Broken Vows

No tale should start as one kind and end as another

Bardelys was morose today. Not only was he still reeling from the moment of silence he had struck the other day, when he feared he had lost all tales and song and joy in life forever, and not only was he still trying to tease out some way to reconnect himself with the true tales that would always be available (and failing in the attempt), but — what was the last stroke — he had foundered in the last reaches of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight.

Peste was what he wished to mutter. A fine old oath, that. Peste! Peste! Peste!

He had only himself to blame. You see, he had wanted to like the book too much. He had trusted in its popularity to be a badge, a sort of reliable promise of quality. Alas, it was not to be.

The start of the book had not been auspicious. But that was to judge the finer points of talesmanship, and Meyer is no veteran, he told himself. So he allowed for the mediocre opening, and remained confident that the tale itself, once it got going, would be a corker.

There were warning signs along the way for him, that should have told him to lower his hopes. But then, the tale had gotten onto firm ground.

Meyer was pretty good at showing how incipient love turns on the many ‘coincidences’ of running into the one you will love, again and again. And she was quite good, excellent indeed, when it came to the first date of the lovers, and the secrets and trysting, and the longing that teens and only teens can know.

All that was to her credit, and Bardelys honored her for it. He was thankful too of being reminded of youthful ardor, for he was an old man, and it was too many years since he had felt those flames of hormonal passion. (Was he then, he wondered, so old that he had forgotten what it was like to be young? Ah, that is to be old indeed!)

But then — then —

Then it all went to hell.

The tender, borderline erotic tale of young doomed love took a sharp turn into comic-book territory, and became a thriller, as generic and as tired as the latest ‘action’ movie whose title Bardelys would forget before the following day, interchangeable with all the other ‘action’ movies that glutted the market.

He was sure, indeed, that Meyer had not set out to write that part. She had been led into it, by fools. Fools who were either her first readers, or her editors, but none of them, Bardelys knew, understood true tales or talesmanship, even.

My First Love is not the same kind of tale as Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane is stalked by Brainiac!!!

Supernatural Desires is not the same kind of tale as X-Men Fight the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants!!!

In a way, Bardelys thought, as he put the book down — probably for good — Meyer had broken her oath to her audience. The shift in story-kind had come in the second half of the book. And there was no hint of ‘action thriller’ in the first chapter.

The first chapter of a novel, like the first 10 minutes of a movie, is an introduction in more ways than one. It not only tells us the who what & where, but it also tells us what kind. What kind of tale it shall be, that is.

Bardelys had trusted in Meyer’s first-chapter promise, that this would be a teen love story with supernatural elements. She had intimated nothing about super-heroes and super-villains battling across the continental United States.

Lay aside the matter of the implicit vow, Bardelys thought; what sort of reader would enjoy the teen love tale? Say they were enjoying that first date, the secrets withheld from Dad. Wouldn’t they want more of that? Who says they would suddenly say, ‘Enough of this, let’s have some action now!’

Or say Meyer’s book was picked up by fans of generic thriller action tales; would any of them endure the first 2/3 of the book, about teen love and getting friends in a new high school, to find at last the part where the action kicks in?

In part this failure of the book related to Bardelys’ search for true tales and his realization that much of tales in the contemporary world were fake.

The parts that Bardelys had liked in Twilight struck him as ‘true.’ But the ‘action thriller’ generic scenes that followed struck him as fake through and through. It was as if, he mused, Meyer had reached a bit of an impasse. She had not been telling her tale too well, for lack of conflict, and the tale had begun to founder; only the scenes and emotions were good, but scenes and emotions are not enough to make a tale.

Then, Bardelys was willing to bet, some editor or reader had told her she ‘needed conflict’ and this was all she could come up with, snatched from the usual garbage of the movies and pop culture.

Whatever the reason why she had taken the tale down that path, it was the wrong choice, and she had broken her vows to Bardelys and all her audience, and he would have no more of it.

He supposed that if the generic ‘action’ thriller parts were original, or exciting, or good, he might have forged ahead. So he had to emend his ideas. If a talesman breaks his vows, but offers gold to make up for it, his audience will (after a bit of grumbling) accept it, and go on to the end with him. But even there, some among them, Bardelys was sure, would still grumble and groan, and say, ‘The first part was better than the end, why couldn’t he just give us more about that?’

And they would be right.

(Composed on keyboard Sunday, August 17, 2008)