I was really proud of myself for achieving such a controlled level of reading, measuring pages, being able to stop reading before I got bored of the topic at hand—I'm reading a lot of non-fiction nowadays. And there's so many kitchen-related essays I can read before becoming increasingly exasperated of (at?) Anthony Bourdain, so I have to pace myself and not read more than twenty pages at a time.
But this wasn't what I wanted to write about. Go back to your kitchen (or airplane, most likely), Anthony Bourdain. We're talking about John Green here.
So! I was reading in a very methodical way and along comes Hazel Grace Lancaster, The Fault in Our Stars' protagonist, all lung cancer, charm and self-awareness, and I know this is a battle I cannot win. I tried not reading it for a couple of days, but this is the kind of book that demands to be read in one sitting, with a pack of kleenex close (just like Meg Ryan's mother in You've Got Mail recommended reading Anne of Green Gables.)
Hazel is not okay with her disease. Or, rather, she's okay with the cancer, but not with the things that surround it. She doesn't like the "Cancer Perks" (things she gets just because people feel bad that she's sick), nor the Support Group she attends, nor her mum's insistence in making her go out and make friends. She just likes to marathon through bad reality television and read for the millionth time a book that finishes mid sentence because the protagonist, an adolescent with cancer, much like her, dies. Presumably. And Hazel's obsessing over it, 'cause she wants to know what happens with the other characters in the story afterwards, since it's not fair that their lives ended mid-sentence too just because the girl died. And the rest of the book happens, but I cannot tell you what happens. Just that this book didn't finish mid-sentence, which was something I dreaded the entire time I was reading it, but was too afraid to find out before time.
I know John Green must be a David Foster Wallace fan (or at least being interested enough in his career to read his biography. I saw it on his tumblr account. I've been stalking John Green for months before trying any of his books, how weird is that?), and I'm very lucky because the only thing I've read by DFW is his commencement speech at Kenyon College, in which he talks about consciousness and going through our lives without being aware of them, without paying attention to what we do out of habit. And I think that speech (that you can read online, or, if you're like me and go around with earphones glued to your face, listen) resonates strongly in this quote:
"You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was talking about fast Fourier transforms and she stopped mid-sentence and said, 'Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed.'
"That's what I believe. I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased towards consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it—or my observation of it—is temporary?"
To resume: I loved this book. A lot. And I cried. A whole lot too. But they were good tears, not this-guy-is-awful-and-forcing-me-to-cry-just-for-the-sake-of-his-ego kind of tears. Real tears of understanding, and love. Well played, John Green. I'll continue to stalk you on tumblr. And youtube. And sometimes on twitter too.
