Twilight and Tom Clancy

Everybody's talking about Stephenie Meyer's Variety interview. I've seen a range of reactions from relief that she doesn't intend on continuing the series, to people upset that she's distancing herself from the franchise that brought her such success. Here's the relevant part:

DM: What about a return to “Twilight?”SM: I get further away every day. I am so over it. For me, it’s not a happy place to be.
DM: Is the door completely closed on that?SM: Not completely. What I would probably do is three paragraphs on my blog saying which of the characters died. I’m interested in spending time in other worlds, like Middle-Earth.

I can't find it within myself to be surprised at this, personally. Maybe I'm a little surprised that it didn't come sooner.

For all intents and purposes, Stephenie Meyer has been held up as a cultural pariah, a herald of ZE END TIMES, because she wrote a book about teen vampire love that got super super popular. From a Sundance 2013 interview:

SM: There are a lot of people who think that the Twilight books should have never been written. I even saw something with Doctor Who going back in time to stop me.

There's no denying that the world hasn't treated Stephenie Meyer with respect. This is what Robert Pattinson - the guy who owes his worldwide fame and approximately twelve gazillion dollars to Twilight - had to say about the books and the woman who wrote them:

"...when I read [Twilight], it seemed like... I was convinced Stephenie was convinced she was Bella and it was like it was a book that wasn't supposed to be published. It was like reading her sexual fantasy, especially when she said it was based on a dream and it was like, 'Oh I've had this dream about this really sexy guy,' and she just writes this book about it. Some things about Edward are so specific, I was just convinced - I was like, 'This woman is mad. She's completely mad and she's in love with her own fictional creation.'"

 Classy!

I've never been a Twilight fan - I'm not a paranormal romance fan in general, particularly for YA. The whole Angel thing didn't work for me in Buffy, and it doesn't work for me now. And there are definitely some problematic elements to Twilight, particularly in the way that Bella allows herself to be treated and how she seems to derive all of her self-worth from being with Edward.

But on the other hand, those are issues I see a lot of other places as well. I certainly don't think we should condone the issues in Twilight, but holding up Stephenie Meyer as the Harbringer of All Literary Doom rather than as a symptom of a larger problem seems disingenuous at best.

Although the majority of consumers loved Twilight enough to make Stephenie Meyer rich many times over (and enough to make a whooooole lot of people rich off her coattails), anyone in any sort of position of power uniformly mocked it: talk show hosts, film critics, other writers. Twilight might not be a masterpiece of philosophical thought, but it's about as realistic and well-written as your average Tom Clancy or Clive Cussler novel. The only difference is, Twilight is an example of the consumer power of women and young girls who like romance rather than of men who like books about international nuclear threats.

I can think of a lot of reasons that Stephenie Meyer would want to leave behind the memory of being universally mocked for the sin of writing a romance that got too popular.