Sara Zarr, whose excellent first novel Story of a Girl comes out in January, asks a lot of penetrating questions. For instance, in an interview that will appear later in the blog tour over at Not Your Mother's Book Club, she asked, "If you were going to be on Intervention, what would be Intervening about?"
So for today's blog tour stop, Sara proves that she is way smarter than me in a conversation about writing and YA literature and religion. (Trivia: This is the first of the blog tour interviews to be conducted over instant messenger.)
Thanks again to Dean for yesterday's "An Abundance of John Green" day.
It took him most of the morning, but Dean Simakis has finally begun his "An Abundance of John Green" postings (look for stuff throughout the day), and he has sure gone all out. I mean, just check out the top graphic of his blog.
In other news, let us briefly discuss two things:
1. Banned Books Week. It rather goes without saying that I am in favor of Banned Books Week, which means not that I want to spend all week banning books, but that I am opposed to banning books from schools and libraries. I used to work down the hall from the people who run Banned Books Week at the American Library Association, and they are doing great work. I urge you all to keep reading banned and challenged books. (Specifically, mine.)
2. Do you live in New York City? If so, I hope you'll consider coming to my reading next Wednesday, October 4, at the Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library (6th Ave and 10th St), starting at six. I'll be reading along with Coe Booth, Dan Ehrenhaft, David Levithan, Scott Westerfeld, Leslie Margolis, and Carolyn MacCullough. (I realize that sounds like a lot of people, but I promise we will all be brief. Or at least I will.)
The answer may surprise you. I mean, that's the name of the blog. My friend (and groomsman) Dean Simakis has declared today "An Abundance of John Green Day" on his blog. (TAMSY, as Dean's blog is affectionaly known to its devotees, is very funny, so I'm sure whatever he has planned will be high-larious.)
Today, The An Abundance of Katherines blog tour takes us to YA writer Jo Knowles' blog. We discuss math, dentistry, and the difficulties of anagramming names that feature a J.
Also: Last night I attended an Old Crow Medicine Show with author David Levithan (whose new book, Wide Awake, is out now and should be read by everyone). They are so great. Their new album, while maybe not as good as the first one, is also so great.
Today on the An Abundance of Katherines blog tour, you'll find a (really quite long, now that I look at it) interview over at Fuse #8. We talk about exgirlfriends, The Current State of YA Literature, the Printz, anagrams, friendster v. myspace, and whether or not I have groupies. (To the best of my knowledge, I do not.)
In other news: Some people (approximately 11,000,000) have reported to me via blog comments or myspace messages or emails that they have been unable to find An Abundance of Katherines at their local bookstore so far. This problem is, at least from what I understand, going to be fixed in the near future.
Sure proof that I'm old: At my brother's wedding (best wedding ever, incidentally), Hank and Evan Vella and I were moshing to "Punk Rock Girl" and shouting out the lyrics, and it was really fun. And then perhaps two thirds into the song I realized that A. I am really tired, and B. I've lost my voice. Washed-up at 29.
About 100 people have written me to say that they can't find An Abundance of Katherines at their local bookstore yet. This is indeed very unfortunate, but I have been told that they will be on the shelves everywhere very soon.
Finally, the An Abundance of Katherines blog tour makes its third stop today at the home of the fabulous Cecil Castellucci, who has not posted her interview with me yet, presumably because she lives in California and is still asleep.
...is a fascinating place to attend your brother's bachelor party, if you're ever looking for a locale.
In a related story, I don't feel so good this morning.
So I'm going to keep this brief: Today on the Abundance of Katherines blog tour, wherein I am visiting 19 blogs in 19 (business) days, I have a conversation with the amazing Justine Larbalestier. I like Justine so much that I have finally, after several years of knowing her, learned how to spell her last name.
Anyway, our conversation is about lying, and I thought it was really interesting and hope you do, too. And thanks again to Lindsay for participating. Isn't Lindsay hilarious? I got several emails yesterday that were like, "Your friend Lindsay should write a book." I know!
Oh, and about buying An Abundance of Katherines: Although it has pubbed, it's not in every bookstore yet, but it should be soon. You can either be patient, or not be patient. Thanks.
So to celebrate the publication of An Abundance of Katherines (which by the way is OUT TODAY. Yay! Go get it!), today's blog entry takes the form of an announcement followed by an excerpt (the first chapter) from Katherines.
The Announcement: Katherines is about a guy who has dated 19 girls, all of whom dumped him and all of whom were named Katherine. So I'm doing this blog tour, which is titled "The Abundance of Katherines Blog Tour: 19 Blogs in 19 (Business) Days." Over the course of the next 19 (business) days, I'm going to be interviewed/talked about at 19 blogs. We start today with my dear friend Lindsayism, who also blogs at Jane Magazine. So enjoy the first day of the blog tour. And now, the first chapter of An Abundance of Katherines:
The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the 19th time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath. Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down. He climbed into the tub as soon as the water got hot, and he sat and watched with a curiously blank look on his face as the water overtook him. The water inched up his legs, which were crossed and folded into the tub. He did recognize, albeit faintly, that he was too long, and too big, for this bathtub—he looked like a mostly grown person playing at being a kid.
