Book Review (Kinda...)

I should be sleeping. But I just finished a great book…so I can’t.

I’m not sure how to start this, because it’s intended as a review for the book, “Will Grayson, Will Grayson” by John Green and David Levithan…and I suppose it will turn out to be just that…eventually.

John Green is the only author I’ve read who forces me to keep a dialectal journal. That’s right folks, an off-duty English major/teacher is voluntarily keeping a dialectal journal as she reads. While I realize that these journals are intended for reactions to quotations found in the novel one is currently reading, mine isn’t quite like that. I just write down the date, quote, and page number on which I found the quote. Some are funny or even sad, but mostly they’re philosophical and typically the quotes I write down are the ones I read a few times over because I’m in awe of whatever message they have that has so profoundly spoken to me.

I began doing this when I read Green’s “Fault in Our Stars.” I typed these ones up in a document that sits somewhere on my hard drive, alone and mostly forgotten. I felt this was a very impersonal approach to a such a project, so I found one of the many journals I have purchased – and have yet to write in—and began a hand-written dialectal journal, beginning with “Will Grayson, Will Grayson.”

Now, the storyline of this novel is questionable. Not in the sense of it’s content, but it’s simplicity versus complexity. It lies somewhere in the middle. Josh asked me in the car today how I liked the book I was currently reading, and I told him that while I appreciate the language in the book as well as the philosophical tidbits (the ones I usually write down), it seemed to be lacking something that I loved in “Fault in Our Stars.” The story itself was slow, and when I was so close to the end I found myself saying, “What has really happened so far?” The answer? Not much. While the teenage angst was legitimate, I never felt like the depth of it was really achieved. That doesn't make much sense… I believe I told Josh that the conflict seemed real, it just lacked something, and honestly, I still don’t know what it is. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the novel, cheesy ending and all. It provided me with a few gems for my dialectal journal, which I will gladly share with you now.

Page 5: “Also, I feel like crying is almost like, aside from the deaths of relative or whatever—totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1. Don’t care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has stemmed from failure to follow one of the rules”

            ** Talk about your pessimistic, pouty, I-refuse-to-engage-with-life-because-I’m-afraid-to, teenage angst! As the story progresses, Will discovers that the rules will fail him, and not the other way around. Silly boy, you can’t sum up life by creating two “rules” and the stand on the sidelines of life and expect something wonderful to happen to you!

Page 25: “The first bell rings. Like all the bells in our fine institution of lower learning, it’s not a bell at all, it’s a long beep like you’re about to leave a voicemail saying you’re having the suckiest day ever and nobody’s ever going to listen to it.”

            **To be perfectly honest, I wrote this one down because it spoke to me personally. It sums up how I felt in high school on some of my moodier days...and summed up how I felt in the classroom on some days over the past 5 months, too. It really should be a legitimate bell…the long tone-like sounds really does sound institutional. But to take it on a more optimistic side, maybe you could see this “long beep” as that sound you heard as a child while you listened to books on tape…the sound that told you it was time to turn the page…and move on to something else.

Page 43: “You like someone who can’t like you back because unrequited love can be survived in away that once-requited love cannot.”

            ** I ponder the truth of this statement. Is it pessimistic or optimistic? Mature or immature? I feel there is a deep conversation that can be had with this statement as its center. It would be interesting to hear other people’s opinion on the matter. It too-easily explains why one person may not have feelings for another, as if the one without the feelings is doing the one with the feelings some kind of favor because if they DID like them back, then the pain would somehow be worse. At the moment, I feel like it waters-down a really complicated situation and all-too-easily explains it away. But a teenager DID say it, and maybe it was that character's way of rationalizing a difficult situation. 

Page 66: “Sorry geniuses, but there’s no such thing as a fuck cure. A fuck sure is like the adult version of Santa Claus.”

            ** This one just made me laugh and think about all those movies where you hear the best friend’s answer to their woeful companion’s problem is, “Dude, you just need to get laid.” Which, according to this quote could roughly translate to: “Dude, you just need to believe in Santa!” Hahaha….

Page 125: “You know what sucks about love? That it’s so tied to the truth.”

Page 127: “Love is tied to the truth. I think of them as unhappily conjoined twins.”

Page 128: “Love and truth being tied together. I mean, they make each other possible.”

            ** These are examples of the philosophical tidbits that I love. What’s interesting about this idea is that the characters never really explore how love is tied to truth…at least not in depth. Through some of their actions I suppose they do, but I feel this concept could have gone a lot further within the story line in terms of character epiphanies… then again maybe they were not meant to explain how love is tied to truth. Maybe that’s my job as the reader.

Page 131: “Random questions are the least random of all questions.”

            ** TRUTH

Page 174: “When things break, it’s not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. It’s because a little piece get lost—the two remaining ends couldn’t fit together even if they wanted to. The whole shape has changed.”

            ** What an excellent metaphor for moving on with one’s life. Again, on the surface, I feel it too easily explains something that can be vastly more complicated, but it still speaks to my own life experiences. On a pessimistic side, one could read this as “Nothing will ever be the same again.” OR, on a optimistic side, one could read this as “We can put the pieces back together that still fit and make new pieces for the missing ones.” How do you read it?

And finally, probably the most profound (to me) quote I found in the entire novel:

Page 277: “This is why we call people exes I guess—because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end. It’s too easy to see an X as a cross-out. It’s not, because there is no way to cross out something like that. The X is a diagram of two paths.”

            ** What’s wonderful about the context of this quote is that the character that says it is not talking about a romantic relationship. He’s talking about a toxic friendship in which he has finally found some closure after a very serious falling out. Meaning that not just romantic boyfriends and girlfriends can become exes. Boyfriends and girlfriends can too. While they are not romantic in the sense of love, they are still platonic or can even border on a family-like relationship. There can still be that intense closeness and connection without having romantic feelings involved. Meaning that if that relationship is somehow severed, its pain can just as easily be as horrible as a break-up…and therefore that person can just as easily be referred to as an ex-friend.  Sometimes friendships last and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you’re only meant to be friends for that short time before your paths diverge into different futures. Nonetheless, your paths did cross and chances are it was probably for a reason. Maybe not an epiphany, all encompassing miracle kind of reason, but maybe they were there to teach you something about yourself that they never intended to do. Or maybe they were the exact kind of person you needed at that point in your life, but then they aren't anymore.

This is why I absolutely adore John Green’s novels. They inspire me to reflect upon myself, my past, my future, and everything in between. They make me think deeply about things that I haven’t thought about it a while, or have never even thought of before.

God, I love reading. J