September 21, 2009
Defining "abstinence porn"
When it comes to "abstinence porn" as a literary device, I think it'd help to more precisely define the term, at least when used in the manner than I intend. Clarifying the actual application to narrative works is a goal for the future.
1. All revved up and someplace to go.
Etymologically, the flippant use of "porn" suggests a frisson created in the absence of plot. In anime it's called "fan service," gratuitous nudity and crude visual gags censored for broadcast but not in the DVD versions.
Drag racers "burn rubber" to heat up the tires and give them more grip. But we don't go to a race just to watch drivers spin their wheels. There's a finish line out there somewhere and we expect them to get to it eventually.
But the smoke and noise and spitting flame is fun to watch.
2. Movie stars don't look good by accident.
As long as the "fan service" doesn't cannibalize the tone or plot, I say the more the merrier. In fact, it seems to me that of late that the standard Hollywood genre fare doesn't contain enough beautiful naked women.
Most mainstream romance authors, on the other hand, know better than to leave the reader begging for more than a fleeting glimpse or well-placed sheet. Plot is a scaffold. What's hanging on it had better please the mind's eye.
3. It's not about commitment (or the lack of it).
In any kind of romantic narrative, keeping the leads apart while other subplots unfold is a major challenge to the writer. Though after a while, the tangled webs woven to accomplish this can begin to strain belief.
But this is "commitment porn," not abstinence porn. It's not enough that the couple in question be abstaining, but they must have something to abstain from. A real and present temptation. Commitment precedes abstinence.
4. Neither is it about plot development.
Except to show how much the leads really like each other. Compelling dramatic externalities that would keep them apart is, again, what we call "plot." Rather, its purpose is as stated in the Harlequin writer's guidelines:
Once we know that Buffy sleeping with Angel turns him into a psycho-killer, abstinence becomes logical. That there are forces conspiring to keep Romeo and Juliet apart is the whole point of the play.
The dying stuff aside, Romeo and Juliet is like two BYU students racing off to Wendover for a quickie wedding so they can satisfy their lusts "morally." Given the nature of the social constraints, it kinda makes sense.
Abstinence porn is not about the plot and it's not about making sense.
5. It's about putting out fires with gasoline.
Abstinence porn pretends to be celebrating chastity while reveling in carnality. Or as my brother puts it more bluntly, "Bella and Edward have lots of sex, just not intercourse." They have the cake and eat it too.
Twilight could be faulted for being like those anti-tobacco commercials that end up making smoking look cool. Though it took Deseret Book until volume four for some moralist in corporate to finally say, "Hey, wait a minute!"
Yet another case where DB "gets it" but for all the wrong reasons. When religions get pharisaical, the Pharisees deserve a hoisting by their own petards.
At the same time, as much as I like discussing it, I don't think much of the persuasive powers of "subtext." All the girls who read into Edward the very picture of the perfectly chivalrous boyfriend, all the power to them.
True, Bella trusts Edward the way no teenage girl should ever trust a teenage boy. Fantasy is fun for its ability to disentangle obvious causes and likely effects. That's why we say it's "made up" and call it "make-believe."
6. But a man's still got to know his limits.
For abstinence porn to produce friction and heat, prohibitions must exist. Take the foot off the brake at the wrong time and the car burning rubber will careen into a brick wall. The forces must balance out (ideally until marriage).
Yet if the external forces are too powerful, we don't end up with abstinence porn but The Scarlet Letter. There must be enough play left so that the needle cranks into the red zone before coming to a screeching halt.
If the desire is equal and balanced, then the woman drawing the line is a dog-bites-man story. Hence Meyer's brilliant stroke of having Edward draw the line and turning the standard male escapism into a female fantasy.
As my sister Kate observes, "Bella gets to say, Let's get it on! without having to worry that the male will say, Alrighty, then!
Granted, "I love you so much I won't" sounds like a sermon by Boyd K. Packer, except that Edward is hanging those stagecoach wheels right off the edge of the abyss while promising not to end up at the bottom of the gully.
Like the little warning says down at the bottom of the screen during car commercials: "Closed track and professional driver."
7. There's nothing new under the sun.
Any genre with the insatiable demand and enormous supply of romance has been there and done that a thousand times over. But Meyer pulled off something unique in Twilight, a literary feat that's probably not reproducible.