As the water began to splash over his skinny but unmuscled stomach, he thought of Archimedes. When Colin was about four, he read a book about Archimedes, the Greek philosopher who’d discovered you could measure volume by water displacement when he sat down in the bathtub. Upon making this discovery, Archimedes supposedly shouted “Eureka! ” and then ran naked through the streets. The book said that many important discoveries contained a “Eureka moment.” And even then, Colin very much wanted to have some important discoveries, so he asked his mom about it when she got home that evening.
“Mommy, am I ever going to have a Eureka moment?”
“Oh, sweetie,” she said, taking his hand. “What’s wrong?”
“I wanna have a Eureka Moment,” he said, the way another kid might have expressed longing for a teenage mutant ninja turtle.
She pressed the back of her hand to his cheek and smiled, her face so close to his that he could smell coffee and make-up. “Of course, Colin baby. Of course you will.” But mothers lie. It’s in the job description.
Colin took a deep breath and slid down, immersing his head. I am crying, he thought, opening his eyes to stare through the soapy, stinging water. I feel like crying so I must be crying, but it’s impossible to tell because I’m underwater. But he wasn’t crying. Curiously, he felt too depressed to cry. Too hurt. It felt as if she’d taken the part that cried from him. He opened the drain in the tub, stood up, toweled off, and got dressed. When he exited the bathroom, his parents were sitting together on his bed. It was never a good sign when both his parents were in his room at the same time. Over the years it had meant:
1. Your grandmother/grandfather/Aunt-Suzie-whom-you-never-met-but-trust-me-she-was-nice-and-it’s-a-shame is dead.
2. You’re letting a girl named Katherine distract you from your studies.
3. Babies are made through an act that you will eventually find intriguing but for right now will just sort of horrify you, and also sometimes people do stuff that involves baby-making parts that does not actually involve making babies, like for instance kiss one another in places that are not on the face.
It never meant:
4. A girl named Katherine called while you were in the bathtub. She’s sorry. She still loves you and has made a terrible mistake and is waiting for you downstairs.
But even so, Colin couldn’t help but hope that his parents were in the room to provide news of the Number 4 variety. He was a generally pessimistic person, but he seemed to make an exception for Katherines: He always felt they would come back to him. The feeling of loving her and being loved by her welled up in him, and he could taste the adrenaline in the back of his throat, and maybe it wasn’t over, and maybe he could feel her hand in his again and hear her loud, brash voice contort itself into a whisper to say I-love-you in the very quick and quiet way that she had always said it. She said I love you as if it was a secret, and an immense one.
His dad stood up and stepped toward him. “Katherine called my cell,” he said. “She’s worried about you.” Colin felt his dad’s hand on his shoulder, and then they both moved forward, and then they were hugging.
“We’re very concerned,” his mom said. She was a small woman with curly brown hair that had one single shock of white toward the front. “And stunned,” she added. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Colin said softly, into his dad’s shoulder. “She just—she’d had enough of me. She got tired. That’s what she said.” And then his mom got up and there was a lot of hugging, arms everywhere, and his mother was crying. Colin extricated himself from the hugs and sat down on his bed. He felt a tremendous need to get them out of his room immediately, like if they didn’t leave he would blow up. Literally. Guts on the walls; his prodigious brain emptied out onto his bedspread.
“Well, at some point we need to sit down and assess your options,” his dad said. His dad was big on assessing. “Not to look for silver linings, but it seems like you’ll now have some free time this summer. A summer class at Northwestern, maybe?”
“I really need to be alone, just for today,” Colin answered, trying to convey a sense of calm so that they would leave and he wouldn’t blow up. “So can we assess tomorrow?”
“Of course, sweetie,” his mom said. “We’ll be here all day. You just come down whenever you want and we love you and you’re so so special, Colin, and you can’t possibly let this girl make you think otherwise because you are the most magnificent, brilliant boy—” And right then, the most special, magnificent, brilliant boy bolted into his bathroom and puked his guts out. An explosion, sort of.
“Oh Colin!” shouted his mom.
“I just need to be alone,” Colin insisted from the bathroom. “Really. Please.”
When he came out, they were gone.
For the next fourteen hours without pausing to eat or drink or throw up again, Colin read and re-read his yearbook, which he had received just four days before. Aside from the usual yearbook crap, it contained 72 signatures. 12 were just signatures, 56 cited his intelligence, 25 said they wish they’d known him better, 11 said it was fun to have him in English class, 7 included the words “pupillary sphincter” (more on that later), and a stunning 17 ended, “Stay Cool!” Colin Singleton could no more stay cool than a blue whale could stay skinny or Bangladesh could stay rich. Presumably, those 17 people were kidding. He mulled this over—and considered how 25 of his classmates, some of whom he’d been attending school with for 12 years, could possibly have wanted to “know him better.” As if they hadn’t had a chance.
