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Yours,
m.

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I think it always taps into something primal and largely unconscious. In the case of the Twilight series, girls (and women) are responding, I feel, to a centuries old archetype of the dark, enigmatic stranger - mysterious, dangerous and in some way unattainable (the perfect description of the handsome teenage vampire here).

There is another theme at work - “star-crossed lovers” - he is one type of being (otherworldy), she another (human) - neither family would approve of this union initially. Even Shakespeare stole some of this “families at war” plot from the Greeks.

If you read the first three books you would see that Meyer blatantly borrows from three classics: Pride and Prejudice in book 1, Romeo and Juliet in book 2 and, more lightly, Wuthering Heights in book 3. Likely a fourth classic will be used as a template in the last book of the series.

There is a reason why these books endure - they tap into something that most people can’t even articulate. Despite Meyer’s lack of finesse as a writer, she understands those feelings of passion and desire in young girls and many women.

Bella is vulnerable, thinks herself unattractive, unremarkable - yet wwhat happens? She excites the interest of the mmost desirable boy in the school.

With the Potter series (which I tried to read with my daughter but she got deathly bored of them) - it is the archetype of the abandoned orphan who holds special powers or superior charms - think of the age old myth of Cinderella or the tale of The Prince and the Pauper. It plays to the idea that even the most ordianry of us, the most abandoned, are special, even superior to those around us - who can resist that?

Thanks for posting this review.

I wonder what you think of the general trend of adults reading/enjoying books (and other cultural productions——movies?) that are ostensibly “meant” for young people. I would include Harry Potter in this, perhaps the excitement over the new _Where the Wild Things Are_ movie. Is there, as I might argue (though maybe this is too severe) some sort of cultural infantilization taking place? Why are these texts that are written for Young Adults so intensely popular among adults, more popular than most literary fiction, much more popular than the poetry that I think everyone should be reading, or your own books even (this is, of course, somewhat [self-consciously] tongue-in-cheek).

I understand that a discussion of taste between individuals is often nearly impossible, but a discussion of taste on a grand scale seems useful. Why these books? Lots of books deal with teen angst. Lots of books have vampires and other fantastical elements. Lots of fantasy books are written with adults in mind and deal with very complex issues (maybe these _Twilight_ books do too?).

The popularity of these books and movies leave me confused (by your own account they are badly written/edited, contain thoughtless racist elements). I would love to know what someone thoughtful and literate thinks of all this. Is it all just silly fun, and I’m inevitably taking it all too seriously?

Matt.

(I wonder what kind of poetry doesn’t suit publication in magazines? I wonder if it’s any good.)

Striving for honesty in long titles,
m.

Most of these issues do not bother me when I read submissions and some of them seem a bit mean-spirited and even wrong (I had no idea that we will only publish a suite of five poems by one author, since if this is a rule, which I don’t think it is, it has been broken many times).