There’s a post at the Harper Studio blog about Stephen King’s recent denigration of Stephenie Meyer’s talents as a writer. Meyer is, of course, the author of the Twilight books, a chaste vampire saga. The post asks:
Can a book be deemed “good” or “bad” based solely of the quality of its writing?
I haven’t read the Twilight books so I can’t weigh in on King’s assessment. But it seems to me that Stephenie Meyer has activated something profound in people- mostly teenage girls – and the ability to do that may be as rare as the literary gifts of a writer like… Stephen King. Put another way: In terms of literary merit, Twilight may not be “good,” but that doesn’t mean it’s not great.
I have not read these books, though people whose taste in writing I trust more than Stephen King’s have assured me that the writing is abysmal. I have been repeatedly entertained by having what goes on in these books described to me; I have also seen the movie based upon the first of them, which I found quite thoroughly astonishing. From my perspective, it seems clear that these books are a Jesse Helms-level assault on American morality. It’s tempting to pull out Theodor Adorno, bête noire of the blogosphere: should you need a fix, his miniature essay “Morality and Style”, from Minima Moralia, will do the trick nicely.
But I’m interested not so much in Twilight‘s merit but in the attitude toward books that’s on display in this post. Books can be many things, but by this argument they stand mostly as commodity: Twilight is culturally valuable not because of anything that it might be saying – or the method in which it’s said – but because it’s reached a lot of people. By this reductionist perspective, Twilight might as well be a movie or a videogame as a book. And I think it’s this sort of thinking which is causing the downfall of publishing: for big publishers, a great book is simply one that sells a lot of copies. This is an attitude which makes sense to the people in charge of the numbers at a big publishing house, but I’m not sure that it plays so well with consumers. I can’t imagine that anyone – beside their employees – would be particularly upset if Hachette (publishers of Twilight) goes under. If a book is just a vehicle for the consumer to get content as quickly as possible, another vehicle can easily be found.
I’m bothered by the idea in Dan Visel’s comment above that there is a “good” and “bad” in writing, and that popularity shouldn’t be used as a barometer of “good” since that makes books into commodities. The exciting thing to me about book publishing is the sheer variety: there are literary books for literary readers, romances for romance readers, thrillers for thriller readers, etc. A good book is not necessarily a literary one; a bad book is not necessarily a popular one. A good book is one that delivers an important and/or enjoyable reading experience to its reader. A bad book is one that doesn’t. There are plenty of bad literary books, and plenty of good popular books.
I haven’t read this series yet either, but from what I’m seeing in the blogs few people other than the 15 year olds reading it actually like it. I mentioned in another post that this reminds me of the obsession 11 and 12 year-olds developed for the New Kids on the Block when I was in Junior High. Obviously these kids sucked as song writers and entertainers, but they were cute and their managers had the money to make them big. Apparently the fact their audience was packed with little girls anywhere from 5 to 15 years younger than them didn’t make them blink twice. And where are they now?? They failed to “grow up” with their audience and went away pretty quick. This will probably happen here if the author can’t “grow up” and “learn to write” for her aging readership. Otherwise they will leave her behind with their ponies and Barbies and laugh as adults that they “ever found it that entertaining in the first place”.
DW Golden
Let in a little magic with Purple Butterflies, a new young adult novel now available at Amazon.
the only thing more amusing than the awful taste of the masses
is the pomposity of the critics who bash the taste of the masses.
perhaps most especially those who bash the taste of tween girls.
yes, dan, the twilight books are awful. do you feel superior now?
-bowerbird