Twilight IV: The Twilightening

Stephani Meyer is kind of a big deal.  A Mormon big deal.  So say Dan Glaister and Sarah Falconer...

Mormon who put new life into vampires

It sounds like the sort of dream you would rather forget: 'I saw two characters talking about the fact that they were in love. He was telling her that his problem was that he wanted to kill her because she smelled so tasty.'

Now that 'cheesy' dream, in the words of dreamer-turned-author Stephenie Meyer, has spawned a series of novels that is dominating bestseller lists around the world. Meyer has joined the illustrious line-up of authors who have tapped into the obsessive adolescent market, by luck or design. Time magazine even included Meyer on its list of '100 most influential people for 2008', alongside George Clooney and the Dalai Lama.

Hitler, of course, came in first.  Indeed, the only controversy regarding the list was how far to elevate Will Smith based on his universal likability among white people.

She already has the publishing world chattering about the next JK Rowling. 

She already has the publishing world chattering about the next mom-who-can't-write-a-sentence-worth-a-crap-who-somehow-lucks-into-becoming-a-billionaire.

On Saturday, 2 August, thousands of Meyer's fans, many clad in the outfits of her characters [a.k.a., "prom costumes," a.k.a., frickin' prom dresses], will gather at midnight parties at more than 4,000 bookshops in the US to grab a copy of Breaking Dawn Twilight IV: The Twilightening, the latest and final saga in Meyer's vampire saga, The Twilight Saga.

The novel promises to bring to a close the story of ordinary high-school girl Bella Swan and her fellow student and love interest, 'vegetarian vampire' Edward Cullen. 

The novel promises to bring to a close the nerdy-girl fantasy of the plain-girl-who's-actually-really-attractive-once-she-just-gets-some-confidence-in-herself and her fellow student and love interest, 'pussy' Hunky McHunkstein.

Internet chat speculation about the direction Meyer will take next has been fevered and the scale of the launch event echoes the launches of the last few Harry Potter titles.

In May, as a teaser, Meyer released a preview chapter from the new book. This was a typically breathless fan web posting: 'That first chapter gave us such a big insight on what's going on through Edward's head, and it gave me a much better understanding how hard it must've been for him to resist Bella's blood.' A fellow fan, Vampgirl9, replied in what must be called a similar vein: 

Get it??  Vein??  Y'know, the things that transport blood around the body??  Blood being what vampires subsist on??  Aww, forget it.

'That single chapter let me know him so much better. I can just imagine how hard it was for him. I cant Wait!!'

In Britain, Meyer's titles are being boosted by word-of-mouth recommendations. 'Sales are up because girls, mostly teenage girls, often come in asking for them, having been recommended by friends. In fact, we have just had one in to order the new title,' said Lesley Agnew, owner of the Children's Bookshop in Muswell Hill, north London, which stocks the whole Twilight series.

How quaint.  Having only just recently developed indoor plumbing and running water, Britons are eager for the next big invention.  "I hear America has bread that is pre-sliced--bloody brilliant!" squawked Mid-Lower Trinupshirefordshire resident Chester Shitton, on his way home from a long day of mindlessly shitting by the side of the road ("It's a shitty job, but someone's gotta do it, by crikey!").  Shitton's daughter, Amanda, earlier went down to her local typesetter to see what was the latest rage in printing pressery.  There, she was floored to discover a new invention--something called The Intertubesnets--which purported to allow customers to view pornographic material for just two farthings a longfootsmanrock.

'They read as books that are very clearly aimed at teens, so there is no crossover appeal. You can't imagine a parent reading them to an eight-year-old, as was the case for the early Potter books.' 

"She finally came to him in the bed and shouted ‘Arragghrrorwr!’ in his ear, bit his neck, plunged her head between his legs and devoured him."  And that, Suzie, is how babies are made.

Despite her success, unless you are a teenage girl who yearns for a Byronic hero averse to pre-marital sex ["pussy"] you may not have heard of Stephenie Meyer. She lives with her husband and three young children in Cave Creek in the Arizona desert, after all. 

Population: 5

Like Rowling, Meyer, 34, found an unlikely route to teen fame.

...by becoming a famous teen while in her 30s?

While Rowling was struggling to look after a baby on benefits when she conjured up her story of the boy wizard embarking on a strange train journey, Meyer's break into publishing came with her strange dream.

After shuttling the kids to school and performing her domestic duties ["weekly blowjobs and anal"], she found time to write it down. She covered 10 pages that became chapter 10 in her first novel, Twilight. With no plot, outline or agent, Meyer continued the story of the deprived lovers. 

