Rest assured that we will return to the issue of moral enemy D. Brown soon (Is he a pastor? aAprofessor of Islamic studies? The author of Angels and Demons? Could he in fact be the father of lonelygirl15?), but for now I need your help in deciding the winner of the Picture Contest, which was a contest held a couple weeks ago that asked readers to send in photographs of Looking for Alaska in "an unusual place." The four finalists are as follows:

First, we have the Yellow Pages trick, of which I am very fond:

I like this a lot, because 1. keeping Looking for Alaska in the Yellow Pages is certainly an unusual place, and 2. I myself once used this very same trick (although not with the yellow pages) to give Sarah a necklace, and 3. the person who sent the picture revealed that "my mom was pretty mad when she tried to use the Yellow Pages."

Next, we have People In a Fountain:

I like people-in-a-fountain because 1. I mean, they climbed into a fountain and got wet and stuff, and 2. they still managed to keep the book itself pretty dry, which I find rather heroic, and 3. in the one on top, I like how the horse Neptune is riding is spitting water out of his nostrils.

Then we have the swing finalist:


I like this because 1. it was taken at my actual high school, and 2. the swing pictured there is the actual, literal swing that I was thinking of when writing the scene where Alaska first tells Pudge about Bolivar's labyrinth, and 3. I think it is a very beautiful photograph, and I like how magnificently lonely Alaska looks.

Finally, we have Alaska in Hollywood:

I like this because 1. it clearly took some doing, and 2. I was not previously aware that I (well, or possibly this guy) had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and 3. it is a prescient reminder that more or less anyone in the entire universe can get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Okay, so vote for your favorite in comments. (And my secret sitemeter will tell me if you cheat by voting repeatedly, so don't!)

Sarah and I are moving (back) to New York, so we are going to be driving a hilariously overstuffed rental car for the next two days. Then I will be flying (back) to Chicago, to continue the medieval torture that is modern oral surgery for another week.

But before I go, one thing: I HAVE FOUND A MORTAL ENEMY! Woo hoo. My mortal enemy's name is D. Brown. I don't know anything else about him/her, but s/he wrote a mean review of Looking for Alaska (the first, amazingly, the book has gotten on any book-buying web site) yesterday:

"In brief, I find Green's novel flippant and explicit in its treatment of adolescent sexuality and substance abuse, transparently designed to titillate adolescent boys, and both egregious and hypocritical in its objectification of young women. Stay away."

(By the way, if I wanted to 'titillate' [which is a hilarious word] adolescent boys, why would I have written the least erotic, most utterly failed, most horribly unpleasant blow job scene in the history of young adult literature? If you found one moment of that scene titillating, D. Brown, you are truly a disgusting pervert.)

Now the question: Who is D. Brown? Could it be Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code? If so, I'm honored he read and hated my book, since I have read and hated his. If not, I look forward to reading D. Brown's books so that I can trash them in print. The war begins, sir! Or possibly ma'am!

Anyway, the blogging will be spotty for the next week or so, but then I'll return to form, hopefully pain-free. Anyway, how can you miss me if I never leave?

First, the funniest geek joke ever: Internet nerds and/or 8-bit Nintendo fans will surely find it hilarious that the title of my brother's wedding web site is "Hank and Katherine: All Our Base Are Belong to Each Other." (Which, for non-Internet nerds, references this.)

Second, to celebrate my birthday yesterday, I loaded up on painkillers and went for a ride on a Segway. Outrageously fun.

Third, I just received the first audiobook of An Abundance of Katherines. You can listen to a sample of the Katherines audiobook here, and a sample from the forthcoming Looking for Alaska audio here. What do you think of them?

Fourth, we need to talk more about lonelygirl15 and danielbeast, the best thing ever to happen to youtube, particularly now that my brilliant editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, has been converted to lonely girl/danielbeast fandom.

As you'll no doubt recall, we learned in a recent video that Bree, aka lonelygirl, seems to have a religious devotion to the occultist cocaine addict Alesiter Crowley. Well, now Daniel is going to visit Bree's summer camp to see her in a play. The summer camp is 'religious,' and since Bree's religion appears to be Thelema (although some at this New York Times blog argue she's a Scientologist, which is certainly funnier), this promises to be one hell of a good play. Virgins will be sacrificed, pentagrams will be drawn, magick will be spelled with a k, etc.

Julie believes that the series may culminate in a video of the play, and that the people behind 'Bree' and 'Daniel' accidentally tipped their hats with the Crowley bit. I tend to agree. (It could even be the Blair Witch Project people, up to their old quasi-occultist tricks.)

At this point, very few people believe that Bree is actually an occultist with excessively strict parents. But the slight chance that it might really be real has thousands of people utterly transfixed, which I think is the larger point. By maybe being really real, we pay closer attention to Bree and Daniel's story than we would to a similar known-to-be-false story. And I still think that hypertextual narratives like this might be more and more prevalent in the future.

Now, Sara Zarr, who is a lovely person and an excellent writer but apparently inadequately fond of my theory, asked some good questions in comments, which I'd like to briefly respond to:

Q. First of all: How much vicodin did you take last night?
A. The Vicodin ship has sailed, dude. I'm on much stronger stuff these days. But plenty, trust me!

Q. Are you pro or con realishness?
A. I'm neither. I'm only saying that these days people seem to have an easier time devoting themselves fanboy-style to realish narratives than to non-realish narratives (although I have to say that I am blessed to have a big audience that re- and re- and re-reads Looking for Alaska, which does rather poke a hole in my argument.)

Q. I think this kind of realism/ishness is still in plenty abundant supply in novels, and in a superior way because the terms are clear from the beginning.
A. But my argument is that because the terms are clear from the beginning, the audience will note devote itself to as close of a reading. There are thousands of people trying to figure out the meaning of lonelygirl and danielbeast. Are they a parable? Do they stand for Christianity or against it? Is this mere marketing and if so for what? I agree that a lot of readers will still devote time to asking the same questions about a novel, but I don't know if that will continue to be the case, or if the easy intoxication of the realish hypertext will eventually seem more compelling to almost everyone.

But regardless, I agree with Robin Wasserman that books will survive. They always survive. But you can survive without thriving. See also: Opera, ballet, and heavyweight boxing.

Birthday wishes are in order for Dave Chappelle, Chad Michael Murray, Cal Ripken Jr., Malcolm Cowley, and Borges. And me! So far, I have celebrated with an early-morning root canal. But things are looking up for the rest of the day.

My birthday present to myself is no blogging.

...is Kyle Lewis for the following brilliant idea:

"This prank requires a team, a student owned car, walkie talkies and a student willing to get expelled.

"In preperation, the team must keep surviellance on The Eagle, to discover what times he leaves campus. Once his schedule is recorded, the team will tie up the the student willing to be expelled, steal the Eagle's car keys and place the student in the Eagle's trunk. The student should be in his/her underwear though this is not required. When the Eagle finally drives off campus, a student should follow him until he reaches an area with other cars. At this time the driver will call a team member that is at a random pay phone who will call the police. That student will give the police the Eagle's car information (which should be acquired before hand) claiming to believe that he thinks the Eagle has a person in the trunk. The driver of the car will continue to follow the Eagle until he is pulled over by the police. once this is done, the driver will signal the student inside the trunk. At this time the student will start screaming as loud as he/she can. At which time two things can happen the Eagle can open his trunk right away and then the student will try to climb out and run away screaming about being kidnapped. Second the Eagle can wait until the police tell him to open the trunk at which the student stays and cries and thanks the police for saving him/her from the Eagle. Not only will this prank be the most memorable in Culver Creek history. It will be the only one to affect the eagle directly.

"However, there are several variables. It is possible that the Eagle can look into the trunk beforehand. It is also possible that the Eagle doesn't go to somplace with a lot of cars at which time it would be obvious which person called in, which may lead to more explusions. However, that is the risk you take for a good prank."

Congratulations, Kyle. There were many excellent entries into the Prank Contest, but yours stands out for its cunning and cruelty. Obviously, however, I do not recommend actually doing this prank, because A. I have spent some time in car trunks in my life, and it is not very comfortable, and B. if somehow the other students lost track of the Eagle, the person in the trunk could, you know, die. Still, though: Great work!

The other day my friend Randy and I made a 1-minute video for the awesome people who are publishing Looking for Alaska in Mexico. I was going to post this video to Youtube, but then Sarah said--and I'm quoting her directly here--"Sweetheart, I love you, but this is terrible." (Its terribleness is not Randy's fault; he just held the camera.)

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that it's hard to make a funny, charming first-person video, which is why I became so quickly and thoroughly fascinated by lonelygirl15 and danielbeast. Here's an overview, which you can skip if you're among the 1,000,000 people who've already seen the videos:

Lonelygirl15 is a 16-year-old girl named Bree. She has very strict, religious parents. She's homeschooled. She spends all her time inside her room. She's smart. Her best and only friend is Daniel, a technology whiz who enjoyes editing digital video. Together, they make a bunch of funny, nerdy videos about, say, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (the significance of which they sort of misunderstand, but whatever), or, say, the phenomenon of dental grills. Then one day, Bree posts an unedited video of herself in which she reveals that Daniel admitted having a crush on her.

Incidentally, if you love freedom and justice and truth and all that is good and noble in the world, you want Bree and Daniel to fall in love and live happily ever after and have beautiful brilliant babies. Sure, they'd have to hide their relationship from Bree's parents, but that's easy! Even I've done that.

So, okay. Daniel likes Bree. And Bree, if she loved freedom and justice and etc., would like Daniel back. Except "she's never thought of him that way." Daniel proceeds to post a video saying that he wishes Bree would keep their private life private. They reconcile (as friends only), make a movie about the Tolstoy principle, and then start fighting again.

It's a pretty interesting love story, and the videos are so well-made that they'd be fun to watch even without the love story.

Oh, and there's one other thing: I mentioned before that Bree's parents are very strict and very religious and that she is homeschooled, so you might conclude that her parents are fundamentalist Protestant Christians. But then Bree and Daniel made a video that was ostensibly about a discussion Daniel had with Bree's father. In fact, the whole video seems to build toward one moment, when Daniel attempts to light a candle beneath a framed photograph:
That, for those of you who didn't spend the early 1990s embroiled in an embarrassing phase of mystical searching, is a portrait of none other than Aleister Crowley, the occultist/mason/mystic/chess expert/cocaine addict* who was once known as "the wickedest man in the world." So, why does a very religious girl have a viscerally violent reaction to her male friend's attempts to light a candle beneath Aleister Crowley's portrait? Presumably, she and her parents are followers of the Crowley-centered religion Thelema, which is odd, because A. I didn't previously know that there were still any Thelemites anywhere, and B. because Crowley wasn't the sort of guy who wanted girls locked in their rooms (he wanted girls locked in his room).

After the Crowley video, almost everyone decided that lonelygirl15 and danielbeast were fakes, created either 1. by a production company to sell as an eventual TV Show (the trials and tribulations of an occultist family, perhaps), or 2. by Thelemites for the purpose of gaining converts, or 3. by some extremely smart high-school kids with a boring summer stretching out before them. The supposedly airtight evidence that lonelygirl is a fraud is that the domain of her fan site was registered about a month before she posted her first video. (The webmaster has a justification for this, but it is flimsy.)

As a friend recently told me, "Lonely girl is like LOST. Only real. Ish." Incidentally, I still believe that lonelygirl and danielbeast might be real (so do the new york times and the Times of London), although I think it is probably just two very smart kids who are fudging with their real lives to give us something realish.

And it is this realishness that has me worried. What lonelygirl accomplishes (and to a lesser extent what something like LOST does, as well) is she gives viewers a sense that the story might be really real, and that we can uncover its really realness by paying close attention. It gives us a compelling reason to focus intently on the work, which is why two of the best recent youtube videos (here and here) have been about Bree and Daniel.

Books, with very few exceptions, cannot mimic this kind of realishness. (The Gospel According to Larry, one of my favorite YA books, accomplishes realishness on some level, but Janet Tashjian's name is still on the cover and we still secretly know that it is not really real; same with Infinite Jest and the excellent As Simple as Snow. Go Ask Alice, like a reality TV show, makes us think it is real although it is not, but it never plays with the question of its own realness.) And I wonder if the abundance of realish works of art out there make it more difficult for people to find books compelling in that read-it-again-and-again-in-search-of-its-truest-secrets kind of way that great books demand to be read.

I also wonder whether the eventual response to the paucity of realishness in books will be to abandon them altogether, at least in their book form, and instead to create narratives that combine textual and non-textual elements, like Bree and Daniel, or all the LOST stuff. Forty years from now, will the magic of books seem like snake oil compared to the heady narcotic of the really-realish hypertextual novel?

I hope not, because as previously noted, I'm not good in front of the camera. Text is my only solid medium, and I need it to hang around, because otherwise how am I going to pay the dentist?

But I'm not one to complain.

Oh, my God. The pain.

Not that I'm whining.*

Anyway, all of sparksflyup.com has been changed and improved, including pages devoted to An Abundance of Katherines, anagrams, and the formula. I hope you like it. Your input is welcome.




*Although for the record it isn't really getting much better and I just feel miserable all the time and I'm left to try to explain to my teeth that I am supposed to be working extremely hard on a novel, which--as my teeth are presumably aware--is difficult to do when you have to take vicodin every night when the pain finally overwhelms you. That's no way to get a book finished, and aside from really wanting to write the book, and really missing the feeling of productivity that accompanies meaningful progress on the book, there is the small matter of needing to write the book in order to be paid for the book, which will in turn allow me to pay the oral surgeon who caused the pain in the first place. Physical pain is such a silly, trite, and useless thing, which is why there are so many more books about broken hearts of the figurative variety than about broken hearts of the literal variety. Something can be taken from a broken heart; absolutely nothing can be taken from a broken tooth. God, I do love to whine.

First: Interesting fact about dental bone grafts: They often used sterilized bone from a cadaver. So there is some dead person's bone inside my jaw bone, which is probably an extremely resonant metaphor, although I'm not sure for what.

What I'm saying is that if I ever write a novel about the interconnectedness of all people, dead and living, I will be sure to include some dental surgery. Fortunately for everyone, the book I'm currently working on isn't about that at all (it's about whether or not the future exists, a question that was spurred by Sarah, who once told me "Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia," which ended up going into "Alaska" word for word). So you will be spared my dental metaphors for at least a while.

And now about Blurbs: (Blurbs, for those who aren't obsessed with all things publishing, are those little quotes on the backs of books from other authors.) I remember when "Looking for Alaska" was about to be published, and my tireless and fearless and magnificent editor would tirelessly and fearless and magnificently attempt to contact every major author in America to get them to read and hopefully blurb the book. I was very very lucky that K. L. Going (who by the way is one of my favorite YA authors, and I very much look forward to getting ahold of her widely lauded new book "Saint Iggy") wrote such a nice blurb for "Alaska." Julie wanted a second blurb, but it never happened.

Anyway, during that whole painful process of being unable to get anybody famous other than K.L. Going to read "Alaska," I made a solemn vow always to read anything that was sent to me in hopes of a blurb.

I ended up keeping this solmen vow for approximately four hours. I mean, I'm not famous. I'm not a bestselling author or a TV talk show host or a decorated American general or a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright. So you wouldn't think that I would be in very high demand as a blurber. And yet, I get a lot of blurb requests. And the only fair way to deal with it was to say no to everyone, even close friends. Because A. I need time to write books, and B. you cannot just become a blurbing machine, because then no one will take your opinion seriously, and C. it is really hard for me, once I've read a book, NOT to blurb it. The problem is, I like books. I like them a lot, and not only the very good ones, but also the sorta good ones. I'd imagine that most authors enjoy and appreciate books, on average, more than most non-authors, just as most basketweavers enjoy and appreciate baskets, on average, more than most non-basketweavers.

I've stuck with this no-blurbs-no-matter-what thing since January, and it hasn't been very much fun but I've stuck with it anyway. But now I am starting to feel pangs of regret. I'm starting to think that maybe it is unfair of me not to at least read a book that I'm offered the opportunity to read. (And yes, I know, I just split an infinitive--all the more reason not to take my opinion on literature, as expressed in blurb form, with any seriousness). So, what do you think? Are blurbs important to readers? Do all authors have a responsibility to their readers and fellow writers to consider blurbing manuscripts?

Also: Contest results early next week. Thanks for your patience. I think incidentally I may have to ask for your help when judging the pictures contest, because there are some pretty fantastic pictures.

My mouth still hurts, so to improve my mood I'm going to indulge in my favorite hobby: Surveys. This one I received from the lovely Cecil Castellucci, author of "Boy Proof" and "Queen of Cool." Surprising fact: Cecil caught the bouquet at our wedding.

1. FIRST NAME? John, obviously. No one would pick John as a pseudonym.

2. ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? I'm named after someone on my dad's side of the family, and I also have a great-uncle on my mom's side named John.

3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? It's been a while. Maybe two weeks ago, while watching "Intervention?" That show always makes me cry. And drink.

4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? It's pretty poor. In second grade, I got an "N" in handwriting, for Needs Improvement, and it could still use improvement. But that's why God invented computers.

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Is turkey a lunch meat? Turkey.

6. KIDS? I don't have any at the moment, but I'm very interested in acquiring one.

7. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? That's a surprisingly good question, Survey. I'm not sure. I would probably find myself pretty exasperating (as an old professor of mine once put it, "What you find annoying about other people is what other people find annoying about you"), but I might like me anyway.

8. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? I have this blog. But I don't really keep a journal, no. I know that a lot of writers do, but I've never been at all interested in it. I like writing for an audience; the idea of writing for myself does not intrigue me all that much, to be honest. I do have a lot of files in my computer that contain notes about my books, but all of that is done in the hope of eventually producing something that other people will want to read. I've tried to keep a journal a few times over the years, but I have always hoped that it would be read by somebody.

9. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? No. (Note the sarcasm.)

10. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Hold on, let me check. Yes.

11. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Of course not. Jesus. Who do you take me for? I don't even stand on balconies or walk across footbridges or climb ladders or cross the street without looking both ways. But this question reminds me of something that Eudora Welty once said: "A sheltered life can be daring as well. For all serious daring starts from within."

12. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? I'm not huge on breakfast generally, but in a pinch I've been known to enjoy some Honey Nut Cheerios.

13. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? No, although I never thought about it before. Is this a symptom of laziness or something?

14. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? Not particularly. But I surround myself with a lot of strong people. My wife, for instance, is a boxer, so you can't screw with us.

15. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Mint chocolate chip.

16. SHOE SIZE? 11

17. RED OR PINK? Red, I guess.

18. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? I wish I managed my time better, and worked harder. I also feel chronically undertalented.

19. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? I miss the idea of Alabama. Is that a person? I guess not. Okay. Maybe my brother. He lives far away, in Montana.

20. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? I want everyone who reads this to also fill it out and post it on their blogs, so I can find out what they don't like about themselves, and then I will use whatever they don't like about themselves to exploit and humiliate them!

21. WHAT COLOR OF PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING RIGHT NOW? I'm wearing green shorts and I'm barefoot.

22. Who is your favorite writer/book/movie? Writer: Mark Twain. Book: All the King's Men. Movie: Rushmore.

23, WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? The ticking clock.

24. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Forest Green, I guess. I always wanted to have a kid named Forest.

25. WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE SMELLS? I'm very fond of Sarah's perfume.

26. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU SPOKE ON THE PHONE WITH? Daniel Biss, author of the appendix to "An Abundance of Katherines."

27. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO? Overall bone structure of the face. I'm very particular about faces, which was always a problem, but fortunately I've settled down with a top-notch face.

28. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Cecil? Of course I like Cecil. Who doesn't like Cecil? Communists and kitten killers, that's who.

29. FAVORITE DRINK? Champagne. Or gatorade.

30. FAVORITE SPORT? For watching, soccer. For playing, tennis.

31. HAIR COLOR? I guess it's pretty brown. The other day my friend David Rojas saw that I had a gray hair and pulled it out for me. That was a little depressing.

32. EYE COLOR? Greenish brown. They look like the bottom of trash bins.

33. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Glasses.

34. FAVORITE FOOD? Sushi.

35. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDING? I hate scary movies. I hate everything about them.

36. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Talladega Nights (recommended, although if you are a NASCAR fan, you have to forget everything you know about the sport to enjoy it)

37. COLOR OF SHIRT YOU ARE WEARING? Red.

38. WINTER OR SUMMER? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say winter, as long as it's not too cold.

39. HUGS OR KISSES? Um, both?

40. FAVORITE DESSERT? Brownies.

41. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? This is not relelvant, as I don't know who will read it.

42. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Cecil said me, but look!

43. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? Still "Pound for Pound," because I'm still groggy from surgery, so I'm slow to get thrugh it.

44. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? It's not my mouse pad, because we're not living in our own apartment this summer. But it's an HP mouse pad.

45. FAVORITE SOUNDS? I'm pretty fond of Sarah's voice.

46. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT? Project Runway

47. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles

48. THE FURTHEST YOU'VE BEEN FROM HOME? Italy, I think. Either Italy or Alaska. I'd have to measure.

49. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? No. Except maybe imagining special talents.

50. WHEN AND WHERE WERE YOU BORN? August 24, 1977 -- and I'm not telling where, because if I do you will steal my identity.

My jaw hurts a lot. To readers over 21 years of age: Do you remember Glass Joe from Mike Tyson's Punchout? I'm hurting like Glass Joe after a first-round TKO at the hands of Little Mac.

But this is a daily blog now, and we do not stop for rain or sleet or snow or bone grafts into our jaws.

Thanks to Literaticat and Sarah Dessen.

1. One book that changed your life:
I guess I would have to say Mark Twain's "Huck Finn." I first read "Huck Finn" when i was in sixth grade, and it was far and away the best book I'd ever read, and then I read it again as a sophomore in college, whereupon it regained its supremacy. And while obviously I'm not as good a writer as Mark Twain, it's the book that has probably taught me the most about how I WANT to write.

But a lot of books have changed my life. "Looking for Alaska," for example, changed my life in several observable ways.

2. One book you have read more than once: The last book I re-read was "The Great Gatsby." But I try to re-read Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men" every year or so.

3. One book you would want on a desert island: Maybe the Bible, because A. it's long, and B. if I were on a desert island, I could relate to all that suffering and oppression and locusts and weeping and gnashing of teeth and everything, and C. it's good reading, and D. I'd probably be praying a lot, and also E. not to be sacriligious or anything, but you could use the lesser-read books (I mean, who reads Obadiah or Nahum?) as kindling. Kindling is huge on a desert island, as you'l no doubt remember from "Cast Away."

But anyway, I have an inherent problem with this question. What does it matter which book I take with me on a desert island when I'll be dead in a week? Don't desert islands, by definition, have no fresh water? And aren't islands without fresh water deathtraps? Nothing against literature or anything, but I'd rather take a saltwater filtration system, thanks. I'll catch up on my reading once me and my bloody volleyball build a raft and get home.

4. One book that made you laugh: Literaticat said "King Dork" by Frank Portman, and I agree.

5. One book that made you cry: Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief," which made me cry for 11 straight days. More recently, I teared up while reading "Story of a Girl" by Sara Zarr.

6. One book you wish had been written: I wish that in like 1986, someone had published an illustrated book entitled "John Green, You Should Not Date the Following 11 Girls." JGYSNDTF11G would be a novel written by my future self and then transported back in time with the help of a flux capacitator, and basically it would tell my 9-year-old self 11 names I ought to avoid.

7. One book you wish had never been written: I don't much like "The Gossip Girls" or books of their ilk, which I realize is unfashionable, but I stand by my opinion. But if I could pick one book to have never been written, I would obviously pick "Ethan Frome," because it has inflicted so much pain on so many.

8. One book you are currently reading: F. X. Toole's posthumously published "Pound for Pound."

9. One book you have been meaning to read: "The Heights, the Depths, and Everything in Between," by Sally Nemeth, which I have been meaning to read for several months, but books I have to review keep getting in the way.

10. Tag five people: Instead of tagging five individual people, I am just going to go ahead and tag the entire Internet.

p.s. Scott Westerfeld's rant re. the planethood of Pluto is brilliant. I am with him. We must end the planetary charade that is Pluto. As Stephen Colbert put it last night, the new mnemonic device should be, "My Very Educated Mother Just Said, 'Uh-oh, No Pluto!'"

It is a testament to my newfound passion for dailyfying this blog that I'm posting. Long-time readers of this blog may remember that several months ago I had a couple root canals, and while in the dentist's chair I found out that I had won some Cuffies Awards from Publisher's Weekly.

So anyway, because the root canals didn't really work, I had to have something called an apicoectomy, which is where they cut open your gum and scrape infection out of your jaw. I cann't recommend this surgery to you highly enough, provided that you are the kind of person who likes to experience intense pain in the lower half of your face for several hours once the numbness wears off. (Incidentally, the numbness has just worn off.)

Anyway, I was hoping that I would find out about another Cuffies Award or something while sitting in the chair, but no dice.

So I may be out of commission for a couple days, delaying the announcement of the Contest Winners. (Also, please remember that you still have five whole hours to send me your submissions. sparksflyup at gmail.)

Oh, and this: Dude, did you know there's an MTV show about Hoover High School football? And did you know that I went to high school like ten miles away from Hoover High School? Maybe it's the Vicodin talking, but that sounds fantastic.

So in the next 30 or so hours, you should really email me (sparksflyup -at- gmail.com) a playlist, an idea for a prank, or a photograph of Looking for Alaska in an unusual place. You have a particularly good chance of winning if you send a picture or a prank, because I have approximately 11,000 playlists. In a related story, I've spent the last week listening to a lot of Death Cab for Cutie.

I don't want to sound like an ancient, washed-up 28-year-old or anything, but let me just make one observation about what the kids these days listen to: From Coldplay to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I can't help but feeling like all these bands would benefit from a little more banjo. I have the same problem with Jay-Z. Jay-Z is a genius. And yet, no banjo. I mean, Jay-Z has 99 problems, and too little banjo is approximately 42 of them.

In other news, it's nice to see the Peter Pan guy getting work. (Also, while this is not a political blog, and this is also not a blog the features curse words, the challenges to net neutrality are a bunch of bullshit*.)

Also, the ongoing YA-novel-in-amateur-videos that is the saga of Lonelygirl15 and Danielbeast continues to be the best thing on the Internet. Even the New York Times thinks so.

Furthermore, this thread at Chasing Ray (which is a great lit blog) about Stephanie Klein is great reading.

But life can't be all about the things you hate: There are also adorable animals to look at, courtesy of my friends at mental_floss.

Check out literary crush lists from E. Lockhart, Bookshelves of Doom, Alimum, and Ally Carter. (Pop Quiz: What do all these lists have in common? Why, their melessness, of course. Not that I'm bitter!)

And finally, some last words: I'm reading the posthumously published first novel Pound for Pound, by F. X. Toole (who wrote the short story "Million Dollar Baby"). On his way into surgery, he said to his doctor, "Get me a little more time, Doc. I gotta finish my book." He didn't get to finish the book, but what we've been left with is excellent.





* For the first few months after Looking for Alaska was published, interviewers often asked me about the language in the book, and how I responded to people's concerns about the swearing. And I would go on for several minutes about how books have been stuffed full of obscenity since Chaucer, and yet the world had not yet ended. And I would say that there isn't an American over the age of 12 who hasn't heard every foul word ever invented (well, although before noted upholder of righteousness Mel Gibson came along, I'd never heard the word sugartits).

And then I would go on for a while about the importance of representing life as it is and not life as you think it ought to be, because literature may be inherently political but it should never be obviously, boringly political. And then I would point out that knowing the particulars of sexual intecourse and several euphemisms for it does not help a person actually engage in sexual intercourse any more than knowing the words shotgun and duck helps you hunt ducks.

And then the piece would come out in the newspaper or whatever, and I'd feel misquoted because I always sounded like a corrupter of children. But lately I've developed a new answer to the question, which I'm still asked pretty often. My new policy is to tell the truth in as few words as possible:

Q. How do you respond to the controversy surrounding the language and content of your book?
A. I think it's all a bunch of fucking bullshit.

I hope you're not flying today. My friend Randy Riggs was visiting me in Chicago this morning, but then he had to fly back to LA. Bad news for him, but great news for me: He had to leave all his liquid or semi-liquid toiletries at my apartment. His Old Spice is going to last me for, like, two weeks. (Although I can't use it this particular weekend, since I have to get up at five tomorrow morning and fly to Alabama.)

While I appreciate everyone's thoughts on mortal literary enemies, in the end I've decided to be enemy-free for now. In fact, I've decided to abandon hate altogether. What the world needs now is love. Sweet love. So I've collected the following list:

MY TOP 5 (or 7) YA AUTHOR CRUSHES*

1. Markus Zusak
The only guy on our list. (EDIT: Scott Westerfeld, mentioned below, is also a guy, as his wife points out in comments.) Sure, I get tired of librarians talking about his good looks and generosity and kindness and brilliance, but it's all true. He's funny, extraordinarily personable, and a genius (if you don't believe me, read The Book Thief). Also he is Australian. One gets bonus points for being Australian.

