The John Green Collection (34 page)

Authors: John Green

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Friendship, #Death & Dying, #Adolescence

BOOK: The John Green Collection

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For more information and source notes on the other quotes in the book, please visit my Web site:
www.johngreenbooks.com.

^*It means both “Blessed are they who die in the Lord” and “Blessed are they who die wearing a cloak.”

Turn the page for a

new and updated reader’s guide to

looking for alaska

Hi. I’m John Green, the author of the book you just read. Well, perhaps you
haven’t
read it, and you’re just skipping ahead to uncover spoilers, in which case I insist that you return to your page immediately.

Now that it’s just those of us who’ve finished reading the book: Thanks for reading
Looking for Alaska
. Books are a weird collaboration between author and reader: You trust me to tell a good story, and I trust you to bring it to good life in your mind. I can only hope I held up my end of the bargain.

In the spirit of that collaboration, I thought I might answer some questions from readers and then offer up some questions for you about the novel and your response to it. So first, here are some real questions submitted by readers via Twitter and Tumblr:

Is
L
OOKING FOR
A
LASKA
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
?

Yes. No. Kinda. Certainly, the physical campus of Culver Creek is very similar to the boarding school I attended, Indian Springs School. And many of the characters are amalgams of people I knew in high school. Indian Springs is a great school—a place unlike any other I’ve ever come across—and I could never have written this story if I hadn’t spent three years there. That said,
Alaska
is a novel. It is well and truly made up. (And the basketball coach there would like me to note that their basketball program is really quite good.)

I’
M READING
L
OOKING FOR
A
LASKA
FOR SCHOOL AND
I
WAS WONDERING WHAT WERE TWO MAJOR SYMBOLS IN THE BOOK AND WHO WAS THE ENEMY.

I’m very grateful that
Looking for Alaska
is now taught in so many English classes, but it seems to me that books do not require either
symbols or enemies to be worth reading. That said, in my opinion, there are symbols and enemies in
Alaska
. But my opinion doesn’t really matter much. Books belong to their readers, and any symbols (or enemies) you find in the story can be just as interesting and important as any I could tell you about.

In short, I’m not gonna do your homework, dude.

D
ID YOU KNOW WHETHER OR NOT [SPOILER REDACTED BECAUSE
I
KNOW PEOPLE WILL READ THIS DISCUSSION GUIDE BEFORE THEY’VE READ THE BOOK,
EVEN THOUGH I JUST FORBADE YOU TO DO SO LIKE SIX PARAGRAPHS AGO]
WAS INTENTIONAL WHILE YOU WERE WRITING IT
?

I still don’t know whether [spoiler redacted] was intentional. When I started writing the book, I knew that neither I as a writer nor you as a reader would ever get inside Blue Citrus that night. I wrote the book that way because at the time I had a lot of questions—big questions about suffering and loss and faith and despair—that could not be answered. And I wanted to know whether it is possible to live a hopeful life in a world riddled with ambiguity, whether we can find a way to go on even when we don’t get answers to questions that haunt us.

D
ID YOU LISTEN TO ANY MUSIC WHILE WRITING
L
OOKING FOR
A
LASKA
?

I listened to a lot of old country and bluegrass music: Hank
Williams, Bill Monroe, and Doc Watson. I also listened to Neutral Milk Hotel and The Mountain Goats. (These days, I often listen to songs ABOUT
Looking for Alaska
while writing. This book, astonishingly, has inspired a lot of beautiful music.)

W
HY DID YOU CHOOSE THE NAME
A
LASKA
?

For the first couple years I was working on
Looking for Alaska
, it had no title and I used a placeholder name instead of Alaska. One day, my friend Levin and I watched the movie
The Royal Tenenbaums
, which includes in its soundtrack a cover of the great Velvet Underground song “Stephanie Says,” which refers to a girl called Alaska. I loved that song in high school, and I loved the name, but it wasn’t until I went home and looked up the original meaning of Alyeska, “that which the sea breaks against,” that I realized it would be Alaska’s name.

H
AVE YOU BEEN AT ALL SURPRISED ABOUT THE SUCCESS OF
L
OOKING FOR
A
LASKA
?

I have been entirely surprised.
Alaska
has been published all over the world, from Japan to Mexico to Lithuania, and it has enjoyed an uncommonly generous reception from readers. It has won awards that I never dared to hope for, and most importantly, people still read it and like it enough to share it with their friends. Honestly, I never thought this book would even still be in print seven years after its publication, let alone that I would be answering questions about it in a New and Expanded Discussion Guide.

A
RE THERE ANY LAST WORDS YOU LIKED THAT DIDN’T MAKE THE BOOK
?

Tons! I love Emily Dickinson’s last words: “I must go in. The fog is rising.” Winston Churchill said, “I’m bored with it all.” British MP Lady Astor awoke from a stupor to find her family surrounding her and asked, “Am I dying or is it my birthday?” (It wasn’t her birthday.) The Irish playwright Brendan Behan turned to a nun who was drawing his blood and said, “Bless you, Sister. May all your sons be bishops.” And the great short story writer O. Henry, who knew a thing or two about endings, said, “Turn up the lights. I don’t want to go home in the dark.”

SOME INTENTIONALLY VAGUE AND BROAD

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1.
Is forgiveness universal? I mean, is forgiveness really available to all people, no matter the circumstances? Is it, for instance, possible for the dead to forgive the living, and for the living to forgive the dead?

2.
I would argue that both in fiction and in real life, teenage smoking is a symbolic action. What do you think it’s intended to symbolize, and what does it actually end up symbolizing? To phrase this question differently: Why would anyone ever pay money in exchange for the opportunity to acquire lung cancer and/or emphysema?

3.
Do you like Alaska? Do you think it’s important to like people you read about?

4.
By the end of this novel, Pudge has a lot to say about immortality and what the point of being alive is (if there is a point). To what extent do your thoughts on mortality shape your understanding of life’s meaning?

5.
How would you answer the old man’s final question for his students? What would your version of Pudge’s essay look like?

p.s. The great and terrible beauty of the Internet now makes it possible for us to continue the strange conversation between reader and writer indefinitely. Here are some of the places you can catch me online:

My Web site:
http://www.johngreenbooks.com

The video channel I built with my brother:

http://www.youtube.com/vlogbrothers

My tumblr:
http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com

(that url is a very long story)

My twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/realjohngreen

SPEAK

Published by the Penguin Group

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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in the United States of America by Dutton Books,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006

Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008

This edition published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2012

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DUTTON EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Green, John, date.

An abundance of Katherines / John Green.

p. cm.

Summary: Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine,
recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on a road trip
with his best friend to try to find some new direction in life.

[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Self-perception—Fiction. 3. Graphic methods—Fiction.]

I. Title. PZ7.G8233Abu 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2006004191

ISBN: 978-1-4406-2979-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON