Every generation, there is but one great work that not only redefines literature and the artistic endeavor, but also changes how we as humans perceive and relate to the world that surrounds us. The landscape has not changed, nor has the model upon which the human heart is based-and, as such, this, for our time and times after, remains Lauren Conrad’s seminal touchstone LA Candy.
This LICK MY CRIT, however, is about a work discussing triumph over adversity through a story of one young girl alone against the world-a young girl very, very much like the aforementioned Ms. Conrad, or perhaps even like a young girl we all know-nay, this young girl is THE young girl, the platonic form of female adolescence made transcendent.
It is about tough choices, life lessons and, most importantly, fucking werewolves versus vampires. I am, obviously, discussing one of the most important second novels ever written in the English language: Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon.
In comparison to New Moon, it would appear that Twilight, the first entry in Stephenie Meyer’s Songs Of Darkness, Songs Of Light: Oh, Thee Vampire Heart saga is full of unbridled optimism as our heroine, the young, apple-cheeked Isabella Nee Izzie Nee Bella “Among My” Swan, arrives at her new home, Snowybunkport Iceland, where she is immediately vilified in her role as The New Girl for her perfect cheekbones (believe me, some of us know how that is). After being fingerbanged through the eyes by Edward “Fucking” Cullen “Bitch”, she falls in love in a way she’s never known before-mostly because she’s 16 and still has a hymen-and as such is unconcerned when it turns out her new boyfriend is a vampire. Plus, she’s fucking 16 and that sort of thing is still cool at that age.
In New Moon, we’re plunged into the depths, the pits, the veritable 18th circle of Dante’s Inferno, as a result of Edward abandoning Bella for “her own good”-namely, he needed some fucking Chik-N-Strips and homegirl’s a vegan. Fortunately, though, she’s spared nights alone with soy ice cream and reruns of America’s Next Top Model when Jacob Black, a young buck stud of a Native American (because, if history has taught us anything, all young Native Americans are studs) who has happens to be a werewolf. In keeping true to his ancestry, the culturally-enlightened Meyer ensures that the character’s surname is a color, he wears leather jackets without shirts, rides motorcycles and worships an eagle or a river or some twigs or something. Also he’s a werewolf, and unless you’re under the age of 3 or have a learning disability on par with being utterly fucking illiterate that’s not a spoiler alert.
Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon, in essence, teaches us that, if our loved ones vanish it’s perfectly acceptable to play tip games with hot ethnic tail, as long as we eventually get to watch vampires and werewolves fight for the entertainment of overweight mothers and their prepubescent daughters everywhere. Thank you, Stephenie Meyer-George Lucas can only fantasize about what it would have been like to have had your talents around when “The Empire Strikes Back “ was being written, for the emotional depths plumbed would have been unfathomable and heretofore unseen on film, witnessed by the human eye or, most importantly, experienced by the human heart.