But mostly for those 14 hours, he read and re-read Katherine XIX’s inscription:
Col, Here’s to all the places we went. And all the places we’ll go. And here’s me, whispering again and again and again and again: iloveyou. yrs forever, K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e
Eventually, he found his bed too comfortable for his state of mind, so he lay down on his back, his legs sprawled across the carpet. He anagrammed ‘yrs forever’ until he found one he liked: Sorry fever. And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now-memorized note in his head and wanted to cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: Crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something. He kept thinking about one word—forever—and felt the burning ache just beneath his ribcage. It hurt like the worst ass-kicking he’d ever gotten. And he’d gotten plenty.
Okay, so in An Abundance of Katherines (which, and I don't want to overemphasize this or anything, but it is out right now and you should really consider purchasing it) there's a mathematical formula.
And no, you don't have to like math to like the book. In fact, as my high-school math teacher would be happy to tell you, I myself do not like math.
But anyway, there is this formula, and in the book, a guy named Colin uses the formula to predict the outcome of relationships. Basically, you can take two people in the entire world, and using the formula, you can figure out in advance who is going to dump whom.*
The formula was written by Daniel Biss, who is a real mathematician, and a very famous one, although I'm sure he would want me to tell you that just because something is created by a real mathematician does not necesarily make it real math. With the help of Christopher Palmer, we've gotten a formula online that you don't have to be a math genius to use.
That said, YOU can now use the formula to predict the future course of your own romantic relationships (using it earlier today, I learned that Kirsten Dunst would dump me if we dated). You can play with the formula here.
*Note: We do not accept responsibility for the formula's accuracy. For more on that you should read the book. However, I will say this: It sure correctly predicted Marie Ponzillo dumping me, a piece of information I could have used round about 1997.
...comes out TOMORROW. Hooray. I hope you read it, and I hope you like it. Here's how I'll be spending my publication date:
First, I will get up at seven in the morning, and I'll be really cranky and bleary-eyed. And then, I will get in a cab, which will take me to an airport, where I'll get on an airplane, which will take me to a different airport, and so on, until eventually after about 1,100 airplanes I will arrive in Missoula, Montana for my brother's wedding. Double hooray. I'd be using exclamation points after these hoorays, but it's still kinda early and it's tough to get too psyched up about anything.
So I'll be spending most of the pub date either on airplanes or doing karaoke at a bowling alley. I hope your Thursday will be just as eventful.
Some good news: I've recently found out that An Abundance of Katherines will be published in Dutch and German. Hooray! Okay, there. I mustered one.
I had to give a speech in New Orleans this summer when I received the Printz Award for "Looking for Alaska." (I would show you a picture of the Printz Award on my mantle, but my browser is cranky right now re. pictures. Incidentally, why is it that I just assume my computer will eventually 'feel better' if I just 'let it rest?') As you read this, it may be helpful to remember two things: 1. I was speaking to 500 librarians. 2. I had the flu. So imagine me sitting up there, looking very much like I was going to throw up about five minutes after my speech (which I did). Now, onto the speech:
Before I even say a proper thank-you, I’d like to begin tonight by asking you all to please lower your expectations. I have been pretty terrified of public speaking ever since I broke down in tears after losing the Audubon Park Elementary School oration contest to Julie Baskin on account of how she gesticulated more than I did. So anyway, I cannot promise a good speech. But I am going to gesticulate like crazy. [Note: At this point I gesticulated like crazy.]
I recently read in a book about speech-giving that you should right at the outset subtly outline the arguments of your entire speech, so allow me to subtly do that right now:
First, I am going to make the bold and controversial assertion that librarians are wonderful and I love them. And in doing so, I will hopefully say a little something about Looking for Alaska.
Then, after a lot of that, I am going to talk about my editor and my family. The main argument here—and again this will be a provocative position to take—will be that I have the best editor, and also the best family, but I’m going to try to make that argument without offending other editors and other families. This part may include a subtle jab at the publishing industry, but it will be very subtle, indeed.
Finally, I will try to patch things up with the publishing business while engaging in more librarian-praising, and then I will quote Faulkner.
But let us begin with librarians, and how wonderful they are. You may have noticed that every time a young adult author gets within shouting distance of one or more librarians, the author will start babbling on about how much s/he loves librarians, and how great librarians are, and how the very fabric of our nation would come apart at the seams were it not for librarians. YA authors talk about librarians the way that Republicans talk about rich people, and for the very same reason: We need you. You invented this thing—not just this award but the entire concept behind it. The very idea of _literature_ written and published for teenagers is an idea born and nurtured in the world of librarianship. For many years now, librarians have been making courageous collection decisions as part of their service to teenagers. And by putting high-quality books in their collections, and by getting those books to kids, who sometimes end up loving a book enough to buy it, librarians have pushed publishers toward a broader and deeper understanding of what it means to write for teenagers. Mike Printz was one such librarian. His is an extraordinarily rich legacy. I never knew Mr. Printz, but without him and other librarians pushing this genre forward, I never could have published Looking for Alaska as a young adult novel. So in that sense, this award—and every Printz Award and Honor—belongs to librarians as much as it does the authors, although if it is okay with you I think I will keep it at my apartment and then if you want to see it you are welcome to come over.
