Introduction

Abstract

Of the myriad books, television programs, and films about vampires that have flooded US culture at the start of the twenty-first century, the most commercially successful to date is the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Between the publication of the first novel, Twilight (2005), and June 2010, when the spin-off novel The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner was released, the four-volume saga had sold more than 100 million copies.³ The initial installment was the best-selling book of 2008; the fourth and final narrative, Breaking Dawn, sold 1.3 million copies on the first day alone. The popularity of Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn led US teens to vote Meyer into one of the top two spots of the American Library Association’s “Teens’ Top Ten” contest for four years in a row: in 2006, J.K. Rowling still reigned supreme, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was placed first, with Twilight ranking second⁴; in 2007, approximately 6,000 teenagers across the country selected New Moon as their favorite book of the year; and in 2008, over 8,000 voters named Eclipse as number one. Astoundingly, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came in second place; an ABC news story remarked on how Eclipse had struck the seemingly invincible Rowling from her “perch atop bestseller lists. Not bad for someone who, a few short years ago, never would have dreamed of being a writer.”⁵

In a society that moves as fast as ours, where every week a new “blockbuster” must be enthroned at the box office, or where idols are fabricated by consensus every new television season, the promise of something everlasting, something truly eternal, holds a special allure.

—Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan¹

[E]very age “discovers” what in a work of art relates most to its own needs and desires, even if the artist himself was not consciously aware of all he created.

—Lester Friedman²