Because the world needed another Twilight spoof, the Harvard Lampoon published its own short novel making fun of the popular series last year, Nightlight. It must be hard for the Harvard Lampoon to keep up in the word of online fan fiction, blogging, and even YouTube videos to be relevant. Can anything really beat "Twilight with Cheeseburgers"?
I mean, the first page of Nightlight after the cover is a description of its first volume being so funny, Ulysses S. Grant was warned against reading it because "he would be too much 'in stitches' to run the government." U.S. Grant, folks. Relevant indeed.
But shockingly, it wasn't just a rehash of everything I've ever heard joked about Twilight (although there was that, too). There are some distinctly literary things that only a novelization could capture, like Meyers' overuse of adverbs to describe every line of dialogue (someone didn't read Stephen King's On Writing). Or the way the first-person narrative can sound braggy and not at all accurate of what's going on. Or the similes and out of place literary allusions that add nothing to the story besides draw attention to poor writing.
In this version of Twilight, Belle Goose is a pretty stupid girl who imagines the school nerd that no one talks to, Edwart Mullen, is actually a super hot vampire who super into her. Of course, since the school nerd has no chance with a girl besides this, he kind of goes along with it. Incorporating events from all four of the novels and even the first Twlight movie, the Harvard Lampoon manages to make an entertaining and brief read that covers all the worst travesties of the series with just enough meta-moments to not be obnoxious. Plus, it was an easy read to slide between Olympic events this afternoon.
And in the end, I was glad I read it, if only to the second to last line that read, "We looked at each other and laughed a little because, hey, relationships take work, and communication" which is something you won't find in any of the Twilight books.
No comments:
Post a Comment