I don't think she planned it that way. She simply said, "Oh, let's pretend that when it comes to sex, men are still all chivalrous and everything like in the fairy tales." And millions of girls said, "Oh, yes, let's!"
Lucas pulled an old monomyth of the hat in Star Wars--and didn't know what he did. Joseph Campbell explaining it to him didn't help. Like Lucas, I wonder if Meyer--or anybody--can trap that light in a bottle again.
8. So you write what you know.
While Meyer's one-off can't be taken as a template, the basic principles are worth a long look. Abstinence porn typically thrives in historical settings, but the right modern religious context could work too.
I believe a big reason that Meyer made it work was because she knows whereof she speaks. The series ends the way it does because according to Meyer's world view, abstinence ends with marriage and sex. That's the whole point!
She just never came out and explained why.
The official Mormon position on the "Law of Chastity" might obviate my requirement against externalities. But the church's ecclesiastical bark is louder than its bite and modern mores bend the tree awfully far over.
To put it cynically, the tree doesn't fall in the forest if nobody hears it. Or confesses to chopping it down. To clarify, I'm not belittling such proscriptions, just pointing out that they do not incur a physical risk to life.
When it comes to contemporary American culture, Mormons are practically alone in living though the Sturm und Drang of abstinence porn. They should figure out how to take advantage of that fact.
1. All revved up and someplace to go.
Etymologically, the flippant use of "porn" suggests a frisson created in the absence of plot. In anime it's called "fan service," gratuitous nudity and crude visual gags censored for broadcast but not in the DVD versions.
Drag racers "burn rubber" to heat up the tires and give them more grip. But we don't go to a race just to watch drivers spin their wheels. There's a finish line out there somewhere and we expect them to get to it eventually.
But the smoke and noise and spitting flame is fun to watch.
2. Movie stars don't look good by accident.
As long as the "fan service" doesn't cannibalize the tone or plot, I say the more the merrier. In fact, it seems to me that of late that the standard Hollywood genre fare doesn't contain enough beautiful naked women.
Most mainstream romance authors, on the other hand, know better than to leave the reader begging for more than a fleeting glimpse or well-placed sheet. Plot is a scaffold. What's hanging on it had better please the mind's eye.
3. It's not about commitment (or the lack of it).
In any kind of romantic narrative, keeping the leads apart while other subplots unfold is a major challenge to the writer. Though after a while, the tangled webs woven to accomplish this can begin to strain belief.
But this is "commitment porn," not abstinence porn. It's not enough that the couple in question be abstaining, but they must have something to abstain from. A real and present temptation. Commitment precedes abstinence.
4. Neither is it about plot development.
Except to show how much the leads really like each other. Compelling dramatic externalities that would keep them apart is, again, what we call "plot." Rather, its purpose is as stated in the Harlequin writer's guidelines:
We want to see an emphasis on the physical relationship developing between the couple: fully described love scenes along with a high level of fantasy, playfulness and eroticism are needed.
Once we know that Buffy sleeping with Angel turns him into a psycho-killer, abstinence becomes logical. That there are forces conspiring to keep Romeo and Juliet apart is the whole point of the play.
The dying stuff aside, Romeo and Juliet is like two BYU students racing off to Wendover for a quickie wedding so they can satisfy their lusts "morally." Given the nature of the social constraints, it kinda makes sense.
Abstinence porn is not about the plot and it's not about making sense.
5. It's about putting out fires with gasoline.
Abstinence porn pretends to be celebrating chastity while reveling in carnality. Or as my brother puts it more bluntly, "Bella and Edward have lots of sex, just not intercourse." They have the cake and eat it too.
Twilight could be faulted for being like those anti-tobacco commercials that end up making smoking look cool. Though it took Deseret Book until volume four for some moralist in corporate to finally say, "Hey, wait a minute!"
Yet another case where DB "gets it" but for all the wrong reasons. When religions get pharisaical, the Pharisees deserve a hoisting by their own petards.
At the same time, as much as I like discussing it, I don't think much of the persuasive powers of "subtext." All the girls who read into Edward the very picture of the perfectly chivalrous boyfriend, all the power to them.
True, Bella trusts Edward the way no teenage girl should ever trust a teenage boy. Fantasy is fun for its ability to disentangle obvious causes and likely effects. That's why we say it's "made up" and call it "make-believe."
