REVIEW: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

Will Grayson, Will Grayson

by John Green and David Levithan

“You know what’s a great metaphor for love? Sleeping beauty. Because you have to plow through this incredible thicket of thorns in order to get to beauty, and even then, when you get there, you still have to wake her up."

There are two Will Graysons. I will call them Will Grayson 1 and Will Grayson 2. Will Grayson 1 (written by John Green) has two rules in life that help him cope: 1) Don't care too much. 2) Shut up. It has kept him protected so far, but that is very difficult to do when you are best friends with Tiny Cooper, the largest, gayest friend a person could have, who cares with every fiber of his being, and lets everyone know it. Will Grayson 2 (written by David Levithan) protects himself with a shield of bitterness and scorn. The one person he allows himself to be vulnerable with is a boy named Issac who he met on the internet. When he and Issac decide to meet, the worlds of both Will Graysons collide, and they both must decide whether it is better to protect yourself, or to risk it all and tell the truth.

I loved this book! Maybe not as much as Every Day, but more than Paper Towns, I think. Levithan's Will Grayson is harsher, more jagged than the protagonist in Everyday. He has closed himself off from everyone, and is only kind and vulnerable with Issac. That is what draws us to him; we glimpse the man he could be. John Green's Will Grayson doesn't seem like your typical John Green protagonist either. He is more repressed. He too has closed himself off, and limited his life by not risking, not speaking the truth. Yes, he falls in love with a girl (Jane), but she is not the usual manic pixie dream girl John Green writes. She is softer, a quieter support for him, and she compliments him nicely.

The real manic pixie dream girl is Tiny Cooper. He is fan-frikkin-tastic. He is huge and loving and wants to make the world a better place... and better than that, he actually tries to do it every day. He makes big bold moves, the latest of which is to write the gayest of musicals about himself to be performed at his school, and the school rallies around him. Though we soon discover that he has his dark points as well.

Tiny Cooper and the two Will Graysons (and Jane) wrestle with living truthfully versus protecting yourself from hurt. With need and vulnerability versus appearing weak. Feeling nothing versus feeling everything. Both writers bring the best of themselves to the table and create a compelling duet of pain and joy. Initially I liked John Green's half better until the heart of Levithan's half broke open beautifully.

I highly recommend if for John Green and David Levithan fans, as well as anyone struggling with opening yourself to the world.

Books Like This
Every Day by David Levithan
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Paper Towns by John Green
Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt

Ok For Now by Gary Schmidt

Message from Me: John Green, Neil Gaiman and Myself on Empathy

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of John Green and Neil Gaiman, not just as authors, but as heroes and far away mentors. They are both passionate and articulate about the power of reading, especially when discussing how reading engenders empathy. Here are two speeches, one by John Green and one by Neil Gaiman, about empathy and reading (both, coincidentally given at the BookExpo a year apart).

I would add one thing to what these great men have said. In order to get the full effect of empathetic fiction reading, you need to read books about people who are not you. For the first 20 years of my life, I predominantly read fiction about a young (usually brunette) girl who was either bored, or timid, or forced by society into some specific role. She then has to break out of this role and rise above and be awesome. I have played out this scenario in my mind hundreds of times, though usually in some sort of fantasy land, often of a medieval and British persuasion. These were the stories I related to, that I understood, that I was comfortable with. 

Now, at the ripe age of 28, I am branching out. It started with The Wednesday Wars, a book about a boy who lives with an abusively perfectionist father and learns to become a man through Shakespeare. This was one foot in and one foot out of my comfort zone: Shakespeare, easy; boy in abusive family situation, new. Then I read similar book by Gary Schmidt, Ok for Now, about a boy with an abusive father, and brothers, all going through deep pain and frustration, and how he must choose who he will be, the bully everyone thinks he is, or the man certain people allow him to be. And he is saved through the Audubon Birds of America. Another tiny step outside of my comfort zone. Then, John Green happened through his Vlogbrothers, and I read loads of his books. No overt arts involved. Just people, mostly teenage boys, living in the real world and dealing with real things. 

Then I took the plunge with Personal Effects. Abusive conservative military family. No one is saved by literature, no one is sensitive or dreamy or artsy. It is not couched in beautifully structured style and tied together with an overt truth, like John Green's books. It is raw and painful and strange. A new mind, a mind that did not at all work like mine. And I understood him. I felt for him. His experiences were no where near my own, but I knew what it felt like to be him. I had put up so many walls against the words "conservative" and "military," and this book allowed me to see behind the stereotype and connect with them as human beings.

I am writing this post now because I am about to embark on a YA literature class whose focus is almost solely on realistic, urban, or historical fiction. The reading list is diverse, and often we can choose from a list  which book we want to read. I am going to challenge myself to seek out experiences and cultures that are unfamiliar. I can sit in my little white, middle class, dreamy artsy girl box all I want and say I have empathy because I read books, but I can never truly have it unless I reach out and try to see the world through the eyes of someone outside my experience and feel what they feel.

I am also letting you know that, because I have to read about 20 books for this class, Palimpsest will change slightly for this period of time. I may or may not review the books I am reading, but look to see many books on this blog tagged as "non-mission," outside the specs of the blog's literal mission statement. However, I do truly believe that everything is interconnected; the past, the present, the future, imagination, all cultures and times overlap. We tell the same stories over and over, influenced by things we can't even remember. These books are a part of the human experience, which is truly a mash-up of everything. 

I will leave you with an RSA Animate video on the empathy, and how it will change the world. 

REVIEW: Paper Towns by John Green

Paper Towns
by John Green

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.” 

