We all have these dreamy periods of relentless joyfulness in our lives, and if we're old enough, we can recognize them while they're happening (then again, when we're old enough, we also know they won't last). Such was my life in the first half of 2007. I was living in a city I was learning to love. The distance between my brother and me had evaporated thanks to a weird video project. And almost every day, I wrote a lot.
I have all that now, too: I am hard at work on the Paper Towns screenplay and revising the book I'm cowriting with David Levithan. (Spring 2010.) Hank and I are still making videos--and still laughing at each other. And ... okay, I would say I'm learning to LOVE Indianapolis. But a place is people, and I like our friends.
And yet.
And yet I miss writing with Maureen Johnson and Printz Honor winning E. Lockhart.
That Thing Neil Gaiman Does Where He Responds to Emails in Blog Posts
...is a very good idea. Unpleasantly, it just isn't possible to respond to emails right now. But I will respond to some things here! These emails are from yesterday.
"Is there any way I can interview you about how your religious beliefs have affected your work?"
Alas, there is not, but I will say this: All writers' work is inevitably shaped by their values. I don't think I'm any different. But anyone who is looking for some message in my books that being religious is better than not being religious is barking up the wrong tree. I happen to be religious, mostly for the reasons David Foster Wallace outlined in this speech. But I don't think the full experience of humanness is open to me and closed to others because I happen to be religious.
"I wrote a story for my english class and I was hoping you could possibly read/edit my paper."
Alas (again with the alases!), I cannot read unpublished stories or manuscripts, partly because my tbr pile is already too long and partly because my publisher strongly discourages it for legal reasons.
"How can I get an autographed copy of your books?"
The probably-easiest way is to happen across one of the many independent bookstores where I have signed stock, or else to live in Indianapolis, where I have secretly signed every copy of my books I happen to come across in bookstores. I don't at the moment have a way of SASE-ing books, because I am extremely disorganized and scared of the post office. (CRAP. That reminds me I have to go to the post office. CRAP.)
1. I don't know anything about picture books, so I'll stay out of that, but I do know one thing: I love William Carlos Williams.
2. This is the best Newbery list I can remember (and I can remember some great ones). I love Savvy. I love The Underneath. I love After Tupac and D Foster. And I love The Graveyard Book. (Haven't read the other, but I'm sure it's lovely.)
3. I thought the Printz choices were extremely strong, although it's no secret that I would have liked to see Octavian Nothing win. Usually there's a choice I'd disagree with (like what was up with the honor nod for that schticky math novel in 2007?), but this year I'm really pleased. I am particularly happy about The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks, which--not to brag or anything--I liked before it was cool to like.
The committees who decide these awards work so hard, and the work they do is a gift to all of us.
So after Chief Justice John Roberts and President Obama bungled the constitutionally mandated Presidential oath of office, they had a do-over. When Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, he placed his hand on the same Bible Abraham Lincoln used at his inaugurations. But yesterday, during the redo, OBAMA DIDN'T USE A BIBLE.
And this, if you are a blogger, is cause for profound concern. (See, for instance, Drudge.) Questions I've seen on blogs today include:
1. Is Obama President if he didn't swear the oath on a Bible? 2. Did Obama and Roberts--who I'm sure are dear friends after Obama voted against Roberts's confirmation to the Supreme Court--conspire to bungle the oath so that when Obama REALLY took the oath, he wouldn't have to use a Bible, because he is a secret Muslim? 3. Doesn't this make you wonder about Obama's piety?
Yes, no, and no. I talked about the history of inaugurations in this video. Presidents who swore the oath of office without a hand on anything include John F. Kennedy and Teddy Roosevelt. (John Q. Adams and Franklin Pierce both swore the oath on books of law.) So Barack Obama is the President. (!)
Related: This wasn't racist. If you think that was racist, you're confusing "racist" with "awesome."
If the first couple tweets are any indication, my twitter will be nothing but exhortations to save our economy through hard work and smart spending, like:
Work: It Keeps Away the Hunger. Work: Remember When People Used To Do It and Things Were Better? Work: It's What Bankers Do That Makes Them Feel Entitled To Their Wealth Even Though Their Compensation Structure Encourages Short Sighted Greed and Renders Sustainable Growth Impossible.
Yeah, okay. My sloganeering needs some...work.