6. But a man's still got to know his limits.
For abstinence porn to produce friction and heat, prohibitions must exist. Take the foot off the brake at the wrong time and the car burning rubber will careen into a brick wall. The forces must balance out (ideally until marriage).
Yet if the external forces are too powerful, we don't end up with abstinence porn but The Scarlet Letter. There must be enough play left so that the needle cranks into the red zone before coming to a screeching halt.
If the desire is equal and balanced, then the woman drawing the line is a dog-bites-man story. Hence Meyer's brilliant stroke of having Edward draw the line and turning the standard male escapism into a female fantasy.
As my sister Kate observes, "Bella gets to say, Let's get it on! without having to worry that the male will say, Alrighty, then!
Granted, "I love you so much I won't" sounds like a sermon by Boyd K. Packer, except that Edward is hanging those stagecoach wheels right off the edge of the abyss while promising not to end up at the bottom of the gully.
Like the little warning says down at the bottom of the screen during car commercials: "Closed track and professional driver."
7. There's nothing new under the sun.
Any genre with the insatiable demand and enormous supply of romance has been there and done that a thousand times over. But Meyer pulled off something unique in Twilight, a literary feat that's probably not reproducible.
I don't think she planned it that way. She simply said, "Oh, let's pretend that when it comes to sex, men are still all chivalrous and everything like in the fairy tales." And millions of girls said, "Oh, yes, let's!"
Lucas pulled an old monomyth of the hat in Star Wars--and didn't know what he did. Joseph Campbell explaining it to him didn't help. Like Lucas, I wonder if Meyer--or anybody--can trap that light in a bottle again.
8. So you write what you know.
While Meyer's one-off can't be taken as a template, the basic principles are worth a long look. Abstinence porn typically thrives in historical settings, but the right modern religious context could work too.
I believe a big reason that Meyer made it work was because she knows whereof she speaks. The series ends the way it does because according to Meyer's world view, abstinence ends with marriage and sex. That's the whole point!
She just never came out and explained why.
The official Mormon position on the "Law of Chastity" might obviate my requirement against externalities. But the church's ecclesiastical bark is louder than its bite and modern mores bend the tree awfully far over.
To put it cynically, the tree doesn't fall in the forest if nobody hears it. Or confesses to chopping it down. To clarify, I'm not belittling such proscriptions, just pointing out that they do not incur a physical risk to life.
When it comes to contemporary American culture, Mormons are practically alone in living though the Sturm und Drang of abstinence porn. They should figure out how to take advantage of that fact.
Related posts
Abstinence porn
Selling the sizzle
Labels: BYU, criticism, deep thoughts, lds, meyer, sex, thinking about writing, twilight
September 16, 2009
Abstinence porn
I was reading this entertainingly nasty review of the Twilight series by Christine Seifert, which introduces the wonderfully precise term: "abstinence porn." And I had an epiphany.
Granted, Seifert takes the standard lit. crit. line, namely way overreacting to the horror, the horror of conservative mores invading the hallowed ground of pop culture (which has always been as reliable "real" as a Ken Burns documentary, right?), not to mention treating such frivolities so deadly serious to begin with.
I enjoy taking pop culture too seriously too—but with tongue firmly wedged in cheek. Lefty academics treating bad genre fiction as a poisoner of tender young minds and a threat to civilization is no different than the religious right getting riled up about sex education and evolution (at least the religious right is ideologically consistent about policing thought).
Besides, as Moriah Jovan points out, every time the literary critics pull on their scorn-laden boots and resolve to squish the paleo-romance genre to death once and for all, it just pops out someplace else under a new, superficially politically-correct guise (such as yaoi).
I mean, geez, people, can't you just laugh about it? Because I laugh more at critics wringing their hands about how "worrisome" and "disturbing" Twilight is, and how it's going to "undermine feminist sensibilities." Not to mention the annoying habit—again, usually expected from the right—of using "porn" to describe anything you don't like that's somehow related to sex.
Though I'll have to plead hypocrisy here too, because I rather like "abstinence porn" as a genre description, and see no problem in exploring and exploiting it the best I can. In any case, I would respectfully submit that when it comes to messing around without "crossing the line," a good Mormon like Stephenie Meyer knows what the heck she's talking about.
