Bella, sent off to finish high school in the state of Washington, “catches the eye of a gorgeous boy in her biology class named Edward. He turns out to be a member of a commune of vampires, who have banded together to fight their inclination to drink human blood." So begins Gail Collins’ synopsis of “The Twilight Saga,” a series of extraordinarily popular books by Stephenie Meyer (“A Virginal Goth Girl,” The New York Times, 12 Jul 08).
Collins continues: “Edward, who has never been attracted to a woman, mortal or immortal, in more than a century of postdeath existence, falls for Bella at first sniff. And he is going to be faithful to her forever, even when she gets old and dies. But as much as he adores her, he won’t have sex with her because he worries he might kill her with his superstrength in the heat of the moment. So, they are forced to spend all their time kissing and cuddling and talking about their feelings.”
The popularity of this series is such that the first three books sold 6.5 million copies in the United States alone in less than three years. The dreams of chaste (bloodless?) romantic relationship that Ms Meyer’s books depict seem to articulate a desire lodging in the hearts of many, primarily female, readers of this saga.
Ms Collins sees this desire as problematic. “This sure sound like trouble to me: A generation of guys who will settle for nothing less than a porn star meets a generation of women who expect their boyfriend to crawl through their bedroom window at night and just nuzzle gently until they fall asleep.” For those nurturing the dream of safe and sexless, sweet and bloodless romance, the annoying waking-life question would be: where do you find a vampire in recovery outside the pages of Ms Meyer's books?
As an interesting dream side-note, Collins concludes: “Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon mom who was a stay-at-home housewife in Phoenix when she wrote her first book. (People who have tried to write fiction may be deeply depressed to hear that she did it in a flash after she had a dream about the characters, who then inhabited her mind and dictated the novels to her.)” Ms Meyer was able to use her sleep dreams and visions to embark upon a successful waking-life career to give voice to others’ unattainable dreams as visions and aspirations.
As always, the truths of waking life are stranger than fiction, but never stranger than our dreams.