Good day yesterday. The President gave a good speech; Jay Z performed his best-written song wearing his best-ever glasses. But let's remember--in six months, in a year, in two years--that we already knew things would get awfully bad.
I have just learned that Paper Towns is a finalist for an Edgar Award. The Edgars are given out every year by the Mystery Writers of America. Congratulations to the other finalists: Bog Child, The Big Splash, Getting the Girl, and Torn to Pieces.
I am very pleased, of course, and not least because this marks the first time that one of my books has ever been up for an award that carries some weight with my mom. (My mom, like me, is a big fan of crime fiction.) Also, I believe the awards banquet involves a tuxedo.
Stolen from facebook. Type your name into Google with the verb that comes after in the question. Answer with your favorites from the first page of google results. Have fun!
Q: Type in "[your name] needs" in the Google search. A: "John Green needs Daniel Biss to calculate an arithmetic mean." (True.) "John Green needs to get his haircut he looks like a hippy." (True, but a run-on.) "John Green needs to be put in context." (Totally true.)
Q: Type in "[your name] looks like" in Google search. A: "John Green looks like the kind of material I want." (Go on, sir.) "John Green looks like Hank Hill." (I'd rather look like the kind of material you want.) "John Green looks like a drunk."
Q: Type in "[your name] says" in Google search. A: "John Green says voters should be aware they're being manipulated." (Spoken by my esteemed namesake.)
Q: Type in "[your name] wants" in Google search. A: "John Green wants to pay off the debt." (But alas, he doesn't have the money.)
Q:Type in "[your name] does" in Google search. A: "John Green does it again." "John Green does not disappoint." (Thanks, guys, although I think one of those refers to a high school basketball player.)
Q: Type in "[your name] hates" in Google search. A: "John Green hates me." (No, I don't!) "John Green hates the Hardy Boys." (Yes, I do!)
Q: Type in "[your name] asks" in Google search. A: "John Green asks himself, Why is being a nerd bad?" (This is taken from my just-discovered wikiquote page, which calls me "an American novelist and minor Internet celebrity.")
Q: Type in "[your name] likes " in Google search. A: "John Green likes socks." (As long as they're argyle!) "John Green likes to champion young adult readers." (Who doesn't? Fascists?)
Q: Type in "[your name] eats " in Google search. A: "John Green eats a blenderized Happy Meal." (Don't remind me.)
Q: Type in "[your name] wears " in Google search. A: "John Green wears peanut butter sexy."
Q: Type in "[your name] was arrested for" in Google Search. A: "John Green was arrested for drunk driving." (Different John Green.)
Q: Type in "[your name] loves" in Google Search. A. "John Green loves the Mountain Goats." (True!) "John Green loves you back!" (True, in a limited way!) "John Green loves librarians." (True!)
I always assume that everyone who reads this blog also follows the videos over in nerdfighteria, but maybe that isn't the case, so briefly:
There's a nerdfighter named Shawn Ahmed who moved to Bangladesh a couple years ago hoping to do something about global poverty with 300 dollars he'd saved for an XBox 360. Shawn has used his immense talent for making videos (and immense patience, which is required when uploading them from Bangladesh) to change the relationship between rich and poor in the world. (Watch this video to see youtube at its best.)
Our friends at iPower (aka athenewins) are trying to momentarily draw the attention of the Internet away from rollerblading kittens and toward decreasing worldsuck--specifically by making people aware of Shawn's work. You can help out by digging Shawn and bumping him up on Reddit.
As longtime readers of this blog will know, I am a huge supporter of the burgeoning genre of JGrock--that is, songs based on the work of John Green. (I am open to better genre names.) Recent entrants into the field include:
1. Hank Green's song "The List," which is basically taken word-for-word from a scene near the beginning of Paper Towns:
(Sung here on the last night of the Great American Tour de Nerdfighting, at which point we were both punch drunk and playing this game where we both tried to hold the last note for as long as possible. Hank's REAL HONEST TO GOD STUDIO ALBUM, btw, came out yesterday.)
