'Twilight' series retells a familiar love story
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By MELISSA OLSON
For the Herald
Friday, July 25, 2008 10:53 AM CDT
Next Friday night, Aug. 1, bookstores all over the country will be open late for release parties. There will be store-sponsored activities, customers dressed as their favorite characters, sleepy children up way past their bedtime, and eager, indulgent parents trying to disguise their own excitement and anticipation. And when the night is over, everyone leaves with their book, and then the real fun begins.
Sound familiar? It should: only last summer we were in the same position, poised to celebrate (and also grieve) the release of the very last Harry Potter novel. This summer it’s a different book, but the same old story: Aug. 2 is the release date for “Breaking Dawn,” the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series.
The angsty saga of forbidden love between Bella, a self-contained teenage girl, and Edward, her vampire soul mate, has captured the attention of young adults — and, well, older adults — all over the world, and next Saturday the last volume hits stores at midnight.
It’s easy, of course, to compare these novels to the Harry Potter books: same fantasy genre, same pre-teen to late teen target audience. Both books were written by a new, fascinating female author who hit the jackpot with her first novel, and both series have exploded online and on film ( yup, the first Twilight movie comes out on Dec. 12).
And while Stephenie Meyer’s first three “Twilight” books have sold only about an eighth of Harry Potter’s plunder, that’s still 50 million copies. Historically, that’s more than all the Hardy Boys books combined, more than all the Lemony Snicket books combined, heck, even more than Curious George.
The Chronicles of Narnia books have sold 120 million copies in their long life, but that’s with 60 years and seven books — entry for entry, Meyer’s first three novels are already right on C.S. Lewis’s heels.
And though I find it a teeny bit embarrassing, I have to admit that I love the “Twilight” books as much as the next girl. I picked up the first book, “Twilight” in November on a business trip to Tennessee, and read the 544 pages in less than 24 hours. Then I immediately went to the bookstore and bought its sequel, “Eclipse,” and the third book, “New Moon,” and I was immersed in nothing else for about the next 10 days.
Last month I lent the first novel to my 20-year-old sister to read during her summer break, and she ran out and bought the rest of the series, unable to wait until she saw me again to continue. She spread the word among her friends, who all picked up the book, and they’ve morphed into sort of an informal Twilight fan club.
She visited me in Madison last weekend, and her very first action was to steal my Entertainment Weekly with Bella and Edward on the cover.
If my own family is any indication, word of mouth has done a lot for this book. The people who have read it talk about it, and it spreads like good will at Christmas. “Twilight” never got the press or prestige that the boy wizard drummed up, but it has more than made up for it in person-to-person buzz.
Which brings me to a question I asked myself last summer about Harry Potter: why this book? Why has “Twilight,” which combines elements we’ve seen before, struck such a chord?
Last summer I argued that the Harry Potter books found the success that they did because the world needed to regain its lost sense of adventure. With technology causing the world to grow smaller and smaller, there just aren’t that many great adventures for us to take anymore.
I still think that’s true, but I also believe that this is where the Harry Potter books and the Twilight series differ. If Harry Potter stirred up our dormant sense of adventure, then I think Bella and Edward awakened something much simpler: our idea of love.
I know it sounds lofty, but thousands of years ago, a guy named Aristotle suggested that in all of narrative there are only seven different stories. He argued that every story ever told can be traced back to one of these seven plots, and maybe he was right.
If the story of Bella and Edward sounds familiar, it should: it’s pretty much the exact same setup as a little play called “Romeo and Juliet” — the idea of two people who are so perfectly matched to each other, but a great force stands between them. Will their love be able to overpower that force, or will love get its rear end kicked once again?
That little play found quite a bit of success, and well-deserved, too: like “Twilight,” the story appeals to our sense of romance and sacrifice. It touches a basic, primal emotion in all of us, and that’s what makes it great.
Maybe, just maybe, a young adult fantasy book by a Mormon mother in Utah was able to touch that same nerve. And when crowds of people line up to get their copies of “Breaking Dawn” next Friday night, maybe it isn’t just because they like Meyer’s writing.
Maybe they just want to find out if this time, love will win the day.
And I, for one, will probably be right there with them.
A Chippewa Falls native, Melissa Olson graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in film. She works in Madison for the television program Discover Wisconsin. Visit her online at www.melissaolson.net.
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