Unlike Seifert's aforementioned essay, in which she is surprised at "how successful this new genre is. Twilight actually convinces us that self-denial is hot." (I glean from the tone that this is a bad thing.) What's more surprising is how clueless the writer—a professor at Westminster College in Salt Lake City—is. Talk about fish discovering water last.
And when are we going to finally bury this hoary, pedantic insistence that if a given demographic enjoys a given genre of entertainment, then ipso facto they must desire what's represented in that entertainment in real life? I hope nobody takes the fact that I like Bruce Willis actioners to mean that I'm longing to get shot up by a bunch of Eastern European terrorists.
As my sister Kate puts it, "I can't think of anything dumber than telling a teenage girl that she should stop adoring Edward." Twilight, after all, turns on the fantasy of the
While Seifert's analysis turns hilarious when she notes a fan's "salient" (albeit "subconscious") "understanding of the theme Meyer has been establishing: that sex is dangerous and men must control themselves." A subconscious understanding? I'd call it FREAKING OBVIOUS! Getting teenage boys to corral their sexual impulses is what makes civilization function.
Which makes some teenage girls smarter than some college professors. You know all that fuddy-duddy stuff about chivalry and honor—Who cannot rule himself, how should he rule others?—gee, I have no idea why anybody would be attracted to stuff like that nowadays in a romance novel. Cue Meat Loaf singing "Paradise by the dashboard light."
And then (as Kate helpfully suggests), "I would do anything for love" (the same couple twenty years later).
That once married, Bella turns out to be really into rough sex is the icing on the cake. Didn't Nancy Friday cover this ground, oh, about forty years ago? It's the "hip" Meyer versus her "stuffy" critics. Her skills as a writer aside, I'm cottoning to the idea that Meyer understands women—perhaps especially Mormon women—a whole lot better than her oh-so-progressive critics.
In short, abstinence porn pretends to be celebrating chastity while reveling in carnality. But I believe that Mormon theology supports the contention—in contradiction to the Gnostic heresies—that within proper constraints, carnality deserves being reveled in. It's a fine line, but the struggle to tiptoe down those fine lines is at the heart of dramatic conflict.
To be sure, it's not the thing itself, but the contradictions inherent in the oxymoron that ultimately make the story compelling. And here I return to the point I originally intended to make, which is that Mormon culture provides one of the few contemporary American settings (aside from the Amish) where "abstinence porn" plots actually prove plausible.
Hawt Mormon romance abstinence porn—maybe that's the literary ticket to breakout publishing success!
Granted, Seifert takes the standard lit. crit. line, namely way overreacting to the horror, the horror of conservative mores invading the hallowed ground of pop culture (which has always been as reliable "real" as a Ken Burns documentary, right?), not to mention treating such frivolities so deadly serious to begin with.
I enjoy taking pop culture too seriously too—but with tongue firmly wedged in cheek. Lefty academics treating bad genre fiction as a poisoner of tender young minds and a threat to civilization is no different than the religious right getting riled up about sex education and evolution (at least the religious right is ideologically consistent about policing thought).
Besides, as Moriah Jovan points out, every time the literary critics pull on their scorn-laden boots and resolve to squish the paleo-romance genre to death once and for all, it just pops out someplace else under a new, superficially politically-correct guise (such as yaoi).
I mean, geez, people, can't you just laugh about it? Because I laugh more at critics wringing their hands about how "worrisome" and "disturbing" Twilight is, and how it's going to "undermine feminist sensibilities." Not to mention the annoying habit—again, usually expected from the right—of using "porn" to describe anything you don't like that's somehow related to sex.
Though I'll have to plead hypocrisy here too, because I rather like "abstinence porn" as a genre description, and see no problem in exploring and exploiting it the best I can. In any case, I would respectfully submit that when it comes to messing around without "crossing the line," a good Mormon like Stephenie Meyer knows what the heck she's talking about.
Unlike Seifert's aforementioned essay, in which she is surprised at "how successful this new genre is. Twilight actually convinces us that self-denial is hot." (I glean from the tone that this is a bad thing.) What's more surprising is how clueless the writer—a professor at Westminster College in Salt Lake City—is. Talk about fish discovering water last.
And when are we going to finally bury this hoary, pedantic insistence that if a given demographic enjoys a given genre of entertainment, then ipso facto they must desire what's represented in that entertainment in real life? I hope nobody takes the fact that I like Bruce Willis actioners to mean that I'm longing to get shot up by a bunch of Eastern European terrorists.
As my sister Kate puts it, "I can't think of anything dumber than telling a teenage girl that she should stop adoring Edward." Twilight, after all, turns on the fantasy of the
romantic other who totally understands us and totally wants us and never wants to leave us and is always there for us and knows what is best for us . . . [In real life,] this type of relationship would get very tedious very fast, but I think it is unfair to get after women who voice it.
While Seifert's analysis turns hilarious when she notes a fan's "salient" (albeit "subconscious") "understanding of the theme Meyer has been establishing: that sex is dangerous and men must control themselves." A subconscious understanding? I'd call it FREAKING OBVIOUS! Getting teenage boys to corral their sexual impulses is what makes civilization function.
Which makes some teenage girls smarter than some college professors. You know all that fuddy-duddy stuff about chivalry and honor—Who cannot rule himself, how should he rule others?—gee, I have no idea why anybody would be attracted to stuff like that nowadays in a romance novel. Cue Meat Loaf singing "Paradise by the dashboard light."
And then (as Kate helpfully suggests), "I would do anything for love" (the same couple twenty years later).
That once married, Bella turns out to be really into rough sex is the icing on the cake. Didn't Nancy Friday cover this ground, oh, about forty years ago? It's the "hip" Meyer versus her "stuffy" critics. Her skills as a writer aside, I'm cottoning to the idea that Meyer understands women—perhaps especially Mormon women—a whole lot better than her oh-so-progressive critics.
In short, abstinence porn pretends to be celebrating chastity while reveling in carnality. But I believe that Mormon theology supports the contention—in contradiction to the Gnostic heresies—that within proper constraints, carnality deserves being reveled in. It's a fine line, but the struggle to tiptoe down those fine lines is at the heart of dramatic conflict.
To be sure, it's not the thing itself, but the contradictions inherent in the oxymoron that ultimately make the story compelling. And here I return to the point I originally intended to make, which is that Mormon culture provides one of the few contemporary American settings (aside from the Amish) where "abstinence porn" plots actually prove plausible.
Hawt Mormon romance abstinence porn—maybe that's the literary ticket to breakout publishing success!
Related posts
Defining "abstinence porn"
Selling the sizzle
Labels: criticism, deep thoughts, lds, meyer, sex, twilight, utah, writing
December 16, 2008
Selling "Twilight" in Japan (update)
Twilight was first published in two A6 volumes (4 x 6 inches), with the original cover art. The three-volume sets, illustrated by mangaka Ryuuji Gotsubo, are in JIS B6 (5 x 7.25 inches).
Labels: japan, meyer, publishing, twilight
November 24, 2008
The best "Twilight" review so far
As previously noted, I really enjoyed Dirty Harry's take on the film: "old-fashioned" as the new new. Seriously, I think he's onto something.
But David Edelstein at NPR does Dirty Harry one better. Kristen Stewart (as Bella), he argues, is so "much better at conveying physical longing than any of the actors playing vampires" that
Sublimating our way to high art, yeah, that's the ticket! (Hmm, on the other hand, not a bad idea at all.)
Twilight is the anti-everything awful and insidious produced these last fifteen years to further the left’s malicious goal of insinuating themselves in that spot they find most comfortable: right between you and your children. Not a single one of the cultural, sexual, or political pitfalls so common in movies (and public schools) are found here. Even the way in which the film’s directed, edited and scored is anti-MTV.
But David Edelstein at NPR does Dirty Harry one better. Kristen Stewart (as Bella), he argues, is so "much better at conveying physical longing than any of the actors playing vampires" that
she alone suggests how this series was born, in the mind of a young Mormon girl who had to sublimate like mad with thoughts of vampires. Duncan Lance Black, the screenwriter of the gay-rights activist Harvey Milk biopic with Sean Penn opening next week, is also a Mormon. With characters that veer between implosive sexual repression and explosive sexual liberation, Mormons might well be the new Catholics.
Sublimating our way to high art, yeah, that's the ticket! (Hmm, on the other hand, not a bad idea at all.)
August 12, 2008
The Tale of Genji ("Twilight" edition)
The "imprinting" instinct used as a plot device in the Twilight series got me thinking about The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (written 1000 years ago). During his romantic conquests, Genji stumbles across a beautiful child by the name of Murasaki (hmm, also the name of the author).