I would particularly like to thank the extraordinarily accomplished librarians who served on this year’s Printz committee, and YALSA, who continue the ALA’s long and storied tradition of, always and everywhere, using acronyms—and who also do so much for YA literature and YA librarians.
The idea for Looking for Alaska first occurred to me in the Fall of 1999, when I was working as a student chaplain at a children’s hospital. The way it worked was you sort of took classes and stuff during the day, and then about two days a week, you worked a 24 hour shift. We had these two beepers to keep with us during those 24 hours, and at the end of your shift, you handed the beepers off to the next chaplain. And so a couple times a week, I would sit alone in this little windowless room with these two beepers all night long. I would try to read or sleep, but mostly I just stared at the beepers and prayed they wouldn’t go off. And then they’d go off.
I’d follow the beeper to some horrifically sad event—because chaplains aren’t generally met with good news—and after it was over, I would go back to the room, alone with the beepers. And it was during those times that I began to think about questions of loss and guilt and forgiveness. When someone close to you dies, it’s very typical to feel guilt, to feel that you should have done something. And usually, you eventually realize that there was nothing you could have done—that the feeling is irrational, born of a desire to explain the inexplicable, to imagine that there is something you can do in this mean world to save yourself and those you love.
But then sometimes, it is your fault—not because you are evil, but because you are careless and dumb and generally human. I found myself wondering about that particular variety of suffering. So many other questions spun off from that one, but the initial question—of whether there can be hope in a world where people cannot help but be careless, a world where there is no chance of true justice—inspired Alaska.
But a lot of 22-year-olds have had a lot of ideas for a lot of books—and had I not left chaplaincy and landed as a temp at the Booklist offices, I might never have actually written the book. My job there involved a lot of retyping ISBN numbers, and so I became freakishly familiar with publishers’ ISBN prefixes, which will figure into the story later, but one of my first assignments was to retype the speeches given by the 2000 Printz Award winners and honorees. It was the year that Walter Dean Myers won, and honors went to Ellen Wittlinger, Laurie Halse Anderson, and David Almond. When my boss explained to me that the Printz was this new award given for “literary excellence” in young adult literature, I thought (but thankfully did not say), “What, like for the metaphorical assertion that the Sweet Valley High lies in the shadow of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain?” I had never read YA literature. But after retyping those speeches, I went home and read Monster and Speak and Skellig and Hard Love—all wonderful books. I realized then that my book—my as-yet-still-imaginary book—was YA literature, too.
And here is where librarians re-enter the story. Because it was a librarian, Stephanie Zvirin, who gave me my first job and who gave me YA galleys she thought I might like. It was a librarian, Bill Ott, who took time away from his job as my boss’s boss’s boss to talk to me and treated me with respect and collegiality, even though as a 22-year-old I once remarked to him that someone who died at 50 could not be said to have died “young.” It was an extraordinary magazine created for and by librarians, Booklist, that helped guide my reading and purchasing decisions. And it was a librarian, Ilene Cooper, who changed my life forever by making me believe that I could write the book inside my head.
Ilene Cooper was the first actual author I ever met, and she worked just down the hall from me. She would come over to my desk and ask me to do something just like a normal boss, except she wasn’t a normal boss, because she wrote books. Ilene and I quickly became friends, because it is pretty rare in this life that one hypochondriac interested in the historical Jesus, Catholic saints, pretzels, the vast right wing conspiracy, books, and white wine meets another. And one day I mentioned to Ilene that I wanted to write a book. She said the idea sounded promising, although I doubt she figured she’d one day have to recuse herself from a committee over it. Ilene gave me a deadline: April 15, 2001.
When that deadline passed, I’d written ten horrible pages. I’d read you a selection from those pages, except various members of the Printz Committee might rush the stage and take back this award. The central problem was that I couldn’t find a structure to tell the story. And then September 11th happened, and that night I was alone again, this time in my apartment. Everyone on TV kept talking about how we’d see the world in terms of before 9/11 and after it. And I thought about how all time is measured that way—before and after the birth of Christ for Christians; before and after the hijrah for Muslims. Before and after is not the true nature of time, of course, but it's the only way we have of living through time. This, I realized, is how I would tell my story. Before and after. A year later, the manuscript was sent to Dutton.
Okay, so this is where the knowledge of ISBN prefixes re-enters the story. Five months and seventeen days after sending the manuscript, Dutton called and offered to publish Looking for Alaska. And literally, my first thought was, “oh. My. God. I’m going to be a 0 dash 525 dash!” (Note: This is a joke that only librarians and publishing nerds would get. But each publisher has their own ISBN prefix. All Dutton ISBNs begin 0-525-, so Alaska's ISBN is 0-525-47506-0.)