Quentin has had a special connection with his neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman ever since they both found a dead guy in a park together when they were kids. They grew apart and are now in high school and he is a nerd, but he still feels deep down he knows the popular, funny, gutsy, effervescent girl. Then, one night, she crawls in his window and whisks him off on a night of bitter pranks and adventure. And then she disappears, leaving cryptic messages that seem to be only for Quentin to follow.

John Green books are tricky. They start out deceptively simple, and then wallop you with a whole sack full of truth. When I began to read this book, it felt like a first attempt at many of the ideas he played with in Looking for Alaska. However, Looking for Alaska was his first book. I worried he was just re-hashing the same material, and in some sense, he does. Troubled Manic Pixie Dream Girl has issues while the average timid Everyman must rise to the occasion and figure her out. However, while Looking for Alaska was about grief and finding your place in the world, and what you think of it, this book is how you never really know people. No matter how hard you try. John Green has talked about this many times; how literature is one of the few ways you can get inside a person's head and know them. In real life, everyone has their own picture of who you are, but none of them are complete. You assign meaning to actions, box people into categories. You are surprised when they "don't act like themselves." But in the end you can never really know what "themselves" is. I guess the only way you can really deal with that is to treat everyone with compassion.

The book itself is wonderfully funny, especially the scenes between Quentin and his friends. John writes excellently unique and unashamedly flawed characters who all speak in very distinct voices. I tended to like them even better than the glorious Margo Roth Spiegelman, but I think that was on purpose. The road trip sequence was perfection, and the drunken party where Quentin was sober rang very true.

I also love love love that John Green uses classic literature to underline messages in his YA books. He integrates it into the story, and shows how the classics can speak to us. This one makes you (and hopefully teens) want to read Leaves of Grass.

I wish I had more to say, but it has all gotten a bit fuzzy, since I read it a few weeks ago. Catching up!

Books Like This:
Looking For Alaska by John Green

John Green and Why/ How You Should Read

We interrupt our usual review programming to bring you something I am passionate about! Yet again, John Green has spoken what is in my heart, and this time it is about my favorite topic: books! He talks about how books are communication, and that reading is an act of empathy. How it is more important for the reader to get something inspiring out of a book than it is for the author's intent to be fully understood. AND how grammar  is so important!

If anyone asks you why reading is so important, here is a version of what Jon says (the list goes by so fast)! 

By reading critically and understanding language you will:

1) Have a fuller understanding of lives other than your own, which

2) Will help you to be more empathetic, and thereby

3) Help you to avoid getting dumped by that young woman in the first place, although more importantly,

4) Reading critically and attentively will give you the linguistic tools to share your own story with more precision.

And this will help you immensely in any field you enter, be it in finance where you have to give a presentation to the board, or in an argument where you are trying to explain your point of view, or as an author yourself!

REVIEW: Looking for Alaska by John Green

Looking for Alaska

by John Green

“When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.” 


Miles Halter lives a safe, dull life. He loves both his parents, no one comes to his birthday parties, and he is obsessed with last words (of dead people, not of books, or conversations). He decides to go and seek "the Great Perhaps," as poet François Rabelais said, and enrolls in a boarding high school in the woods. There, his life is shaken up by the family of misfit students who adopt him, especially by the funny, sexy, spontaneous and destructive Alaska.

Oh dear. I am so behind. I read this book over a month ago, and it is now fading from my memory. I am sure I have many other things to say about this book, but right now you will only get the things that made the strongest impression on me.

First, let me say that I am so incredibly late to the John Green bandwagon. I came across him as mearly a perveyor of wisdom and whimsy on the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel. Once I learned he was not only a YA author but an incredibly lauded YA author, I felt I must see what more this lovable genius man could do. Why did I choose Looking for Alaska? It was the only John Green book not checked out (probably because it was in the storage closet and no one knew it was there!)

Things I remember about this book:

1) It reminded me of what I imagine Perks of Being a Wallflower is like (though I have never read it.)

2) It is so good! The style is pretty much what you would expect from John Green. Funny, with a huge smack upside the head of truth. I kept picturing the main character as either a young John Green, or a young Hank Green (his brother who co-runs Vlogbrothers), depending on what the character was doing.

3) The characters are excellent. Not a stereotype in the lot. Alaska could just be a manic pixie dream girl, but he gives her real, dark reasons for why she is so unpredictable. She must seize every moment and never stop going going going or bad things will happen. Miles' roommate, the Colonel, is another gem. You think he will be a bit of a neanderthal, but his charm, his brain and his heart just pick you up and hug you. His and Miles' relationship become one of the high points of the book.

4) This book is not just high school hyjinx. The whole time, each chapter title counts down to something. "63 days before, "50 days before," "10 days before." You don't know what it is counting down to, or whether it is good or bad. Some moments you are hopeful, but other moments you are filled with foreboding each time you see those numbers. When it happens, even though at times you think you know what it will be, it still knocks you off your feet.

5) It is one of the best studies of grief since "The Body" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Possibly better than that.

6) It is peppered throughout with brilliant scenes from Miles' World Religions class, where they study not the dry facts of religion but where, as the teachers says, "We are engaged here in the most important pusuit in history. The search for meaning. What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person? How did we come to be, and what will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules this game, and how might we best play it?”

7) It was almost banned in a school because of sexual content, which lead John Green to post this video, called "I Am Not a Pornographer." I am a sucker for intellectual freedom.

I recommend it wholeheartedly, and I will definitely read more if his stuff! I will leave you with an inspiring, truth-dropping John Green vlogbrothers video: