You ask questions. I provide answers.

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?

A. Liverpool FC! (So beautiful in HD.)


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.