How lucky I have been to be a 0-525-. Dutton’s publisher, Stephanie Owens-Lurie, has done so much to support this book, as has Doug Whiteman at Penguin. The world of children’s publishing is increasingly dominated by blockbuster deals and mega-hits—and no, that’s not the subtle jab at the publishing industry; that’s still coming—but Penguin took a small book with the dreaded “questionable content” and they worked their asses off to get Alaska to readers, and I am so grateful for it.
But the very best facet of being a 0-525- is Julie Strauss-Gabel, my incomparable editor. In the contemporary world of YA publishing—and here’s your subtle jab—far, far too many books are acquired and then published after only cursory revision because there is so much pressure to churn out titles.
That might have happened to me, and I certainly wouldn’t be here if it had. But instead, I ended up with Julie Strauss-Gabel, who literally spent years working on Looking for Alaska. Fewer than half the words in the acquired manuscript appeared in the final book. We talked about Alaska at 2 AM on instant messenger; she sent me editorial letters longer than some Newbery winners; and when I felt like we’d done enough work, she pushed me still further. I continue to be inspired by her dedication to the craft of editing and her genuine belief in the importance of creating good books for young people. Looking for Alaska is a collaboration between myself and Julie, and I am proud to share this award with her.
There’s one more collaborator who needs to be mentioned here, and that is my wife, Sarah. Sarah and I attended the same high school—a place that bears some physical resemblance to Culver Creek Prep—but we never knew one another until just after I began revising Alaska in earnest. So much of her, and so many of her stories, went into this book. Alaska says one thing in particular that I stole directly from Sarah: On our very first date, Sarah said, “Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia.” So I want to thank you, Sarah, for that line, for making each day of my life fun and invigorating, and for agreeing to marry such a nostalgic bastard.
I would also like to thank my parents and my brother, Hank. I had the astonishing good fortune of having my parents by my side when the Printz committee called to tell me about this award. I have an extraordinarily kind and funny and supportive family—in terms of their goodness, they are possibly even better than librarians—and I’m so glad to have my mom and dad here tonight. My greatest ambition in life is to make them proud.
I am often asked whether I wrote Looking for Alaska for teenagers, or whether I intended it to be a novel for adults and was just steered to a YA publisher. The answer is that I wrote it for teenagers, and my next novel is written for teenagers, and that I intend to write novels for teenagers as long as I am allowed to do so—although, to steal a line from Laurie Halse Anderson, I am really happy that the 12 adults sitting over there liked it, too. Writing for kids is the only kind of writing I know how to do that I feel is halfway noble. In his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, William Faulkner said, “The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, one of the pillars that help him to endure and prevail.” This is precisely why I write for young adults, and I think it’s why most people in the business do what they do. When you are a teenager, you discover that life is messy. Life is defined by ambiguity and confusion and unfairness and a pervasive randomness. It is in adolescence that you realize you are not safe, not in any sense the word, and that you never will be.
When I was a teenager, I remember reading a book by the sociologist Peter Berger in which he said, “The difference between dogs and people is that dogs know how to be dogs.” This is what we do as teenagers, and forever after: We try to figure out how to be people. I like writing for teenagers because they are still trying to figure out how to be people in un-selfconcious, forthright ways—because they are still open to the idea that a single book might change their understanding of how to be a person. It is my fervent hope that, at least for some teenagers, books can play a role in helping them navigate the labyrinth—that books can help show us how to choose the awful pain of love over the strange comfort of destruction, that books can be a pillar to help us endure and prevail.
I realize those are some rather grand sentiments, particularly coming from a guy whose first novel features a lot of jokes about peeing. But I really _hope_ that in some small way, my books will help teenagers to endure and prevail. I _know_, however, that your work does just that. So again: Thank you.
Q. Do you know how to do that thing everyone else can do where a Youtube video actually appears in your blog and people just have to click play for it to work? A. I think so! I hope this works. So, a Looking for Alaska reader (okay fine it was my dad) has posted a video of my lengthy appearance on the Today Show last week. You can watch it here. To be funny and also make fun of me, Dad made the intro like twenty-four seconds long, so that you'd think we were leading up to something significant, and then, well, you'll see:
Q. When does your new book, "An Abundance of Katherines," come out? A. Three days. I am very excited. Although actually, I am not THAT excited, because nothing really happens on the day the book comes out. I remember when Alaska came out, I kept waiting for something to happen. But books are like babies in that the first couple months tend to be pretty boring. You have to wait for them to grow up a little.
Q. Who won the soundtrack contest? A. Um, I'll get back to you. It is a lot of soundtracks to listen to, in my defense.
Q. Who won the Picture Contest? A. The Swing, although the Book-Inside-the-Yellow-Pages also had a lot of votes. So congratulations! I'm going to keep that picture on my myspace forever. It's great.
