John Green has shown a lot of promise. The Fault in our Stars was okay. Not bad, but it wasn’t great, either. Just okay. And as a writer, you never settle for “just okay”.
But it looks like he’s been doing it a long time. TFIOS was the latest book he has published. His first books were even more painful to read.
And I don’t mean the painful, gripping, heart-wrenching kind.
Case in point (# 1): An Abundance of Katherines.
It took me three months to finish this. I never read a book that long, unless it’s something really boring. And this book was just that, every bit of it. It was a struggle. I kept waiting for the book’s big left hook, that which will keep me wanting to turn the page, but it never came. Instead all it gave me were empty flirtings between obviously-manufactured-boy-genius Colin and quintessential pop kid Lindsey, and hollow and unfunny punchlines delivered by the sarcastic (the annoying kind) sidekick Hassan. I felt like I wasted 215 pages, 3 months, and P400 on the kind of material you wiped your ass with. It was THAT bad.
There was a slight moment of almost-brilliance when all things came unfolding and we all found out about the cheating and the drama and I was like, “Now we’re talking”, but I guess Green specializes in anticlimaxes, because after that one page of climax was nothing. Nothing. If the goal of the book was to underwhelm its readers, then congratulations, you’ve succeeded.
My friends said I should read Looking for Alaska because it’s better than Fault and Abundance. Hence—
Case in point (#2): Looking For Alaska
I don’t know if I’m prejudiced against Green or the book was really just as bad as the rest of them, but I really did not enjoy it. There, glad I got that out on the first paragraph.
I think the problem with this (as with Abundance and Fault) is it ignores the fact that his readers are from 12 years old up. Green’s books are slightly based on his life, his experiences, just exaggerated versions. His readers must be able to relate to his characters. In a society where we encourage teenagers to be themselves, to be unique, what the hell are we trying to do making them identify with rigid stereotypes? Why do we need to show them that nerds and geeks are losers and get dumped 19 times and get duct-taped and mummified on their first day in school? That’s hardly encouraging.
It’s also irritating that his characters are damn too smart for their age. I’ve said it before with TFIOS. Colin’s probably a special case since he’s a child prodigy. But Alaska and Pudge and the Colonel and all that talk about Buddhism and the “labyrinth of suffering” is kind of pretentious to me.
These books are required reading in some schools in the US. Imagine reading about blowjobs and smoking and drinking and random acts of promiscuity in 10th grade English class. Someone once said that there are times when you should write for yourself and not for the public, but I guess this is not one of those times. Especially when you’re targeting young adults. This is not to say that we should shield teenagers from the big bad world that awaits them and make them live in a pretend environment of rainbows and butterflies, but I don’t think it’s right that we should shove it to their faces just as well.
At the end of the day, John Green is a businessman. The Young Adult genre is the in thing nowadays, just as Chick Lit was in the early 2000s and the Vampire-Werewolf-Fairie-Angels-Shadowhunters-Tikbalang genre was in vogue in the late 2000s. He wants to sell copies. If he’s lucky, he’ll get all of his books signed on to become movies (and he seems to be very fortunate in that aspect). He has a following online called nerdfighters, for crissakes. Would it still matter if he wrote crap? He’s rich. It’s all good.
