The Preface to The Review of a Hopelessly Amazing Yet Dreadfully Goddamn Sad Novel by One Such Author, John Green

Could that title get any longer? I have my doubts, and my suspicions.

John Green is an author I have discussed at great length at least once in the past. Well, perhaps his work more than himself as an individual, or an author specifically. In complete honesty, if I could get my hands on John's 100% up-front and in-depth life story, I would pay a very large sum for it. That may sound really creepy or stalkerish, but the fact of the matter is that I am highly interested in the play-out of his life which has influenced his writing. Far too much of his work is very heavily influenced by his life and experiences and I cannot deny my intrinsic curiosity about the specifics. I understand that his life is his own and there is absolutely no way that I could ever truly know it--or him by extension--but that does not remove the desire from me. And in all reality, No, I don't actually truly mean that, not in entirety, anyway. I hope you understand that conflict, because I've no desire to further explain it.

John Green has 4 published novels, all of which I am in possession of and 3 of which I have read. I did my final project last semester for my comp class on Looking For Alaska, and I may decide to post at least pieces of it here for you, because it was actually very good--whereas the last paper I posted was absolute garbage, just noting. And I never really got a chance to blog about LFA, either. So... we'll see what happens. Paper Towns was the subject of the blog post before last, and it ended up an extremely long post. I have yet to read An Abundance of Katherines, but I am quite certain that it will be one of my very-near-future endeavors.

I am presently 5 chapters from the completion of The Fault in Our Stars, whose title comes from a Shakespearean poem; I did not mark that page. By the time I actually write the rest of this blog post, I will have finished those 5 chapters. It is currently 2:00 AM on the 7th of February, and I have Microeconomics at 9:30; while not a particularly difficult class, it does require focus, because half-assing economics is kind of a dumb idea.

I kind of made this book into a project with quotes. While reading, I picked out quotes that stood out specifically to me, for whatever reason that might have been. I also asked a very good friend (one of my best, as a matter of fact; I feel it important to qualify that) to do the same thing. I haven't got a clue if she actually did it or not, but my book is full of little pink post-it tabbies. I may or may not eventually take them all out; it's hard to say at this point. This book is not as infinitely quotable as LFA was, or even Paper Towns, but TFiOS wasn't about being amusingly quotable, or really necessarily 'quotable' in general. It simply wasn't. Isn't. However you'd like it expressed. The Fault in Our Stars is... is... tragic. It's tragic and it's beautiful and yes, in places, it's incredibly funny, but it's so... Dreadfully Goddamn Sad. That's what it is. That's why I said it in the first place.

John Green writes about life. He writes about life and how dreadfully goddamn unfair it is and he doesn't pretend like because this is a novel, everything gets to end up being okay. Green doesn't do that to us. He doesn't sugarcoat the awfulness of things. He doesn't provide an illusion of grandeur to things that are just lifelessly... well... un-grand. There are far too many words that would fit there for me to pick even a few, so I'm going to use a very graceless "un-grand" instead, and you can just cope with it because sometimes, Green makes me very sad, indeed. And this novel makes me very sad.

I thoroughly appreciate that Green is 100% abhorrently realistic and honest and truthful and blunt while managing to be graceful and delicate and bold and creative and beautiful. I thoroughly appreciate that he doesn't just make the end glittering and golden because, as readers, as optimists, as people, we all want it to be. He doesn't make the ending happy because life so very rarely ends happily, and this is the heart of what Green is portraying: Life. Real, honest-to-God, painful, joyful, unfair, beautiful life.

Tomorrow we'll discuss this novel. Tomorrow I will cry, and I will wish I didn't get so emotionally attached to characters on paper and I will praise John Green for creating such beautifully dynamic characters and I will hate life for being what it is. Tomorrow.
Tomorrow.

Author's note: I wrote this last night at 2, as stated, but am forced to post it NOW because Blogger is being an absolute butthead. I don't understand what the hell is going on, but it's pissing me off. I will have a follow-up posted ASAP. Promise.