not my first choice, but literacy and curiosity are my priorities, and those start with books, in my opinion. Your remarks about Ende are spot on, by the way.

Again, if I had just stumbled across Twilight and read it, I never would have given it a second thought. But I am still confronted daily with the “duty” I have to read it, and the rest of the books.

You’re right: life is too short. I would rather read a book I love every day for the rest of my life than waste another page on something I have to trudge through.

Thanks for your thoughts.

“Have you read all four books in the series?” No, Josh? Thank God, you still have an IQ/literary credibility. I have read the first book in its entirety, and exactly 30 pages of the second, at which point I realized, “life is too short, and there is much too much actual literature out there to waste my time and pollute my mind for one more precious second with this sub-par, pedestrian, wordy, sappy, prudish tripe.”

“Meyer’s writing ability is chop-sketchy in the first 13 chapters of Twilight[?]” Meyer’s writing ability is “chop-crappy” in its entirety. She is quasi-illiterate, creatively defunct, a glaringly sad, plump, insecure scribe at every turn. Sure, on some level, her <> “writing” speaks to the chubby, self-conscious, last-picked, lonely, home on a Friday night, every Friday night, wallflower pubertal girl in all of us…oh wait…no…I don’t have one of those inside of me, pining away the hours, gorging herself on cookie dough, whole pans of brownies, and endless pints of phish food in a vain attempt to drown even one ounce of the pain, and, as such, Meyer’s <> “writing” does not speak to me AT ALL.

You should be embarrassed. Twilight is TERRIBLE.

And how dare you? How dare you attempt, even indirectly, to parallel Meyer with Ende. The “Neverending Story” is literature. Bastian is a profound, complex, multi-dimensional character in his own right, but particularly as compared to the parade of half-dimensional, transparent strawmen conjured up by the unbrilliant mind of Stephenie Meyer.

And the idea that if, like Bastian, you just keep reading and believing it will somehow get better boggles the mind. She sucks. Fundamentally. Irrefutably. Just as a leopard cannot change its spots, a terrible writer cannot improve that drastically simply by writing more of the same. You don’t need to read every over-written page of every stupid book to know that.

“But Im [sic] sure most men will continue to hide their Twilight love affair like a dirty little secret[?]” You have got to be [bleep]-ing kidding me! The incomprehensible ability of otherwise seemingly reasonable, intelligent women everywhere to overlook the glaring flaws in Meyer’s <> “work” is mystery enough. But to insinuate that there is some substantial group of clandestine male Meyer-worshippers out there is as preposterous as it is insulting. No straight, even semi-literate man can look on Twilight with anything but sheer and utter disdain. I entreat you to prove me wrong.

Finally, Josh, I think you were entirely too generous, both in your response to poor V and in your review of the <> “book.” The horrifying truth is that, you are right, while certainly not better than anything else of its kind out there, it is not just glaringly, astoundingly worse. Which is, in itself, a terrifying commentary on the overall state of literature, both tween and otherwise, today.

Dasvedanya,

Boris