2. Sarah Dessen
Not Australian, but the next best thing: North Carolinian. Sarah Dessen has the advantage of bearing a resemblance to Sarah Green, but my author crush on her really began with The Truth about Forever, and then increased as I read her other books, and then came to a deafening crescendo when we drank and gambled together in New Orleans. (I only went gambling because I wanted to support the New Orleans economy. And boy did I!)

3. E. Lockhart
E. Lockhart's gender is a closely guarded secret--well, at least you can't figure out its gender from its initial. I happen to know, however, that E. is a woman. And man, what a woman. She writes about gherkins better than anyone I know, and her books are at once deeply funny and subversive.

4. Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier
I am extremely jealous of Scott and Justine because, unlike certain authors, they both have wikipedia entries, and while that jealousy could eventually morph into a kind of mortal-enemyish rage, I really like them. They both write consistently excellent books. They are adorably married, and both quite charming. Also, they are about 53% Australian, which helps.

5. Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci
Holly and Cecil get lumped together not because they are married like Scott and Justine, but rather because 1. they share an agent, and 2. they are my only two literary crushes who were/are into role playing games. (In the interest of full disclosure, my brother Hank and I really loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle role playing game, and in fact I would probably quit writing books entirely if Hank and I could play the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle role playing game professionally.)

So who are your top 5 literary crushes? (And yes, this is my lame attempt to start a meme.)




*I mean non-romantic crushes. My definition of literary crush here is someone whose writing makes you wish you could hang out with them all the time. It's like when you meet someone and they're really cool and you think, "God I hope I get to become friends with that person." Eventually that feeling fades, and you just ARE friends (e.g., I am already friends with noted Out Magazine featuree David Levithan).

So keep sending in your suggestions.

But mostly I'm here to remind you to enter the three contests (just five days left!) so that you can win a free autographed copy of An Abundance of Katherines.

Contest 1: Come up with a better prank than anything in Looking for Alaska. (Note: You don't have to DO the prank, just describe it to me in an email.)

Contest 2: Take a photograph of Looking for Alaska in an unusual place. Multiple entries are allowed; funniest wins. Those can also be emailed, or posted online.

Contest 3: Create a Looking for Alaska playlist. n.b.: There are approximately 11,000,000 entries in this contest so far, and so your chances of winning go way up if you enter one of the other contests. But you should create a playlist too, because they are fun to listen to.

I've been thinking lately about ways of taking my career to the "next level," you know, the level where I don't have to write my own books anymore. According to my calculations, there are seven distinct levels of literary fame, and I want to move up on the ladder from merely published to the kind of famous where you can churn out a thousand crap sequels to your books, all of which are written by other people, whom you pay slave wages so you can afford your mansion in the Hamptons. I'm talking "An Abundance of Suzannes: A John Green Novel Written by J. K. Rowling." (That's right, J.K. When I'm famous enough to hire ghostwriters, I'll hire you.)

And I've been thinking recently about how to make it happen. And then I realized: I need a mortal literary enemy. Lillian Hellman had her Mary McCarthy. Gore Vidal had his Norman Mailer. Jen Lancaster apparently has her Stephanie Klein.

Incidentally, Ms. Klein isn't famous and oughtn't be, and we shouldn't even discuss her. We should treat her the way George Bush treats global warming: Maybe if we just pretend she doesn't exist, she won't.

But Stephanie Klein won't work as a mortal enemy, because A. she's taken, and B. you need someone who is in your sphere. Sarah Dessen, for instance, would be totally perfect, but as it happens I really like Sarah Dessen and think she is a lovely person and writer. Cecil Castellucci and David Levithan would be good, too, except I like them also.

So, who's it going to be, dear blog readers? Who should be my mortal enemy? Once we decide, I will send The Enemy an email in which I assault their writing and their personhood, and then hopefully I'll be chilling on Easy Street in short order.

p.s. Lindsay Robertson's Flowers for Algernon cartoon idea is very funny.

If you go scroll down to "Galley Talk," you can read a nice review of An Abundance of Katherines here.

Katherines has also received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and The Horn Book.

If you're wondering why Katherines has not yet received any negative reviews, I have a theory: It takes longer to write negative reviews. As a book reviewer myself, I know what an exhausting process it can be to write a truly soul-crushing review. Should I call the author fat, or stupid? Should I refer to the subplot about the litle boy's love for giraffes as "unprecedentedly vapid" or just "rather phallic?" Is unprecedentedly even a word? These are just some of the questions that the writer of soul-crushing reviews must ask.

In other news, you have but eight days to complete your Contest entries.