Q. Speaking of myspace, once a year or so don't you go through google and laboriously invite everyone who listed Alaska as one of their favorite books to be your myspace friend? A. I do. I've always liked monotonous and repetitive tasks, and this is one that I particularly enjoy, because it's a chance to briefly say thank you to a lot of people who've read the book, and also I am just a myspace nerd.
Q. In the process of doing that recently, have you learned anything interesting? A. Well, I learned that there is now a band called Looking for Alaska, which they indeed got from the book. There is also a band called The Great Perhaps, but they are unrelated. So anyway, take that Harry and the Potters!
The Today Show just said I've been dumped 59 times. It was 53, thank you very much. Whatever happened to fact-checking?
What kind of loser gets dumped 59 times?! Not this one, certainly.
Anyway, as predicted, I had 11 seconds of air time, but at least my shirt didn't look wet. I think, for better or worse, there will be more on Thursday and Friday.
T minus 9 days and counting until the publication of An Abundance of Katherines. Also, T minues 11 days and counting until my brother Hank's wedding. You should really either preorder my book or buy him something from his wedding registry. I'll leave the choice to you.
Here's a sentence you'll never hear out of me again: There are two reasons to pick up this month's issue of Teen Vogue. First, there is an ad for Katherines in which I dish out relationship advice to girls (my advice in the ad, and also my advice to girls generally, is to date more nerds). Second, Rachel Bilson, the not-unattractive star of The O.C., reveals that she has read Looking for Alaska (and found it to be "a heartfelt story"). I'm not sure if heartfelt is a compliment, but I'll take it.
(You might have to click on that photo to get the full effect.) Thanks to myspace friend Lydia for bringing this to my attention.
The other news is The Today Show. As you will see if you watch Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, I participate on a panel of men, who are ostensibly telling their relationship secrets. There was a relationship expert (whom I liked a lot) named Ian Kerner; there was the very funny Sherrod Small from VH1's Best Week Ever, and then there were three other guys, and then there was me. Hopefully they will edit me so that I seem funny and charming. Admittedly, that will require extensive editing, which is why I'll probably be on screen for eleven seconds.
(The best part about the entire experience was that about five minutes before the reporter showed up to start asking us questions, I spilled water all over my shirt, because I am an idiot. If you look closely at the start of the interview, you might see it. So here are a bunch of burly film crew guys, and a bunch of guys who are about to be interviewed regarding the secrets of real men, and everyone is huddled around me, suggesting ways to help dry the shirt quickly. All of which goes to show once more than men are from Earth and women are also from Earth.)
Contest results for the two remaining contests should come tomorrow.
Here's a very brief excerpt from my new book, An Abundance of Katherines (which comes out in just 10 days--jeez, that snuck up on me):
"Five years is a long time," Lindsey said. "It is and it isn't, baby. It is and it isn't."
That dialogue in a completely different context (which I can't tell you or it will spoil the whole novel), but I was thinking about that this morning. For me, five years has been a long time, and also it hasn't. I startd writing Looking for Alaska in earnest about a week after September 11th, when I was lonely and newly single and about as unhappy as I've ever been. Since then, a lot of personal things have changed--the book has come out, I met Sarah, got married, moved to New York, started writing full-time. But at least in my head, I'm the same basic person I was five years ago. I was 24 then. I suppose I'm a different person from my 24-year-old self, but not THAT different.
Five years, on the other hand, is a very long time if you're 15. If you're 15, 9/11 happened to a pre-pubescent kid version of you, not the current teen version of you. I wonder what it's like, to have a new self between you and this event that defined everything that has come since both politically and socially. I wonder if it allows you to grow up with the country (as R.P. Warren put it). Or maybe you grow up faster than the country; maybe youth allows you to go on growing up while the country stays scared.
It's a really beautiful day here in New York. A brilliant blue sky, clear as I've ever seen it. Hope it's nice where you are, too.
1. Earlier today, I confused The Backstreet Boys with N Sync. Thanks to the reader who pointed this out. I would be embarrassed, but of course there is no better badge of honor than an inability to distinguish boy bands.
2. Also earlier today, I recorded a segment for NBC's Today Show, which is (tragically) not about An Abundance of Katherines, but instead about relationships. (I was part of a panel of men.) I can just hear my ex-gilfriends saying, "Getting relationship advice from John Green is like getting chastity advice from Madonna," but whatever. You can make that joke when YOU'RE on the Today Show, ex-girlfriends.
Anyway, I will blog about the entire experience (hints: The reporter was nice; I was sitting next to the very funny Sherrod Small from VH1's Best Week Ever; and also I spilled water on myself right before they started filming) next week, and I will constantly remind you to get up early and watch me do my goofy laugh everytime someone says something funny.
I got this from Sarah Dessen, who incidentally is hooked on lonelygirl15, which incidentally has now been established as fraudulent, with the creators issuing a James Frey-esque note to lonelygirl fans. (All we know at the moment is that lg15, whoever that is, is represented by Hollywood superagency CAA.)