"Meyer has extended this practice of writing without a plot or outline to her other works, most notably Twilight II: Just After Twilight and My Dinner With Andre."  (zing!)

When she reached the end, she worked back from her dream to the beginning of their relationship. With her sister's encouragement, Meyer then began to look for a publisher. After nine rejections, her manuscript was noticed by an agent at Writers House in New York. From there it was a precipitous journey to book fairs, multi-million-dollar deals, a movie of Twilight, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and due out in December, and an obscure kind of celebrity. 'To be honest, I feel like I was guided through that process,' Meyer told an interviewer in 2005, after publication of Twilight.

The guide she was referring to was not her New York agent Jodi Reamer, or Elizabeth Eulberg, 'director of global publicity for Stephenie Meyer' at her US publisher Little, Brown. Rather, her guide is a more lofty being: Meyer is a Mormon and, while her books avoid direct mention of religion, her faith informs her work. Interviewed on amazon.com, she declared that the Book of Mormon was the book 'with the most significant impact on [her] life'. Accordingly, her books, in the words of one critic, are full of sexual tension but remain 'as decorous as Jane Austen'.

"Homoeroticism and incest also figure as themes, but each is broached in only the most genteel way," said the critic while masturbating furiously.

The intersection of vampirism and Mormonism has caused some comment among other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 'Some Mormons, especially those who know me, are surprised by my choice of topics,' she told the Mormon arts and culture website motleyvision.com. '"Vampires?" they say, with a critical lilt to their voices. Then they add self-righteously, "I don't read those kinds of books." I hasten to explain to them that it's not like that. 

Good to know that even Meyer is ashamed of her books' subject matter.

Unconsciously, I put a lot of my basic beliefs into the story. Free agency is a big theme, as is sacrifice ... Even after I explain all that, I still have LDS friends and extended family who look at me funny.'

Free agency, as most know, is a new concept to the Mormons.  Only recently established under the Collective Bargaining Agreement of 2001 after the contentious lockout-shortened 2000 season, free agency among the Mormon community has been seen as something of a novelty.  Additionally, with the advent of Sabermetrics, sacrifices have seen their importance lessen, as Mormons come to understand that trading a sure out for moving a runner up one base does not generally pass the cost-benefit analysis.

Funny or not, 

Not really.

the figures speak for themselves. 

She should patent that.

Her first novel, in 2005, was sold in 28 countries; her second, New Moon, reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list; while her third stayed in that position for 29 weeks. Combined, the three books have sold more than 5.3 million copies in the US, have been translated into 20 languages and have spent 143 weeks on the NYT list. And while the Twilight series is ripe for the attention of teenage girls, it also appeals to some of their mothers.

Twilightmoms.com is a website started by a woman who became obsessed by the books but found that 'the only other obsessed people I could talk to about it were the teenage girls in my neighbourhood'. 'Is your house a disaster with piles of laundry in every corner and stacks of dirty dishes at record-breaking heights?' asks the website. 'Have you imagined your husband is a vampire (or werewolf) and suddenly have the libido of a newly-wed again?'

Other questions include:

• "Are you nauseated by the smell of garlic and repulsed by the sight of religious symbols?" 
  
• "Do you sleep in a coffin during the day?"  
  
• "Are you chronically pestered by stake-wielding hunters?"  
  
• "Do you sparkle like a diamond in the sunlight?"
  

New York Times columnist Gail Collins posed a different rationale for the appeal of Meyer's oeuvre. After quoting Meyer's sometimes exuberant prose - 'He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare ... A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal' - Cooper [Collins?] concluded: 'Edward is a version of that legendary, seldom-seen male who won't take advantage of his date even if she rips off her clothes and begs him to take her to bed.'

No, no, no.  It's common knowledge that the wymmins folk get their panties all up in a bunch when they're treated like shit by asshole guys.  Pussies like Edward never get laid in real life.  How's this for analysis: Edward is the male-daddy figure that immature child-women like Meyer fantasize about because he is able, in resisting the siren song of the Slut (because he knows what's best for her), to put women in their place as the sniveling, sexual-deviant-without free-will-or-the-capacity-to-resist-sexual-urges they are.  

Spanking is likely involved.

The good people of Forks, Washington state, where Meyer has set her stories, have all this on their minds over the summer months as they promote their town with weekly tours of locations from the Twilight series.

The highlight of last year's Stephenie Meyer Day - 'Events & activities honouring author Stephenie Meyer for choosing Forks to be the location of her series of four books that have achieved widespread popularity' - was advertised as being held at City Hall at noon: 'Police chief will serve peanut butter/jelly sandwiches.'

It sounds like a dream you would rather forget.

Or a nightmare you can't wake from.