The Cliché as Standard

There has been a lot of smack written about Twilight, mostly because the book’s primary audience is not articulate enough to adequately voice their opinions of the book beyond: “Edward is so dreamy,” “I want someone to love me that much,” “Vampires are sexy.”  What Meyer has done is taken every romantic cliché from a book or movie and compiled it into one book that doesn’t move beyond its primary archetypes.  Without plot dynamics or the growth of characters, the book falls apart.
 
Bella is an author-fulfilling character with no personality beyond her love interest and her archetypal teenage angst.  Edward is a creepy stalker who can’t see the forest for the trees.  The entire book is nothing but them spouting trite and cliché lines at each other.  Any book whose memorable lines include: “I can’t live without you,” “I’ll always protect you,” or “I’m only afraid of losing you,” is only memorable for the people who are reading the lines for the first time.
 
The reason why Twilight has become so popular is because its primary audience had no concept of romantic clichés in literature or the tradition of vampirism in horror stories.  It’s all new to them, and that makes the story engaging for them.  For the rest of us who have read at least three other books, have moved beyond a fifth grade reading level, and actually think about what we’re reading, we see the break of literary tradition, the stagnation of narration, and the downfall of good writing.