1. Favorite Beatles song: I don't know. "Across the Universe?" Whenever I listen to the White Album, I find myself saying, "The Beatles were really good."
2. Favorite Rolling Stones song: I don't really like the Rolling Stones, but I guess "Can't Always Get What You Want," despite its questionable theme.
3. Favorite Doors song: I don't know any Doors songs. Um, is that famous one called "Break On Through" or "The Other Side?" That one, I guess.
4. Favorite Bob Dylan song: "Tangled Up in Blue" for sure, although I am also a big fan of the more recent "Things Have Changed."
5. Favorite Led Zeppelin song: This meme featues a lot of banjoless bands. Um, pass.
6. Favorite TV Theme Song: I was really into the Growing Pains theme, but I'm also quite fond of the Law and Order song, which I sing like this: "Duh-DUH! Boo-dee-lee-do."
7. Favorite Prince Song: The one that's in Looking for Alaska.
8. Favorite Madonna Song: Like a Virgin
9. Favorite Michael Jackson song: Thriller
10. Favorite Queen Song: Oh, come on. Queen is like the OPPOSITE of banjos. I pass.
11. Favorite 'N Sync Song: When I was in a sketch comedy group in college, we choreographed a dance to "I Want It That Way." (The videotapes have since been destroyed.)
12. Favorite Al Green Song: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.
13. Favorite Bruce Springsteen song: Atlantic City
14. Favorite Cure song: Ooh, finally a band I like! 10:15 on a Saturday Night.
15. Favorite song that most of your friends haven't heard: None of my friends like any of my music. I guess probably "Southbound," by Doc and Merle Watson.
16. Favorite Beastie Boys song: Another band I like. Probably "Brass Monkey."
17. Favorite Clash song: London Calling.
18. Favorite Beach Boys song: Surf City, USA (a favorite of mine when I was eight).
19. Favorite Cyndi Lauper song: They are all tied for last place.
20. Favorite song from a movie: Elliot Smith's "Needle in the Hay" from The Royal Tennenbaums or else "In the Jailhouse Now" from O Brother Where Art Thou. (BANJO!)
21. Favorite Jeff Buckley song: Sarah Dessen picked Hallelujah, even though it is a Leonard Cohen song that Jeff Buckley covered. I am going to pick Hallelujah, too, because A. it's great, and B. I don't know any other Jeff Buckley songs.
22. Favorite Johnny Cash song: You're Drifting Away, or else Jackson, his duet with June.
23. Favorite song from an 80's one hit wonder: Ice, Ice Baby. No contest.
24. Favorite Pink Floyd song: Wish You Were Here.
25. Last song you heard: Some song by Modest Mouse I'm listening to for the Soundtrack Contest (and yes, I'm listening to every song, which is why it's taking so long).
So for the last several days, I've had this antibacterial gauze stuffed inside my jaw bone that kind of comes out of the hole in the bottom of my gum (oh, by the way, don't read this blog entry if you're eating). I've liked having the gauze because I don't have to look at the weird fact that there is a gaping hole in the bottom of my gum that seems to lead to the abyss, to the thing that Robert Penn Warren called "the darkness, which is you."
So the gauze keeps me from having to see the darkness which is me, but then this morning, it was time for the removal of the gauze. This was Sarah's job. A surgeon's daughter, Sarah is expert with tweezers, and she was able to reach in and gingerly remove the gauze. It didn't hurt nearly as bad as I'd feared. And now I can pull down my lower lip and stare into the abyss. The darkness. The oblivion toward which we are all inexorably headed. Have a great day, everybody! (Just kidding. It doesn't even hurt that badly at the moment.)
Speaking of the darkness, which is me, lonelygirl15 (a probably-fake and possibly-Satanic video blogger, for those of you who don't remember) continues to haunt me with her excellent YA-Novel-in-Videos, which now appears to be not a romance novel but a horror novel:
1. There is a new video about Pluto, and also about how Lonelygirl used to get teased. She looks a little tired in it, but hey, so would I if I were about to be ritually sacrificed. 2. Virginia Heffernan was sent an outlandishly creepy audio from Cassie (who used to be friends with Bree and Daniel but has never appeared in the videos). In the audio, Cassie whispers, "I'm scared," and then at the very end, seems to begin to scream.
I wish I knew how to quit you, Lonelygirl15. The latest news, very briefly (those of you tired of Bree and Daniel can just skip past the numbers to the other stuff):
1. Lonelygirl15 and Danielbeast have started posting their videos at Revver.com, which is exactly like Youtube, only A. terribly designed, and B. clunky, and C. ugly, and D. horrible. Oh, and E. Revver pays you a tiny bit of money for each time someone watches one of your movies. This seems to lend credence to the idea it's a small group of young people who made the movies as a project and now that they are popular want to make a bit of money off of them. In short, it seems unlikely that this is a promo for Lost, or for a video game, or for the new Harry Potter. (Although that would be brilliant.) But why has no one recognized them yet? Do they live in an Alaskan village or something?