He installs her in his manor as his "daughter," and then marries her after she grows up a bit. So I guess he has some standards, though it's still creepy by today's standards (not to mention that everybody in the story is somehow related to everybody else).
From the Seidensticker translation:
All together now: Ewww. Though come to think about it, Murasaki and Genji also kind of remind me of Bella and Edward (Genji never "sparkles," but he is described as "the Shining Prince"):
And:
And:
On the other hand, if the above was getting you into a genre-romance state of mind, there is this (hard to put out of your mind) bit of self-reflection early on:
But after reading this absurdly funny chapter-by-chapter summary of Breaking Dawn, I'm beginning to think I could really learn to grok Meyer's twisted, 11th century view of romantic relationships. I'd like to believe she wrote the previous three books just to get to this one.
In fact, the imprinting business strikes me as Meyer's buried lede (that she returns to in The Host). It is a more extreme example of the plot device I employ in The Path of Dreams--asking what happens when we are deprived of a specific element of human agency and try to accommodate it.
Though as my sister points out, this theme would have held together better if Jacob hadn't spent all his time up to that point hitting hard on Bella, apparently, it turns out, in order to get first dibs on her (as yet unborn) daughter. I'm sorry, but that even outcreeps Genji.
He installs her in his manor as his "daughter," and then marries her after she grows up a bit. So I guess he has some standards, though it's still creepy by today's standards (not to mention that everybody in the story is somehow related to everybody else).
From the Seidensticker translation:
Murasaki was much on [Genji's] mind. She seemed peerless, the nearest he could imagine to his ideal. Thinking that she was no longer too young for marriage, he had occasionally made amorous overtures; but she had not seemed to understand.
All together now: Ewww. Though come to think about it, Murasaki and Genji also kind of remind me of Bella and Edward (Genji never "sparkles," but he is described as "the Shining Prince"):
Murasaki was suddenly a forlorn little figure. She put aside the pictures and lay with her face hidden in a pillow.
"Do you miss me when I am away?" He stroked her hair that fell luxuriantly over her shoulders.
She nodded a quick, emphatic nod.
"And I miss you. I can hardly bear to be away from you for a single day."
And:
So she had herself a nice husband, thought Murasaki. The husbands of these women were none of them handsome men, and hers was so very young and handsome.
And:
Murasaki was more on his mind. He must go comfort her. She pleased him more, she seemed prettier and cleverer and more amiable, each time he saw her.
On the other hand, if the above was getting you into a genre-romance state of mind, there is this (hard to put out of your mind) bit of self-reflection early on:
Murasaki was the perfect companion, a toy for him to play with. He could not have been so free and uninhibited with a daughter of his own. There are restraints upon paternal intimacy. Yes, he had come upon a remarkable little treasure.
But after reading this absurdly funny chapter-by-chapter summary of Breaking Dawn, I'm beginning to think I could really learn to grok Meyer's twisted, 11th century view of romantic relationships. I'd like to believe she wrote the previous three books just to get to this one.
In fact, the imprinting business strikes me as Meyer's buried lede (that she returns to in The Host). It is a more extreme example of the plot device I employ in The Path of Dreams--asking what happens when we are deprived of a specific element of human agency and try to accommodate it.
Though as my sister points out, this theme would have held together better if Jacob hadn't spent all his time up to that point hitting hard on Bella, apparently, it turns out, in order to get first dibs on her (as yet unborn) daughter. I'm sorry, but that even outcreeps Genji.
August 07, 2008
"Breaking Dawn" at Dear Author
A review at the Dear Author blog (not a nice one). But these are people who love fantasy and romance. Not literary snobs. The kind of readers I identify with the most, who know there's good pulp and then there's not-so-good pulp.
The comments section contains a compelling discussion of character and story structure and meeting expectations in genre fiction. Who is responsible for a book's success? The writer? The editor? The readers?
I agree that the readers have the final say and ultimately render the only judgment that matters. But can too much love ruin a writer? Does sparing the rod spoil the child? Can the fans love an author to death?
Warning: plenty of spoilers along the way. You will know the plot of the whole book by the time you've read through all of the comments. Oh, and I made a similar quip about the Mormon naming business here.
