Laura Occasionally Blogs

You might think NPR is full of lit snobs and maybe it is, but Twilight seems to have been one of those odd little bits of plebeian pop culture that they randomly take a shine to. (Normally, this would be something like Buffy which is actually good. Perhaps they just like vampires.) Granted, Twilight is inexplicably feel-good, and I think there's a lot to be said for the joy which it afforded me both in reading and watching (which admittedly came largely in the form of occasional urgent and disbelieving read-alouds/helpless giggling whenever any vampire hairdo was visible on screen). But I think the seven-minute panegyric delivered by Fresh Air's literary critic Maureen Corrigan gave it way too much credit.

Finally, Salon critic Laura Miller did come on the cranky show on Teen Angst to complain that Bella has nothing whatsoever to recommend her and Edward has nothing whatsoever to discommend him. She worried that it set up unrealistic expectations--that you can just be a personality-free nobody and you will be lifted to this state of utmost importance and showered with everything you might ever normally have to work for simply because you have been chosen by a man who is super beautiful, super strong, super fast, older/wise/experienced yet eternally youthful, rich, has several hot cars, plays concert piano, and, okay, is a vampire, but that really has functionally no effect. There was also some discussion of whether escapist fairy tales really set up unrealistic expectations, and an admission that the same argument has been used against the romance genre forever, all of which I agree with, but it was still nice to hear just some of Edward's insane omg bestboyfriendever qualities listed all at once like that.

Miller left out a lot, though, like Edward's perfect knowledge of high school biology and wonderful penmanship. (These things are actually understandable considering he is 100 years old, learned to write when these things were taught, and canonically has had many rounds of high school biology to get it right. Still, it adds just a few more points on the totally ridiculous list.)

ETA if you have any interest in this topic you MUST read the link sent by rakafkaven in the comments.