I’m thankful for Stephen Fry, who really is quite lovely:

Today I was interviewed by a UT broadcasting student about the Twilight phenomenon and the question of how reading romances affects women (particularly young women). The student putting together the story found me through one of the students in my Women’s Popular Genres class, which I know I’ve mentioned before, because it’s been delightful. I still can’t claim to know much about Twilight — I’ve seen the movie (at T.’s insistence!) but haven’t yet read the book — but I am fascinated by the fandom, partly because of its overwhelming size. As a recent piece in Prospect noted, “In the first quarter of 2009, Twilight novels composed 16 percent of all book sales – four out of every 25 books sold were part of the series. The final installment, Breaking Dawn, sold 1.3 million copies on the day of its release in August 2008.” (Bolding mine.)

For my generation, the girl/vampire romance of the moment was in Buffy, and, well, she kills him. (If you haven’t seen the “Buffy vs. Edward” remix vid, this is your chance; also note that Joss Whedon is on record stating that “Angel would kick the shit out of Edward Cullen,” and also that Edward Cullen is hot.) So we talked a little about that, as well as about Janice Radway’s theories of romance as a method of training women to settle for the tiny bits of affection doled out by their (disappointing, she assumes) male partners.

I don’t have a unifying theory about Twilight myself, but I do have some interesting links. McSweeney’s offers Cathy and Heathcliff auditioning for the movie:

CATHERINE: (to Heathcliff) Your presence is a moral poison that would contaminate the most virtuous!

HEATHCLIFF: (stepping toward Catherine) Nay, you’ll not drive me off again, Cathy.

HARDWICKE: Okay. Wow. That was kind of erotic in a weird way. I like the direction this is going in. Let’s try some more lines. Edward, you know that Bella’s figured out you’re a vampire. You want to make her say it. From behind, you lean in close to her ear and deliver the line, “Say it. Out loud.” Bella, your line is “Vampire.” Are we ready people?

And the wit behind Geoffrey Chaucer’s blog summarizes the plot of the first book as follows:

In this fyne book of sparklie vampyres, Bella Cygne moveth from Essex to Yorkshyre to lyve with her fathir, who ys a sheriff and escheator. At a scole ful of recentlie coyned stereotypes, she witnesseth the fayre skyn and fashion-sprede slow-mocioun hotenesse of the Cu Chulainn clan, the which have all eaten long ago of the magical Irisshe Salmon of Really Good Hair (oon byte of this magical salmon and ye shal have good hair for evir). Aftir Bella doth see the hottest of the clan, Edward, stop a wagon wyth hys bare handes, fight off twentie churles, and brood so much he did make Angel look lyk Mister Rogeres, she doth realise that the Cu Chulainns are vampyres. But they are good vampyres, who drinke wyne. Ther is considerablie moore sexual tensioun than in Piers Plowman.

This Metafilter post collects feminist critiques of the series, while a recent Washington Post piece addresses women who originally dismissed the series only to become serious fans. And finally, an Esquire article reading Edward’s appeal as dependent on young women’s desire for gay men.

In Cold Blood is one of my favorite books, but I tend to forget that — as much as I love nonfiction, I always think of fiction first when somebody asks me about my favorites. Little Truman’s slender book gets crushed beneath Middlemarch and Pride and Prejudice. I reread In Cold Blood this summer for the workshop I attended at the Mailer Writers Colony, though, and that reread reminded me just how profoundly Capote’s book shaped the true-crime narrative. Every crappy cable show about cold cases owes a huge debt to In Cold Blood. The structure dominates: the teaser in which you see the victims alive, doomed, going about their final day of life unknowing; the first introduction to the killer(s); the dread. What’s amazing is how little of Capote you see in the narrative, how transparent he managed to make it appear. I reread the book right after reading Tom Wolfe’s Hooking Up, which, with a few exceptions, I despised, largely because of Wolfe’s intrusive, irritating presence. (And his damn exclamation mark addiction.) Of course the transparency is a fiction, and the work itself is a fiction. But it’s so beautifully done, so clean and angular.

It’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like to read that clean angular book and see in its mirrored surface the faces of people you knew. So maybe it’s not a surprise that Bob Rupp never read the book, and maybe you can’t blame him. But I do disagree that Capote didn’t do “the Clutter family justice,” as Rupp says, though of course I don’t disagree with his perfect right to believe that. Capote’s skill makes the Clutter family live for me. I think that’s a kind of justice.

This interview with Cormac McCarthy is wonderful, thorough and crotchety, and since I’m not much a short-story writer myself, I’m oddly heartened by his lack of interest in writing them, or in delving into collaborative work in Hollywood, etc.:

WSJ: But is there something compelling about the collaborative process compared to the solitary job of writing?

CM: Yes, it would compel you to avoid it at all costs.

…

WSJ: How does that ticking clock affect your work? Does it make you want to write more shorter pieces, or to cap things with a large, all-encompassing work?

CM: I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

I actually didn’t like The Road much — shocking, I know, but I still prefer Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker to just about any mainstream post-apocalyptic novel I’ve read — but I did like this interview quite a bit.

And via Sarah Johnson, I saw this report of a book deal for a new historical fiction series by an academic, set in the eighteenth century, described as:

An utterly riveting, edge-of-your-seat, series featuring an 18th century heroine, Henrietta Lightfoot: courtesan, adventuress, spy and erstwhile murderess. It had all of us here hooked. With potential to become a really popular series, this is a female Flashman who can show the chaps a thing or two, while deliciously rollocking through one of the most interesting and dashing periods in history.

I just finished Heyer’s The Grand Sophy with my undergrads — some of them adored it, some of them hated it. I think we all felt, by the end of our discussions, that the book has flaws that make it difficult for c21 female readers to enjoy without reservations. I enjoy it tremendously, myself, but those last few pages are tough to swallow. I’m guessing that the Lightfoot series won’t necessarily be much more realistic than Heyer’s books, but it would be delightful to read something as rompish as Heyer that doesn’t just flit lightly over any hint of sexuality (or turn it into a threat of violence, ahem, Georgette).

A driveby post to note that Alcestis got a pretty nice review in Publishers Weekly today! I saw this immediately before teaching this morning and had to restrain myself from starting class with, “HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT–”

Via Elizabeth McCracken on Twitter, I found Edan Lepucki’s story “I Am the Lion Now“, up now at Narrative. A few paragraphs from it:

Margaret thought she heard a suppressed roar coming from the kitchen. Before the turgid novel, she’d been reading a book about the history of al Qaeda; in it, the author told about Taliban members who had broken into an Afghan zoo. One man decreed the bear’s “beard” too short and cut off the animal’s nose; another zealot leaped into the lion’s den yelling, “I am the lion now!” The lion killed him. The noseless bear survived.

When Margaret had first read that passage, she’d been appalled. Those kinds of men had to be contained. The longer she spent away from the book, though, the more the lesson changed. Now she thought the story meant something else entirely. Such as: Do not underestimate the strength of animals.

It’s a little story, a little series of moments, but they’re all the right moments, and written in the right words. (I admire the way Lepucki writes animals, in particular. Also the way she writes people talking to animals.)

Sidenote: I love short-shorts and am hoping to brainwash — er, lovingly guide — my students into loving them, too. My class is reading Margaret Atwood’s short piece “Women’s Novels” in conjunction with Lady Oracle, and they’ll read JCO’s “Love, Forever” in a few more weeks. (I was obsessed with Murder in the Dark when I was in high school. It was weird but satisfying to put on my syllabus something I used to read in the breaks between class periods.)