2. Lauren Fairweather's brilliant and hilarious "Black Santas:"
3. A song called "Up Here, Looking Down" about Margo and Q looking down from the SunTrust Building:
4. A song about Margo and Q called "My Mirror:"
5. Another version of "The List" (no pressure to BUY HANK'S ALBUM or anything).
In comments, Manar writes: "I can't wait for the movie. I'm overjoyed that you're writing the screenplay because that means that even if it must deviate somewhat from the book (because although I may not like it, I recognize that it can be necessary for movies to not be perfect visual replicas of the literature that they are displaying...) it will nonetheless still be awesome. :)"
It is well known that when it comes to the movies, I am a bit of a Holden Caulfield*. But it should also be noted to all fans of Paper Towns that, should a movie ever be made of the book, it will likely be RADICALLY different from the book. It will not be an attempt to make the book into a movie; it will be an attempt to make a movie that doesn't suck. I hope that won't make you hate me.
I know that this is an unpopular position, and I'm happy to acknowledge that I might be wrong about it, but ultimately I'm not interested in movies retelling stories. (Like, when watching the Harry Potter movies, I am always bored. Like, I've already had a much richer experience imagining these characters doing and saying these same things. What I want from Harry Potter movies are vastly different stories told in the same world, with different endings and the like. For instance, I would LOVE it if in the last HP movie, Harry died.)
As I begin to write a screenplay called Paper Towns, I find myself still interested in the ideas of the novel, but I don't think that the same plot rendered visually works in the service of those ideas. So I hope that you will not hate me, if they ever make a movie, for "ruining" the book. Nothing I'm writing now says anything about the book; I'm just trying to write something that will be fun and interesting to watch.
I know this early to start begging your forgiveness, particularly when you consider how rarely movies actually get made, but still: Forgive me.
* Which is to say that I'm dubious. By the way, do you know how the original Catcher flap copy, which was probably written by Salinger, described Holden? "Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it."
I need a break from Fireball Wilson Roberts and his incessant barking. Anyway, meme time. Taken from a random place on the Internet. Someone give me a better place to find my surveys, please.
01. What's the last TV show you saw? Um, last night I watched part of this show on PBS (omfg I am so old) about Arctic Exploration (omfg I am my father), the theme of which was, "If you explore in the Arctic, it is best to do so without lead poisoning and scurvy." I already knew this, but it was nice to have it reinforced with a good old-fashioned story of Victorian suffering and death.
02. What are you wearing at the moment? A zip-up windbreaker, jeans, argyle socks, tennis shoes, and a t-shirt that says, "My Wife Is a Yeti."
03. Favorite Song of the Moment? The recent feature story about Will Oldham has me listening to "New Partner" again.
04. What is your favorite scent? white musk from the body shop. (I know. I'm in eigth grade. And I'm old. And I'm my father.)
05. What's your occupation? What do you do there? I am a writer. I work at Stabucks and other locations. What do I do? I tell stories.
06. What do you drink the most? Water.
07. What is your favorite restaurant? I'm pretty fond of a family-owned restaurant in Indianapolis called Smee's. But my favorite restaurant in the world? Probably Nobu.
08. What will you be doing after finishing this? I will write some screenplay.
09. What did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be this, but I pictured it differently.
10. Your favorite romantic movie? Rushmore. Is Rushmore acceptably romantic? I think it is. If not Rushmore, then maybe Juno.
11. What's the least favorite thing about yourself? I am too lazy.
13. What are your ideal qualities in a novel? I like it when they are all-the-way-funny and all-the-way-serious.
14. What time do you usually go to bed? Between 11 and midnight.
15. What's the meaning behind your LJ username/name/nicknames you go by? sparksflyup is taken from a line in the Book of Job, which is inarguably (TRY TO ARGUE WITH ME! JUST TRY!) the greatest book in the Hebrew Bible. "Yet man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward."
So back when Maureen Johnson, Lauren Myracle, and I were writing the interconnected novellas that became Let it Snow, I never thought our work would be compared (favorably!) to the work of William Shakespeare in no less a newspaper than the Washington Post(who called the book, "a comedy as delicious as any whipped up by the Bard." No lie.)
Nonetheless, Lauren reveals on her massively entertaining blog that she sometimes feels like people like her story less than the others. (Most of the reviews I've read, meanwhile, feel to me as if they like my story less than the others. I theorize that this is due to the fact that a dollop of criticism damages self-esteem more than a dollop of praise improves it.)
But anyway, in her post, Lauren includes portraits of Maureen and me. Maureen's is a real picture of her, although she is smoking a cartoon cigar. And my picture? Gangsta Jesus:
