This evening Paper Towns was named the best young adult mystery of the year by the Mystery Writers of America. I was honored to be nominated alongside Siobhan Dowd's Bog Child, Jack Ferraiolo's The Big Splash, Susan Juby's Getting the Girl, and Margot McDonnell's Torn to Pieces. These are all excellent books, and I was totally stunned-and-thrilled to win.
Now I own a bust. A bust! Who could have ever believed such things were possible?
Sorry about the lack of blog posts recently. (I've been sick and traveling, a tough combination.)
But I am here in New York City today to attend the Edgar Awards banquet. Paper Towns is a finalist for the award, and if you want, you can follow the evening live on my twitter.
Speaking of twitter: I logged on recently to discover that I suddenly have 33,000 followers. Twitter put me on their "suggested users" list (along with Demi Moore and P. Diddy, if that's what he calls himself these days), so now there are a lot of twitter newbies who are like, "Why does this guy call his wife the Yeti?"
Why, indeed. Speaking of which, I sure do miss the Yeti.
What kind of programming are you looking for from authors these days?* And secondarily, nerdfighters, how do you envision the perfect John and Hank (and others?) event?
Best wishes, John
* I ask not because I'm trying to figure out how, in the future, we want to tour. Like, example:
The traditional author visit to a library involves the author coming and speaking to a teen advisory group and other teens/adults who may be interested. These events generally involve a podium, and the author talks about his/her life/work/inspiration/how books change lives/etc. (This sounds dismissive, but I don't mean for it to. I love such events, and I often attend them.)
The nerdfighter tour events Hank and I did last year were very different: There were a lot of kids, and they often came from very far away, and they generally already knew quite a bit about us, and there were songs and dancing in addition to reading and question/answers. This had advantages--lots of enthusiasm about books and libraries, for instance--but also its disadvantages. (Some facets of nerdfighting are inherently inside-jokey, like for instance the word "nerdfighting.")
Here's what we're trying to figure out: If the dollar-to-attendee ratio were amazingly good, would libraries be interested in even bigger events that more thoroughly mixed the worlds of books and music? At what point does it cease to be a library event and become just a concert? Or can a concert of nerdy music emceed by an author be a library event?
On May 31st, I will be talking and answering questions and signing books at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia at 2 PM. You should come--and you should bring your friends. Also you enemies. We love them, too, after all.
To RSVP, you can call 03 8664 7099. Or you can email bookings [at] slv.vic.gov.au
I hope to have a gathering in Sydney, also. I'll let you know.
Totally unrelated: I wrote a piece for the Washington Post in which I argue that the United States, as a nation, should get rid of Prom--through legislation, if necessary.
Also totally unrelated: Leave me questions so I can answer them on Tuesday.
So Ashton Kutcher promised to give $100,000 to buy bednets through malarianomore if he got to one million twitter followers before CNN. (He did.)
So I thought it would be funny if I told my twitter followers that I would give a thousand bucks to malarianomore if they got Ashton Kutcher to follow me on twitter.
I logged on to twitter eight hours later to find Ashton Kutcher among my followers.
Q. I'm considering taking over a country. Do you know of one that would benefit from a somewhat egomaniacal YA Librarian?
A. Excellent question. I'd recommend Somalia. It has lots of beautiful coastline, warm weather, and no functioning government. Somalia could really stand to have a librarian in charge (particularly given that it currently has no public school system).
Q. Does your mom really make goat's milk soap?
A. Yes, she really does. My mom and dad own several goats with their friend Molly (whose adorable daughter is the titular "Farmer Jane"). In fact, they just had two kids on Easter. So they raise the goats, milk the goats, and then turn the goat milk into a variety of things, including soap, which you can buy. (It's excellent, and I'm not just saying that because it's my mom.)
Q. do you know of any other "paper towns" besides Agloe, NY?
A. Yeah, there are several, but they are (by definition) hard to find. The wikipedia entry on fictitious entries has some examples. (Also there you can learn why Myrna Mountweazel is called Myrna Mountweazel in Paper Towns.)
Q. How do I ease the anxiety of a 6 year old boy who has many questions about dying?
A. I don't know. Tough one. There are some good picture books on dying (I'd also recommend that you read the brilliant Adam Gopnik essay "Death of a Fish"), but my general advice would just be to answer the questions patiently and calmly, remembering that children are A. curious, and B. repetitive, and C. want to feel safe.
The bad news is that on some level, the boy in question is right to feel anxious about death--it is coming for him.
The good news is that statistically, having reached the age of 5 alive, he has a 99% chance of living to be 55. I realize that statistics aren't terribly comforting to six-year-olds, but still. He is likely to have more pressing worries, such as second grade, which--trust me--is a killer. (Not literally!)
Q. Just read An Abundance of Katherines for YA lit class and love it. What life lesson do you want readers to take away from it?
A. Thanks! (And none.)
Q. what was the first story you ever wrote (that wasn't a HS journal) and will you ever share it with us?
A.
Q. Auburn or Alabama?
A. Roll Tide.
Q. Is there ANYTHING you can say to convince us to drink the "YFN-is-a-real-person" Koolaid?
A. No. (I mean, her name--317--spells LIE when you turn it upside down. I don't think she's a real person. I've never said I thought she was a real person. I said I receive real emails.)
Q: Is there going to be any kind of Nerdfighter gathering in Philly on Saturday, since you are going to be there?
A. Well, you make the gathering a nerdfighter gathering, not me. I have to leave right after my talk and signing, because I have to go to my friend Mary Fran's wedding. So I can't do a nerdfighter gathering. But you still can.
Q. Does religion play a large part in your life and your work?
A. I'm reading this amazingly good book called The Blood of the Lamb by Peter De Vries.
Q. I think this might be a wrong choice. If you really think this person may be ill, you probably should not have taken this public. Why did you?
A. (This question relates to TiNT.) I strongly think that YFN is not crazy--for a variety of reasons, all of which are contained in small ways inside the text of my story.
Judith Krug, the first (and for 40 years the only) director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, died on Saturday.
OIF, as we called it when I worked at the ALA, was just down the hall from the Booklist offices, and so I knew Ms. Krug a bit. But I didn't realize how important she was to the history of books in America until I'd written one myself. Krug invented Banned Books Week, helped countless thousands of librarians defend their collections against threats of censorship, and truly devoted her life to the freedom to read.
There's a great quote from Ms. Krug in the editorial in today's NYT: "Libraries serve the information needs of all of the people in the community — not just the loudest, not just the most powerful, not even just the majority. Libraries serve everyone.”
So there is exactly one and only one way to read the new thing I am writing. So, yeah. If you like my books, this one is free, and a new chapter comes out each week. A brief historical overview:
1. Several months ago, This Is Not Tom was created as a riddle site by a young man named Alexander Basalyga (real person, real college student, real genius).
2. For several weeks before Hank and I stumbled across This Is Not Tom, I had been receiving a series of strange emails from someone who claimed that all these unusual things had happened to her, including high-quality virtual-reality encounters with the novelist David Foster Wallace and a bunch of other hyperreal gaming experiences she referred to as "experations." She also claimed that she had no "access" to her identity.
2a. I never replied to these early emails (there were about 20 of them). I get a lot of emails, and honestly as weird as these were, they didn't seem that weird.
2b. When I first heard about This Is Not Tom, I became obsessed with solving the riddles, but I suck at solving riddles, so I did a blogtv show in which nerdfighters helped me figure them out. Later that night, I got a skype friend request from someone, and it turned out to be the young woman who was sending me the emails. She wanted me to tell her story hidden behind riddles on this is not tom. She didn't want the story to be text-searchable (which it isn't), and she felt that hiding it behind riddles would protect the story from search engines (which it has).
2c. I discussed this idea with Alex, who both agreed to participate. Every week since then, Alex has uploaded a new video to the isthistom youtube channel. That video leads you through a series of riddles that ends with a chapter of the story.
3. That evening, I spoke to this person, briefly, on skype, and I heard her voice, because I wanted to confirm that she was A. serious and B. not Hank and C. not anyone else I know. From speaking to her, she struck me as a totally convincing teenager(ish).
4. No, I am not making this up.
4A. Obviously, it is possible that she is making it up. Honestly, I hope that she is, because otherwise she is probably mentally ill. I'm very interested in this young woman's identity, not least because I want to make sure her family knows what's going on. But she has gone to elaborate lengths to conceal it--or, I mean, I suppose it's theoretically possible that she genuinely doesn't know who she is. Regardless, she seems totally convinced that people are really, as they say, out to get her.
5. So, yeah. I found the bones of what she was telling me interesting enough that I started writing about it, first in cryptic little chapters and then in longer ones. To answer the questions I'm getting most often: Yes, she has told me more than I've written about yet. And yes, she still emails me at least once a week. (Portions of her emails, in fact, are inserted into the chapters.) And yes, I think I know approximately where she currently is, but only very approximately.
6. The reason I kind of danced around the fact that I'm writing this is because of the weird issues surrounding authorship. It is my story, and I'm writing it, but it is her life (or at least she seems to think it is), and in some ways she controls the plot.
7. The riddles Alex makes each week are beautiful and fascinating and deserve to be played, but if you want to catch up on old chapters directly, you can do so by scrolling down to the TINT Spoiled section of thisisnotforums.com.
Q. (I hope this doesn't come off as insulting, because I'm a fan of yours...) I've noted that you sometimes make off-handed remarks about Stephenie Meyer's books -- Edward/his grating perfection/ etc.. But I don't hear you slamming other YA books, you either praise them ad nauseum (Octavian Nothing) or don't mention them at all.
You've classified yourself as writing for "smart" teenagers, and I'm guessing that you consider SM books to be not as "smart." But many teens have Twilight and LFA on their bookshelves and like them equally.
Yours have heavy duty themes. Hers are page turners. Both have their merits. I think your struggle to figure out SM's success is your tragic flaw. Is it?
A. First, let me say that I hope my praise for Octavian Nothing (which is the greatest accomplishment in the history of children's literature sorry I can't stop myself) didn't LITERALLY induce nausea. That certainly wasn't my goal. My goal was to get people to read books that are "hard but brilliant," because in doing so they will learn that such books are not actually "hard." They are just brilliant.
Secondly, have I ever said that I write for smart teenagers? I hope I haven't (and don't think I have). I've said that I like to write about smart teenagers. But books about smart teenagers aren't only for smart teenagers any more than books about drug-addicted teenagers are only for drug addicts or books about vampires are only for vampires.
And one last thing before I get to the core of your question: I don't feel as if I'm struggling to understand Stephenie Meyer's success. (It may be happening unconsciously, but I don't think so.) I envy a lot of writers, but I would find the pressure of being Stephenie Meyer absolutely unbearable. One of the (many!) things I admire about her is that she has continued to work through pressure and expectations that would probably paralyze most writers--and would certainly paralyze this one.
But there are many other things I admire about Stephenie Meyer, including that I think her books (particularly Twilight and The Host) are really fun to read. I'm not a pretentious reader--and I hope to God I'm not a pretentious writer. Books should be fun to read, and hers are. The romance is drawn masterfully (I like romance novels and have even occasionally reviewed them). The pacing is perfect, particularly in the first book, and the world is so complex and well-imagined that you feel part of it in an exciting way.
I think Edward Cullen is an idealized asshat, an empty vessel into which we are allowed to stuff our hopes and aspirations. But that's not in any way a knock on the books. Books don't have a responsibility to present characters who are good boyfriends.
I believe that we as readers should read both as a sweet devouring (as Eudora Welty famously put it)--but that we should also be able to read critically at the same time. Which is to say that I think one can read, and love Twilight while simultaneously being troubled by the manner in which it romanticizes and objectifies the other.
Teenagers, I would argue, are actually very good at this--which is precisely why so many of them count both Twilight and The Catcher in the Rye among their favorite books. They are able to read broadly and without the built-in expectations adult readers tend to have. (I don't like fantasy; YA is sophomoric; literature is boring; whatever.)
I treasure this about my audience, and I certainly don't want them to give it up and start reading only, say, historical fiction set during the Revolutionary War.
There is much talk in the blogosphere about the redesign youtube is expected to launch on April 16th. Here are my thoughts:
(I know I missed by BEDA yesterday; I'll make it up with two tomorrow.)
PHILADELPHIA: I'll be at the Philadelphia Book Festival at 3:30 PM THIS SATURDAY at the Target State. More info here.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: On Sunday May 31st there will be a reading and nerdfighter gathering at the Melbourne library. Details to come, but it will be very awesome!
Tomorrow, an old-fashioned blog post. Today, your questions.
Q. i would love it if my english professors would one day come to class and begin to lecture, instead of slumping down in a desk, arms crossed, and casually asking what we thought of King Richard III while lighting a cigarette.
A. I think it's actually pretty cool that you get to go to school in 1963.
Q. What did you major in?
A. I double-majored in Religious Studies and English lit.
Q. I don't remember if you said this on youtube or Maureen posted about it on her blog or you posted about it on your blog but I believe that the two of you were on a cooking show together. Can you provide footage?
A. That definitely sounds like something that Maureen made up.
Q. How do you pick the questions for both these blogs and the ones on question Tuesday?
A. There is certainly no system. I just go through and pull out questions that seem particularly interesting, or questions where I have a particularly strong opinion, or questions that strike me as lending themselves to funny answers.
Q. Do you think that our experience of the world is limited by language, or do you think it is possible to think and experience something we cannot verbalize?
A. See, this is an example of a question that is far too smart and difficult for me to answer. I have no idea. It is certainly possible to experience things we cannot verbalize, but I'm not sure whether that's our fault or language's fault.
Q. Would you die for your country?
A. Tough one. I mean, I should state as a preface that I'm not particularly convinced by nationalism. I find the whole my-country-right-or-wrong thing a little bit ridiculous. Even so, if we are talking about the right of a place to exist where there is representative democracy and citizens have broad freedoms of speech and expression: Yes.
Also: that moral calculus would totally change if I were to join the US Armed Forces (which at my age and fitness level is unlikely but not totally impossible). Members of the Armed Forces have an entirely different responsibility, not only to their country but also to their units and to the chain of command.
Q. I'm a library student and I have to do a book talk in a high school tomorrow and I'm really nervous. Any tips?
A. Oh, I don't blame you. High schools are terrifying. But that doesn't help. What helps me (and this may not help you either; if it's counterproductive I apologize although actually since your tomorrow is my today this advice is coming too late to matter anyway; now all we want to know is HOW DID IT GO?) but what helps me is to remember that my relationship with the thing I'm doing is very different from their relationship with the thing I'm doing.
Like, to me it is a VERY BIG DEAL because for however-many days/weeks/months I've been worrying about this talk that I'm going to give to high school students, but to them it is forty-five minutes out of a larger day, a day in which they will talk to boys and study and worry about boys and check their makeup and laugh about that thing that happened to that person and worry about the paper they've gotta write this weekend oh and also maybe pick up a book someone suggested to them. This helps me, to put myself in the periphery of other people's days.
Q. What do you say to the fangirly Nerdfighters who think they are in romantic love with you?
A. That doesn't really happen. I'm not saying that to be modest; I just don't think nerdfighters really construct me in a romantic-type way. (Hank, maybe. Maybe hot breakdancing Hank! But not me.) Which makes me happy. I don't want to be constructed in a romantic-type way except by, like, Sarah.
Leave me questions for Friday! On Saturday and Sunday, I will do like actual non-Q&A blog posts. Now, your questions:
Q. Can Liverpool come back in the away leg at Stamford Bridge?
A. (Non-fans: Liverpool lost 3-1 at home in the first leg of the Champions' League quarterfinal to Chelsea.) No, of course not. It is impossible to beat Chelsea 3-1 in their home stadium. But the problem with being a Liverpool fan is that because this happened, you spend the rest of your life assuming that the impossible is not only possible but probable.
Q. Reams of literary criticism for high school students? Ridiculous suggestion. It's not an either/or proposition with what do you think v. what the experts think.
A. Well, reams means, what, a minimum of a thousand pages? I don't think it's ridiculous to read 1,000 pages of criticism over a high school career at all. But we can be friends regardless! (I agree with you re. the either/or proposition and did not mean to imply otherwise in my previous post.)
Generally, it's no secret that I favor the you-shut-up-and-write-notes-while-I-talk style of teaching to the let's-discuss-this-as-if-your-opinion-mattered style of teaching, but I realize that this belief is out-of-favor and quite possibly a character flaw.
(Also, and most importantly, I am not an educator and don't know anything about education except for this super-thin slice of the pie known as my own experience and a bit of highly selective reading. All I was trying to say in my earlier post was that students who distrust their English teachers are generally wrong to do so.)
Q. When you first began writing, did you ever struggle with feeling wildly inferior to all the great writers that have come before you?
A. Yes, and I still struggle with it, because I am wildly inferior to all the great writers who came before me. On some level, one has to say to one's self: Given that The Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace have already been written, my work is sort of irrelevant. Like, at best (and this would be a very big achievement, indeed), anything I do will be redundant.
But but but but but: Even though this may feel true, it actually isn't, at least not in the lives of readers. So finally these great writers are not mountains in whose dark shadow we must labor. These great novels are lions in our path. (Yes, I did steal that from Shelby Foote. I am not a great writer, but I am a good plagiarist.)
Q. How DO you pronounce Michael Chabon's name? And who is Michael Chabon?
A. I have been told that it rhymes with radon, but I don't know that for a fact, and anyway, if it is true I still find it only marginally helpful. Maybe MC will comment and let us know.
Michael Chabon is the massively important author of such hugely brilliant novels as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Amazing Adverntures of Kavalier and Clay, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union. He might be my favorite living writer. (When I was 17, I read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and it kinda changed my life and made my life as a writer possible and etc.
Q. Super Mario Kart- Great game, or Greatest Game?
A. This is a very, very difficult question, because of Tetris and Wii Sports and Doom and Super Mario Brothers and everything. But I'm going to say it: Greatest Game.
Q. Who's your favorite superhero?
A. Spiderman.
Q. you are an avid reader and a successful writer; which is more fun?
A. I certainly find reading more fun.
Q. You often quote poetry. Do you write any of your own? Have you ever?
A. No. People often say of poetry that everyone is writing poetry but no one is reading it. Well, I'm trying to restore balance. I love to read poetry and read it daily. And I love what poetry gives me as a reader. But I have no ear for writing it, and no desire to write it, either.
Note: This might change if poetry were to become lucrative.
Q. In 2006, you said that you were working on a book about whether or not the future exists; is this still something that may happen?
A. That book was Paper Towns. I have returned to the question of whether the future exists, which by the way I find disproportionately interesting, in the screenplay. I will probably cut it again.
Q. In Paper Towns one of the main themes is how Margo (and other characters) are misinterpreted. So I guess my question is, do you have any specific experience with this, that you don't mind sharing?
A. I think the specific experiences of this are far too numerous to share, because I am so busy being the center of my own skull-sized kingdom and everyone else is so busy being at the center of their skull-sized kingdoms that it's extraordinarily difficult for anyone to ever imagine anyone else with any complexity whatsoever. (And yet I think that imagining others complexly and empathetically is precisely what we are called to do as human beings.)
A. I wrote about (there is no way to be sure) seven or eight hundred thousand words while writing Paper Towns. So on average I guess I save 10% or what I write? I mean, that's a very inexact calculation, but I suspect I deleted at least 90% of the first draft of Looking for Alaska, and probably a similar percentage for my other books. But I don't know.
Q. What are your expectations or hopes for the Cubs this season?
A. My expectation is always--always--that the Cubs will win the World Series.
Q. It it a violation of copyright law if I make a button that uses a quote from one of your novels, let's say "I smoke to die." or something equally memorable, and sell said button?
A. I believe you'd have to cut me in on the proceeds from the button, or at least ask my permission. (And I probably would not allow the decontextualized use of that particular quotation, because it has a perverse way of glorifying smoking cigarettes and/or self-destructive behavior, which I don't want my work to do. Unless you gave me like a huge percentage of the royalties. Just kidding. I would never sell out my readers. Not for button money, anyway.)
Q. Several years ago you wrote "...I’m not a very happy person... I don’t have it in me. Happiness exhausts me." Do you feel happier more often these days than you did in your twenties?
A. I do feel happier than I did in my 20s (although let's bear in mind that I'm only 31, so it may be too soon to make a pronouncement), and I have to say that I value happiness much more now than I did when I wrote those words.
I still doubt that people close to me would call me a "happy person," but anyway, I would rather they describe me as a "helpful person" or an "interesting person" or a host of other adjectives. I still think that our society dramatically overrates happiness, but as I get older and mellow out, I see its charms.
Q. What is your opinion on how novels are generally taught in high school English classes? Do you think that by telling students what themes to look for and how to interpret them, students lose the opportunities to really THINK about what they are reading?
A. I'm going to answer this question very honestly. I think high school English classes ought to force-feed critical reading skills to students, even if it 'ruins' the reading experience. You can't really THINK about what you're reading until you have the skill set to read well. (Like, there seems to be this meme running through American high schools that all readings are created equal, that it is just as legitimate to think that Huck Finn is a racist novel as it is to think that Huck Finn is an abolitionist novel. This is simply untrue. Some readings are better than others, and in order to learn how to read critically and thoughtfully, you have to be taught.)
In fact, my honest answer, which you really don't want to hear, is that high schools spend far too much time asking you what you think about a novel and not nearly enough time making you read reams of literary criticism about the novel so that you might understand the approaches to reading that people have taken over the years, and the rewards (and pitfalls) of these approaches.
That said, there are plenty of opportunities to really think about what you're reading, like: 1. If you can thoughtfully and convincingly disagree with the traditional reading of a novel--if, for instance, you have some blinding new insight into Huck Finn that proves its racism--people will listen. 2. You get to think very independently about the books you read outside of class, and about summer reading books and etc.
Q. A sailor walks off of a ship that has just pulled into harbor and immediately heads toward a bay side restaurant. He orders the seagull, and after taking three bites he immediately leaves and commits suicide. Why?
A. I know this one. The sailor was shipwrecked. Lots of people died. The sailor is served a dish he is told is seagull. He loves the taste of it so when he is rescued and gets home, he eats a seagull sandwich. But it doesn't taste like the dish he loved. He realizes the dish was MAN, so he offs himself.
(For the record, I think this is an overreaction to cannibalism, which is a totally ethical thing in the situation the sailor found himself in; presumably the sailor already suffered from some pretty debilitating PTSD and survivor guilt from the whole experience, which in my opinion contributed to his demise as much as the seagull/human conflation.)
Q. You've mentioned before in blogs and in Brotherhood 2.0 that you love watching soccer. Do you support any teams specifically?
Q. Why does my english teacher keep getting characters' names wrong in the books we read, even though I correct her multiple times? (for example, she keeps calling Mr. Antolini from The Catcher in the Rye Mr. AntoNELI. she even did this on our test.)
A. Well, this is something I'm interested in, actually. The truth is that when we read names--and this goes not only for you but for your teacher--we do not actually read the names. What we read is, like, "That set of letters denotes This Person," and we have certain associations with This Person. So this is a mistake that your teacher made, but it is just as easily a mistake that you might make--in fact, it is a mistake that you did make. It's Antonelli, not Antoneli.
The interesting thing here, I think, is what it says about reading. When we read, we are not reading words, exactly; we are using strings of letters to create a narrative in our heads, and so it doesn't matter if Mr. Antonteli is Mr. Antonelli; it only matters that This Person is weirdly carressing the hair of That Person. This is why it's so weird to try to pronounce a word that you've read a million times. Or why one is shocked to learn how you actually pronounce, say, Michael Chabon's name.
Q. Does it make you sad when people read PT and miss the extended Moby Dick allegory?
A. No, not at all. It makes me happy when people read Paper Towns and see the connections to Moby Dick or the connections to Gatsby or whatever, but the book belongs to you. And if you find it useful in any way--as distraction, as entertainment, as allegory--I am happy.
Q. Was the alternative title Under the Red, the White, and the Blue a reference to The Great Gatsby?
A. Yeah. UTRUTWUTB was a considered title for Gatsby, and I liked the idea of appropriating the title for my novel. (At the time, the three parts of the book that became Paper Towns were going to be called The Red, The White, and The Blue instead of The Strings, The Grass, and The Vessel.
Anyway, it was one of those ideas that is almost as clever as it is pretentious--which meant that it was quickly abandoned. Once I figured out that the different ways of imagining the phrase "paper towns" would be at the center of the book, obviously I settled on the title. And that was pretty early on.
Q. What are your opinions on abstinence?
A. Well, it depends on what kind of abstinence you mean. If you mean abstaining from heroin, then I think abstinence is an awesome idea. If you mean abstaining from breathing air, then I think that abstinence is dangerous and potentially even fatal.
If you mean abstaining from sexual intercourse until you are married, I think that's up to you. Sex is personal stuff, and I think you're smart enough to make good decisions. (Okay, I don't think that, actually. But I do think that you'll make exactly the same bad decisions regardless of what I tell you to do, which is precisely what all research on abstinence-only sex education has shown.)
Q. I'm going on a road trip next summer across the US. Where would you recommend going?
A. I always think it's a joy to see some of the world's largest balls. The world's largest ball of stamps is in Omaha, Nebraska. There are several competing world's largest balls of twine--the one in Darwin, Minnesota is particularly nice, and there's a coffee shop next door with an excellent breakfast menu. And if it still exists, check out Carhenge, an exact replica of Stonehenge built out of junked cars. It's in Nebraska somewhere.
Also, the Grand Canyon is nice if you like that kind of thing.
Q. Several years ago you vowed to always read first novels if you were asked. Does that offer still stand?
A. Oh, did I really vow that? (Which is to say that I really did vow it, and like so many other vows along the way, it has since been broken.) The problem is that it became literally impossible for me to read all the stuff I was being asked to read (I am a slow reader) and still write books and make videos and watch enough soccer to feel sane and etc. This is one of the major ways, actually, that I feel like a failure, but I'm trying to find more time in my day to read, so the answer is that the offer does not stand, but I will nonetheless find a way to do better than I'm doing now.
Q. Is Cassandra Clare's Part One title ("Sparks Fly Upward") a shout out to you in any way, or just coincidence?
A. I assume it is a shout-out to the Book of Job, as my domain name is. I know Cassandra, and we are friends, but I can take no responsibility for her awesome books or their awesome section titles.
Q. What do you think of Youtube becoming more corporate?
A. Well, I mean, they are owned by a corporation. They aren't in the business of being awesome; they're in the business of making money. We can find productive ways to move forward working both with and against the corporate model, but we can't expect corporations to stop acting like corporations.
Q. When you go in a bookstore, do you go check your books to see if any nerdfighter notes are in them?
A. Yes. And there often are. God I love nerdfighters.
Q. Do you think this new-media sort of world is eventually going to replace printed novels entirely?
A. Yeah, probably. As much as I like physical books, it's hard for me to lament their loss. The current book business is madness: First, we print symbols onto processed trees, then we bind the processed trees together and produce a heavy item, which we then ship around the world. Then, if no one buys the heavy item, it gets shipped BACK to a warehouse, where it is either reshipped or destroyed.
In a world where text can be read on screens, this is all ludicrously inefficient and carbon-consumptive. We're all going to have to give up things we love to survive, and I suspect books will be among those things.
That said, I just got my royalty statement, and in the last six months, two (TWO!) people bought ebooks of Paper Towns. So we're not there yet.
Q. As a graduation present someone is making me a quilt and I wanted to put pieces of cloth onto the quilt that has the signatures of some of my favorite authors. I was wondering if you would be willing to sign a square in my quilt. I would appreciate it so much.
A. Unfortunately, one of my great deficiencies as an author and a person is my inability to do these things. I'm not good with the mail, and I'm not good with email, and I'm sorry about that. Strangely, I get a lot of requests along this line (although few are so charming and interesting as this particular one), and I would like to do them all, but I don't have an assistant, and it's just impossible to do it all on my own and still write and vlog and blog and do the other things that I have to do. (And want to do.) So, I'm really sorry!
Q. what do you think is the purpose of living and the human race?
A. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't found much that really holds up to scrutiny, but if you have any ideas, let me know.
Q. I don't get the knock knock joke Alaska made in Looking for Alaska. Did anyone ever admit that to you?
A. You are not alone, my friend. I can't even explain it, really. The joke is that if you tell someone else to start a knock-knock joke, they usually will start it immediately with great confidence, because we all know how to start a knock-knock joke, and then the other person says, "Who's there?" and then you realize that you've been set up, that you have absolutely no idea who's there. (And this is intended of course to be a way of saying that Pudge is sorta looking at Alaska, saying, "Who's there?" and not really knowing the answer, and also that Alaska is cognizant of this and is in some ways encouraging it.)
Q. I've tried explaining split infinitives to my friend, but he doesn't understand. Is there any way you could explain it that would make it easier?
A. Don't let anything come between "to" and your very. So you don't say, "It is fun to relentlessly split infinitives," you say, "It is fun to split infinitives relentlessly."
Q. Would you be more prone to developing a God complex or a fraud complex?
A. Well, I have a fraud complex. I assume everyone does. I think I am unlikely to develop a God complex, but I've been wrong before.
Q. If an adult character in a work of fiction were to supernaturally be brought to their own past as a child, would they be a pedophile for engaging in relationships with people of their (supernatural) biological age?
A. Yeah, I do think it's pedophilia. Like, how old you look does not affect how old you are. So, I mean, the reason it is inappropriate for me to have a relationship with an 18-year-old girl isn't because I don't look 18; it's because I've been on the planet a lot longer than 18 years and, as you will know when you are 31, this makes romantic relationships with 18-year-olds unappealing. (Which is to say that yes on some level I find the Edward thing disturbing; I think it is weird to conflate physical appearance and physical age.)
Q. So, John, what do you think of the Children's Book Festival in Hattiesburg? Inquiring minds want you to give us a shout-out.
A. The Children's Book Festival in Hattiesburg, MS was one of the best times I've ever had as an author. Brilliantly organized, great librarians, and the De Grummond Collection is an awesome resource for kids' book nerds like me.
Q. Did any of your books originally have different titles?
A. Alaska had many working titles (including Misremembering Alaska, which I still like, and The Great Perhaps, which became the Dutch title of the book). An Abundance of Katherines was never called anything else. Paper Towns also had a bunch of working titles, including More Light Than Heat and Under the Red, the White, and the Blue.
Q. Could you please link to that speech you said was your favorite speech ever?
Q. I know you were an Obama fan during the campaigns, but has your opinion of him changed based on the decisions he's made since he's been in office?
A. For the record, I wasn't an Obama fan; I was an Obama supporter. I agreed with some of his positions and disagreed with others. I still do.
That said, Obama has significantly exceeded my expectations. I think he's been aggressive about the financial crisis without responding recklessly, whereas Bush and Paulson managed to be both casual and reckless. His success at the G-20 (aside from the Afghanistan troops thing, which was never going to happen) speaks volumes about the restored centrality of America in international policy, and I like that when talking to the American people, he acknowledges complexity and ambiguity.
I mean, look. It's really early. I thought George W. Bush did a reasonably good job for his first 12 months, and that didn't work out very well (in my opinion, at least). So I'm not going to make any far-reaching judgments. But I've been pleased so far. You?
Q. If not fame, what *do* you recommend to fill up the empty spaces inside?
A. Well, the reason people think fame will fill up the empty spaces inside them is because we want to be acknowledged and loved and cared for. Like, say that someone breaks your heart. The pain of that heartbreak is so real and so profound and so deeply felt, and you want other people to acknowledge it. And it feels like if millions of people cared enough about you to read about your heartbreak in US Weekly, then you could bear it. The holes inside would be filled by the thoughts and attention of strangers.
But in fact this does not work. It's a snake oil cure. The only thing, in my experience at least, that fills up the empty spaces is caring for other people and allowing them to care for us.
Q. What do you think about Daylight Savings Time?
A. I suppose I am in favor of it for environmental reasons, but I sure hate it every Spring when that hour disappears.
Q. do you feel the medium of novels is inherently better than the medium of film?
A. Yes, I do. But I'm clearly biased. Also, films reach many more people, and can be wonderfully entertaining and moving and transformative and everything, and I don't want to diminish their importance.
Q. What ever happened to news Sunday?
A.
Q. Why are boys so stupid?
A. Well, in our defense, girls can be really stupid, too. (But yeah. I'm sorry.)
Q. Would you ever let your kids choose their own names like Alaska's parents did for her?
A. No, I like that parents pick names and then kids learn to inhabit them. I actually think it was a bit neglectful of Alaska's parents to allow her to choose her own name.
Q. Why is the website called sparks fly up?
A. The domain name is taken from a line in the Bible, from the Book of Job: "Man is born to trouble like the sparks fly upward."
I had a beautiful drive today up through Mississippi and western Alabama, listening to Leonard Cohen sing, "I ache in the places where I used to play." I'm still a bit achey myself, but Tiny Chicken Disease will not keep me from your questions.
Q. Why YA?
A. I just find the audience more interesting than I find other audiences.
Q. Any advice for those who want to start a vlog?
A. Well, on some level my advice for vloggers is akin to my advice for writers. Watch a lot of vlogs; try to figure out what works for you as a viewer and why. And then, when making videos, try to remember that you aren't making them for yourself (or at least not only for yourself), and that you have a responsibility to engage your audience.
Also, I think it serves you well if you're not trying to get famous but are instead trying to reach out to people whom you respect and treat as peers. (I've stated this before, but will happily state again that wanting to be famous--while totally understandable--is a huge waste of time, and that it will never give you what you want, which is to fill up the empty spaces inside of you.)
Q. Why are all of your main characters only-children?
A. Well, all three of my novels so far have centered on peer relationships more than families. That's why.
Q. I have a friend who is a great writer and wants to be an author, but she says she doesn't want to major in creative writing in college because "so many great writers end up getting ruined by a bad professor." I think she's dead wrong. What do you think?
A. This reminded me of a great Flannery O'Connor story. Flannery was asked whether she felt that creative writing classes discouraged too many young writers. She replied, "I don't think they discourage enough of them."
Your friend will not be ruined by a bad professor. In my experience, professors are almost always right about a writers' weaknesses. (And if a writer thinks she has no weaknesses, she is mistaken.) I don't know of any writer ever who's been 'ruined' by a professor--frankly, I think that gives too much credit to professors.
That said, I don't think it's absolutely necessary to major in creative writing or anything. (I didn't, for instance.) Writing isn't like engineering: You don't have to present a degree in order to get work. Kurt Vonnegut studied mechanical engineering; William Carlos Williams studied medicine; David Foster Wallace double-majored in English and Philosophy; Eudora Welty went to business school. I think studying broadly is always good. (For more on this topic, read my favorite speech.)
Q. Nobody smokes to die. People smoke because of the immediate effect smoking has on their bodies.
A. I disagree, at least personally. I smoked for ten years, and in all that time I never once enjoyed the immediate effect that smoking has on the body. I suppose it's mildly physically pleasurable (slightly less than a cup of coffee, I'd say). Once you're addicted, there's a certain feeling of relaxation associated with smoking a cigarette, but the 'buzz' doesn't feel good so much as different (hence the analogy to coffee).
The questioner goes on to note that "Long term goals or effects are not nearly as strongly motivating as immediate goals or effects." This is true, of course, but there are plenty of bad short-term effects of smoking: it makes you cough, costs a lot of money, and (if you're a teenager) it's illegal.
If smokers are only interested in the feeling of a nicotine buzz, why didn't nicotine patches instantaneously end the smoking epidemic? They give you the exact same buzz, after all.
Q. Question: I'm currently working on query letters. Tips?
A. Don't go for cleverness. Just be straightforward and professional and make sure you're spelling the addressee's name correctly.
Q. I do have to say I disagree with your evaluation of the author being (almost!) irrelevant. Over the course of this year in school, I've learned that absolutely nothing an author does is unintentional.
A. Well, I'm not saying that metaphor is unintentional. I'm saying it doesn't matter whether it's unintentional.
Greetings from beautiful (really!) Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Time to answer your questions:
Q. What do you think of the newest installment of This Is Not Tom?
A. The story interests me more and more with each new chapter--and I am particularly impressed with the interplay between the riddles and the story. (For those of you who don't know, This Is Not Tom is a mysterious series of stunningly complex riddles that hide what appears to be some kind of weirdly interactive novel. The riddles are too hard for me, but fortunately someone has set up forums full of spoilers so that anyone can follow the story. If it's a story. It could be nonfictional, although I really doubt it.)
Q. Do you see yourself writing a book with a female protagonist at some point?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you think the author or the reader determines the meaning of the text?
A. The author determines the text; the reader determines its meaning.
Q. Do you think it's important for people to read classics like Austen and Salinger when there are so great modern books out there?
A. Yes, I think it's important to read Austen and Salinger and Shakespeare and Milton and Chaucer and W. E. B. DuBois and Twain and the Brontes and etc. This does not in any way minimize the importance of also reading great modern books. I think they should be read alongside each other.
Q. Will you, in the foreseeable future, write a book that includes (but is not necessarily about, per se) a non-heterosexual character and/or relationship?
A. In fact, she does not. She might leak a bit of motor oil, but that's all.
Q. What do you think about the importance of the intent of the author vs. the interpretation of the reader?
A. As noted above, authorial intent is almost (almost!) entirely irrelevant. Whether apples intend to be delicious does not affect whether or not they are delicious.
Q. What are you're top five favorite YA books excluding the ones you've written?
A. I don't have to exclude the ones I've written, because they wouldn't make the list. (They wouldn't make the list of the Top 100, in fact.) 1. The Catcher in the Rye; 2. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing; 3. The Book Thief; 4. Speak; 5. The Virgin Suicides.
Q. What is the meaning behind the smokers in Looking for Alaska?
A. Smoking is a symbol for the self-destructive urge in Alaska--Alaska says early in the novel, "Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die." But in fact she's obviously wrong--they all smoke to die. (Everyone who chooses to smoke in the era of lung-cancer-awareness smokes to die.) Why we want to destroy ourselves is at the center of the book, and it seemed to me that smoking was a good example of it.
Q. In your opinion, the best band ever is...?
A. It's no secret that my favorite band is The Mountain Goats. My second favorite band is also The Mountain Goats. My third favorite band, which until recently was The Mountain Goats, is now Hank Green.
Okay so I'm in a hotel in Mississippi feverishly rewriting this speech because, as happens every couple weeks, I have changed my mind about what books are supposed to do.
Onto your questions!
Q. Did you do any urban exploring while writing Paper Towns, and could you tell us about it?
A.
Q. Is the stoner Hank Walsten from "looking for Alaska" in any way based on Hank Green?
A. No. The only things ever mentioned about Hank Walsten are that A. he is a basketball player, and B. he is a stoner. Hank Green is neither.
Q. When you're writing, do your characters ever take on a life of their own, to the point that you feel like they're someone you know--a friend--and you are startled when you remember they are just words on a page?
A. Not really. I feel like a bad writer because I don't experience the whole characters-coming-to-life-and-making-their-own-decisions thing, but I don't. I mean, the characters are inside my head, right? I am very interested in them, and I care about them immensely, and I believe that they are at least as real as, say, Maureen Johnson. But they are still inside my brain. So if they do things that surprise me, that either means that A. something supernatural is happening, which I doubt, or B. I am having some kind of mental breakdown in which I don't know the things that I am thinking. I am sorry about this answer, because I know it's totally disappointing. Sorry!
Q. What is your favorite post WWI novel/writer or poem?
A. Here dead lie we because we did not choose / To live and shame the land from which we sprung. / Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose / But young men think it is, and we were young.
Q. Question: Are you an author because of, or in spite of, the existence of the Internet?
A. The books that I have written could not have been written before the Internet (this is incontestably true of An Abundance of Katherines, but I think in small but important ways true of all my books). That said, if it weren't for the Internet, I'd like to think I would have still written books--just different ones.
Leave your questions in the comments! (You are of course also welcome to leave non-interrogatory comments.)
The major American novelist Maureen Johnson is blogging every day in April (BEDA) to gear up for the release of the paperback of her wonderfully funny book Suite Scarlett.
So I am going to blog for every day of April, too. Maureen has recently started a ning; my blogs will be cross-posted there.
My idea is that I will answer one question asked in comments every day. But in order for this to work, you must leave questions in comments.
Today's question comes from Kate, who asks, "Are you going to be participating in Blog Every Day April?"