2. The New York Times' indefatiguable Virginia Heffernan tracked down the man who appears to be lonely girl's lawyer, and he said--this is pretty exciting, so brace yourselves--"I have nothing to say." By saying nothing, Mr. Ken Goodfried, you have spoken volumes. (More credence lent to the group-of-kids theory.)
3. Theories about for what's going to happen on 10/12/06 abound. (10/12 being the date that subtly appears in one of lonely girl's videos, the very same date that happens to be the birthday of Aleister Crowley, the opium smoker who founded Bree's occultist religion.) It turns out that there is an actual thing called Crowleymas, which is like the occultist version of Christmas, and it is celebrated on 10/12. If this lasts until October 12, it may kill me. I have a book to write, Lonelygirl! This isn't just about you and your strangely compelling Satanic mystery anymore. It's also about me and my languishing manuscript.
Okay, enough about Bree. Let's talk about me:
Buscando a Alaska, which looks approximately like this,
was recently published in Mexico by the really great people at Castillo. (With some foreign publishers, you never hear anything from them, but with others, they really involve you in the process, and Castillo has been great to me, and so supportive of the book, and also I really like the labyrinth on the cover.) They threw a big release party for Alaska in an old theater in Mexico City recently, for which I produced a short (and stupid) video. I wish I could have gone to the event, becauase apparently some people did the Takumi raps in Spanish with someone really beatboxing, which is fantastic. But anyway, the bookstore chain in Mexico City that sold books at the event publishes a weekly bestseller list:
1. Relaciones Publicas. Jorge Rios Szalay, Trillas 2. Buscando a Alaska. John Green, Castillo 3. Todas las Familias Felices. Carlos Fuentes 4. Ines del alma Mia. Isabel Allende, Arete
And yes, that is my name alongside Carlos Fuentes and Isabel Allende (for one week at least).
I Swear to You I Will Never Post about Lonelygirl15 or Danielbeast Again
At least not until the case has been cracked.
But I have well and truly gone down the rabbit hole on this one. This happens to me sometimes: In October of 2004, I pretty much stopped doing everything and devoted an entire month to tracking polls, trying to figure out who was going to win the election. For about 72 hours in 2002, I became obsessed with the idea that you could create a mathematical formula that would correctly predict the future of romantic relationships and tried to re-teach myself high-school math so I could make it happen.
I think it is a genetic disorder (Julie, my editor, suffers from it also), and I think they will eventually identify the fanboy gene that made me sleep four hours a night this weekend while trying to answer the question of who is behind the lonelygirl15 fiction, and what the plot is about, and how complex the clues truly are. Anyway, I've started posting at the messy but smart lonelygirl15 forum, which is a sure sign that I've lost my mind.
Lindsay Robertson posted a hilarious blog post in which she (fairly) ridicules me and everyone else associated with lonely girl and daniel beast. The title of the post: BoredGirl29.
In her previous video, which involved making cookies, the date "10/12/06" was cleverly inserted into the narrative. October 12 happens to be the birthday of noted occultist, Thelema founder, cocaine addict, racist, Scientology-inspirer, and sex addict Aleister Crowley. Lonelygirl15, of course, keeps a portrait of Crowley on her wall.
It seems to me that the creator of the lonelygirl15 web site, who is in some way involved with the lg15/db enterprise, may be part of "A Secret Society," at least according to a random post inserted by an unknown user a month and a half ago into wikipedia. And you can always trust wikipedia!
Secret societies! Satanism! Weird dates in the future! How will we ever get out of this labyrinth?
Happy Labor Day. Tomorrow: Looking for Alaska news from around the world (hint: I'm a bestseller in Mexico).
Well, it seems that Lonelygirl15 might be a scientologist. This would explain a lot. I don't wish to offend any of my scientologist readers or anything, and I know that when you say bad things about scientology they sort of mark you for life and all, but that is one batshit crazy religion.
Sarah and I had a long talk last night with our friend Amy (who is incidentally creating the world's cutest television pilot for Nick, Jr.) about mortal enemies and whether or not one ought to have them.
The long and short of the conversation was that we all agreed that you must never, ever defend yourself or your work against critics, because you end up looking like a jerk, even if you're a really great person who does a lot for kids. This is true 100% of the time, without exception in all of human history. So I am only going to look like a jerk if I start a feud with amazon reviewer D. Brown (whomever s/he might be).
ERGO: I would like to announce that D. Brown is no longer my mortal enemy. In fact, I want to make D. Brown my friend. I want to reconcile with D. Brown and put our painful shared past behind us. The thing is, though, that D. Brown and I cannot have our moving and heartwarming reconcilliation until I find out who D. Brown is.
And so begins an investigation the likes of which has not been seen since Danielbeast tried to light a candle beneath Aleister Crowley.