The comments section contains a compelling discussion of character and story structure and meeting expectations in genre fiction. Who is responsible for a book's success? The writer? The editor? The readers?
I agree that the readers have the final say and ultimately render the only judgment that matters. But can too much love ruin a writer? Does sparing the rod spoil the child? Can the fans love an author to death?
Warning: plenty of spoilers along the way. You will know the plot of the whole book by the time you've read through all of the comments. Oh, and I made a similar quip about the Mormon naming business here.
Labels: criticism, lds, meyer, publishing, writing
July 07, 2008
Selling "Twilight" in Japan
The Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer are marketed mainly as "light novels" in Japan. Each book is broken into a three volume set, but numbered sequentially as a unified series.This is common practice to make paperbacks more portable, to make them "read fast," and, yes, to maximize margins.
The light novel typically uses the A6 (4 x 6 inch) format, and has a glossy color cover. The content is genre fiction, with a dozen or so pen and ink illustrations. Furigana are included to help with the pronunciation of difficult kanji.
The large green characters across the cover of the first volume read: "Twilight 1" (Towairaito). The Japanese title translates as "The man I loved is a vampire." All the books follow this design and have individual titles (so far there are nine volumes).
What with the pining and the angst, the mysterious and/or supernatural boyfriend(s) who seem to live in a world of their own, and the "ne're the twain shall meet" theme, the Twilight series is a good fit for the Japanese young adult romance market.
UPDATE: Twilight was first published in two A6 volumes (4 x 6 inches), with the original cover art. The three-volume sets, illustrated by mangaka Ryuuji Gotsubo, are in JIS B6 (5 x 7.25 inches).
Labels: japan, light novel, meyer, publishing, twilight
July 01, 2008
More about "Twilight"
I haven't read the books and so can only point to what other people (whose opinions I trust) are saying. My sister Kate and her friend Carole take on the series at length on Kate's blog. Additional related commentary here.
May 01, 2008
Stephenie Meyer
A TIME magazine bio about Mormon fantasy writer Stephenie Meyer, author of the fabulously successful Twilight vampire series. My favorite quote in the article: "I rarely write about just humans," Meyer says. "You can get humans anywhere."
I would put it this way: "I don't want to write about reality. I already live there."
Here's some commentary by William Morris about the novels from a Mormon perspective, with a bunch of additional links. More here, wondering if the male protagonists in Twilight are just too good to be true.
Similar thoughts back at A Motley Vision, with Anneke Majors recommending D.H. Lawrence and arguing that
So what makes this guy so compelling?
And all a man asks of a woman is that she be "hot." Pretty dang easy in comparison to that, it seems to me.
Okay, I joke, I joke. But I do glean from the comments a fascination with a certain kind of stoic male sexuality, conforming to all the romance stereotypes: "Edward is expected to have all the self-control. Bella is not just passive, she is actively tempting and provoking him."
This was a theme in the first half of Buffy, and it ended badly. Buffy pretty much repeated herself with Spike, and the relationship was just as dysfunctional. Give Joss Whedon extra points for keeping it real.
I would put it this way: "I don't want to write about reality. I already live there."
Here's some commentary by William Morris about the novels from a Mormon perspective, with a bunch of additional links. More here, wondering if the male protagonists in Twilight are just too good to be true.
Similar thoughts back at A Motley Vision, with Anneke Majors recommending D.H. Lawrence and arguing that
I would much rather my teenage sisters read novels that would elevate their worldviews and deepen their respect and appreciation for human intimacy than see them swooning over the abusive, controlling vampire character of Edward Cullen.
So what makes this guy so compelling?
He's dangerous (a vampire!) but not really (he's good!). He is hot but doesn't care. He's rich but doesn't care and doesn't have to work for it. He is powerful but is helpless before Bella's charms after only a glimpse of her. He is attentive and loyal and thinks only of her.
And all a man asks of a woman is that she be "hot." Pretty dang easy in comparison to that, it seems to me.
Okay, I joke, I joke. But I do glean from the comments a fascination with a certain kind of stoic male sexuality, conforming to all the romance stereotypes: "Edward is expected to have all the self-control. Bella is not just passive, she is actively tempting and provoking him."
This was a theme in the first half of Buffy, and it ended badly. Buffy pretty much repeated herself with Spike, and the relationship was just as dysfunctional. Give Joss Whedon extra points for keeping it real.