And finally, I'm going to go on a rant about footnotes that's absolutely not required reading unless you are unusually interested in my crackpot theories about contemporary young adult literature.*







* E. Lockhart, a writer I admire a lot, sometimes uses footnotes in her book. And I use footnotes in An Abundance of Katherines, and so we have inevitably been compared to each other, which is a great joy to me, because I think she is fantastic. But it should be noted that there are--I'm estimating here--a total of about fourteen million writers who have used footnotes in their novels in the last, say, ten years. But for some reason, whenever a YA author uses footnotes, the beginnings of funny footnoting are traced not to E. Lockhart but to this guy. Now, I don't even know who Jonathan Stroud is to be perfectly honest with you, except that he is handsome and British. And I'm sure that his books are very good and everything, but I'm very curious how he came to be the originator of the idea of using footnotes in novels, since his first book came out in 1999, when the footnote had already become an ineradicable part of our literature.

The fact is that if you attend college, you end up spending quite a lot of time alone with footnotes, and you may eventually start to notice that footnotes are--consistently--the wittiest and most enjoyable parts of hefty texts. (For instance, I am a huge fan of the footnotes in a book called Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde, which incidentally is a fantastic book if you are into that kind of thing.) And so it is inevitable that the reasonably well-educated person falls in love with footnotes, and starts thinking about what footnotes could do and be. It's perfectly plausible to believe that all fourteen million writers who use footnotes in their books just came up with the idea independently when they noticed how footnotes can allow you to create a kind of secret second narrative, which is important if, say, you're writing a book about what a story is and whether stories are significant.

So you could very easily make the argument that it wasn't the handsome and British Jonathan Stroud who gave us our heavily footnoted contmemporary literature but rather all those academic texts we waded through as juniors in college. You COULD make that argument, but I think you'd be wrong. In fact, I do believe that we owe the contemporary footnote to the work of a single person; I just don't think it's Mr. Stroud.

I've had this crackpot theory for a long time that the real progenitor of many contemporary YA novels isn't Catcher in the Rye or A Separate Peace or Annie Get Your Gun or Forever or any of that, but instead David Foster Wallace's 1100 page (and massively footnoted) second novel Infinite Jest,. I know for a fact that E. and I have read IJ. Infinite Jest IS a coming-of-age story, or at least it contains a coming-of-age story, but I would never argue that it is itself a book for teenagers. It's just that literary young adult writers have adopted--whether directly or indirectly--a host of techniques from the book, including weird and largely inexplicable abbreviations (henceforeth WALIAs), a breathless narrative voice that isn't quite stream-of-consciousness, repetition of the word and, and footnotes. Infinite Jest is a major book, certainly, and it's been influential in the world of adult literature, too. But if you've read, say, 100 'literary' ya novels, and then you read Infinite Jest, I feel like it's hard not to be struck by how many of those 100 books owe something in some way to DFW that they would not otherwise have. So nothing against Mr. Stroud, but I think when we're talking WALIAs or footnotes, we have David Foster Wallace to thank (well, if thanks are to be given. I really believe that footnotes are pretty great if done well, and if you disagree with me then I hope we can have a fight about it in the comment section, which is basically the blog equivalent of footnotes).

I have always maintained that my readers, as a group, are smarter and funnier and more clever than anyone else's readers, including James Joyce and William Faulkner.

And this has again been proven with the Contest Contest. There were more than 100 entries in the Contest Contest, and I have never seen such good ideas for giving away free books. And so it was painful and difficult to pick a mere three. But before announcing the winners, let's discuss some of my favorite losers:

Major American author David Lubar said, "You should have a contest where people turn a scene from Looking for Alaska into a shoebox diorama using only gold coins and precious gems. Heaviest entry wins."

I also greatly enjoyed the suggestion that I give away an ARC to the first person who goes to Antarctica and claims it in the name of Alaska (the person, not the state).

But in the end, I decided to select three practical contests. You can enter any (or all!) of these contests between today and August 15th. The prize for each of these contests is a free autographed advanced readers' copy of my new book, An Abundance of Katherines.

CONTEST 1: Outprank Alaska.
SUGGESTED BY: Stephanie
HOW IT WORKS: You come up with a prank that's better than anything Alaska and Pudge and the Colonel ever came up with. The stripper prank is the finest in Culver Creek history; your job is to top it.

CONTEST 2: Photograph copies of Looking for Alaska in unusual places.
SUGGESTED BY: Chris Higgins
HOW IT WORKS: You take a picture of a copy of Looking for Alaska in a fascinating place. Alaska at Graceland, for instance; or swimming with you in the Indian Ocean; or parachuting out of an airplane. Do they make parachutes for books? I don't know. That's for you to find out (and photograph).

CONTEST 3: Create a Looking for Alaska playlist.
SUGGESTED BY: Chuck
HOW IT WORKS: You submit a list of songs--that add up to no more than 72 minutes, so that if you win I can burn it onto a CD--that you think reflect something about Looking for Alaska. Think of it this way: If you were going to make a soundtrack for the hypothetical Alaska movie, which songs would you choose?

Thanks to all who participated in the Contest Contest, and I hope you'll submit to these contests, too. They should be fun.