The main problem with
Twilight
isn't its sparkly vampires who lack all traditional weaknesses, or even
its anti-feminist sensibility. When you get right down to it, the
trouble is that
the writing is terrible,
filled with cliche phrases ("smoldering eyes"), repeated words (294
"eyes" in 498 pages) and the reductive characterization of its main
characters (Bella is clumsy, and I guess she likes books. Or something).
On a recent
car-trip with my husband and the writer Chip Cheek, we mulled over the
question: What if great literary writers of the last 200 years had
penned Twilight instead?
Herman Melville
"Call me
Bella." A tome about the length of the original series investigates
Bella's monomanical search for the vampire who stole her virginity.
There's an entire chapter devoted to describing the devastating
whiteness of Edward's skin, and several on the physiognomy of vampires,
starting with their skeletal structure outward.
Virginia Woolf
The novel
takes place over the course of twenty four hours, during which Bella is
painting a portrait of Edward and reflecting on how her femininity
circumscribes her role within 20th century society.
Cormac McCarthy
In the
opening scene, Edward dashes Bella's head against a rock and rapes her
corpse. Then he and Jacob take off on an unexplained rampage through the
West.
Jane Austen
Basically
the same as the original, except that Bella is socially apt and
incredibly witty. Her distrust of Edward is initially bourne out of a
tragic misunderstanding of his character, but after a fling with Jacob
during which he sexually assaults her (amusing to no one in this
version) she and Edward live happily ever after.
George Saunders
Same as the
original, but set in a theme park. Somehow involves gangs of robots,
which distract the reader from the essential sappiness of Edward and
Bella's story.
Raymond Carver
Bella stars
as the alcoholic barmaid with daddy issues that Edward, a classic
abuser, exploits. When Bella's old friend Jacob comes to visit and is
shocked by her bruises, she thinks about leaving him, but instead hits
the gin bottle. Hard.
Annie Proulx
Edward and Jacob defy society's expectations up in the mountains.
Lewis Carroll
Bella takes acid and charts syllogisms.
James Joyce
Edward's
rapacious love for Bella reflects the way globalism has pillaged
Ireland. It's entirely written in Esperanto, with sections in
untranslated Greek, except for Chapter 40, which is inexplicably
rendered as a script page from the musical The Book of Mormon.
Dorothy Parker
Bella writes a brilliant takedown of the latest school play, dates a string of men, and repeatedly attempts suicide.
Kate Chopin
Stifled by her marriage to Edward, Bella has an affair with Jacob and then drowns herself.
Ernest Hemingway
Edward and
Bella exchange terse dialogue alluding to Edward's anatomical problem.
Eventually, Bella leaves him for Jacob, a local bullfighter with a
giant…sense of entitlement.
Flannery O'Connor
When Native
American werewolf Jacob threatens her with death, Bella reconsiders her
hardcore racism, and just for one milisecond, the audience finds her
sympathetic.
Ayn Rand
Edward
tells Bella that he intends to stop saving her life, unless she starts
paying him in gold bullion. Hatefucking ensues, then Jacob spouts
objectivist philosophy for the next 100 pages.
It's all
about the memories these vampires have carried with them for the past
couple hundred years. Just think how much that would have deepened their
characters. "Bella looked into Edward's smoldering eyes and knew all
the pain he carried with him, the cross burned into the cleft of his
muscular chest, 1 oz., the dash of his hair across his forehead,
dangling ever-so, 5.oz, etc… etc… "
Haruki Murakami: [Added by commenter Benk]
Bella has
sex with Edward, who is half a ghost. Jacob is a talking cat. Most of
the prose is given over to descriptions of Bella making pasta.
Marcella Hazan: [Added by commenter Richard]
Edward
prefers the center of Bella's right calf for his new braise, Osso Bella,
but has trouble finding the Sicilian sea salt essential to its proper
preparation.
Lizzie Stark is the author of
Leaving Mundania, a narrative nonfiction account of LARP due out from Chicago Review Press in May 2012. Her journalistic work has appeared on
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