I missed the John Green craze when it was going around. In the early 2010s, after the publication of perhaps his best-known novel, “The Fault in Our Stars,” the world went crazy for John Green. It sits on Wikipedia’s list of the best-selling books of all time, a little below “The Hunger Games.” The movie version performed incredibly well at the box office and earned praise from critics, spawning other adaptations of Green’s work.
Teenage me wanted nothing to do with “The Fault in Our Stars” — or any of Green’s books for that matter. They seemed too “mainstream” for me to ever enjoy (I was a delightful kid). Though my disdain for his novels remained stubborn, I had no such qualms about Green’s online presence, from the Crash Course videos I occasionally watched on YouTube throughout middle school to the vlogbrothers content I enjoyed right after coming to college. It wasn’t until sometime last fall when I scrolled through my feed and glimpsed yet another John Green clip that I finally caved and decided to see whether his books were worth the hype.
After reading every one of John Green’s (solo) novels, I can safely say that I was entirely wrong — almost.
Almost
Green has a complicated track record with the trope dubbed the “manic pixie dream girl” (MPDG). The MPDG describes a female character, often a love interest, who is rebellious, nonconformist and physically attractive — but maybe (gasp!) with dyed hair! — that serves only to teach the male protagonist an important lesson. On his Tumblr, Green commented that his novel “Paper Towns” was an attempt to deconstruct this trope. “Paper Towns” has all the hallmarks of an MPDG story: Quentin, an awkward boy, is taken on a night of adventuring by Margo, a quirky, mysterious girl, and spends the rest of the story trying to find her after she disappears without warning the morning after. Without spoiling the ending, “Paper Towns” acknowledges that Margo exists beyond Quentin, openly stating that “Margo was not a miracle … She was a girl.”
As Gurman Chawla puts it in an article for Medium, however, Green often “ends up constructing the narrative in a way that proves to be counterproductive.” To summarize her argument, his female love interests are often underdeveloped: Even though the protagonist of “Paper Towns” ultimately concludes that he never understood the girl he fell in love with, her actual character is unexplored, blunting the legitimate criticism he attempts. I don’t, as Chawla suggests, believe that Green is incapable of writing female characters; Margo feels as vivid and as real as any of his other characters — that is when she isn’t viewed through Quentin’s distorted lens (or vanished from the story entirely). But his attempt at deconstruction is flawed if kindly intentioned.
Then there’s the Anne Frank House scene in “The Fault in Our Stars.” I won’t go into the gory details. It’s enough to know the scene is deeply, deeply uncomfortable. Look it up if you have to (though I advise you don’t).
Why you should read John Green
That being said, Green knows how to craft a rock-solid coming-of-age narrative. His dialogue is sharp and funny. Even if the plots are a bit too comfortable and repetitive, the underlying emotional arcs are established effectively.
Take “The Fault in Our Stars,” home of the horrid Anne Frank scene and perhaps my third favorite of his novels. Hazel Grace and Augustus, the protagonist and romantic interest, respectively, feel well grounded. Though their picnic lunches and candlelit dinners sometimes feel close to wish fulfillment, both characters are surrounded by enough quiet, everyday conversations that it seems deserved. They both have cancer, and Green explores how their illnesses change how their friends and loved ones view them.
He never gets too bogged down in self-pity, either — Green’s books are occasionally accused of glorifying mental and physical illnesses, but his writing on the topics, from my admittedly physically-abled perspective, seem to sidestep most common tropes and instead approach these issues with grace and authenticity. There’s more life to Hazel and Augustus, through their coy phone calls over books and bad hospital nurses than to most young adult couples I’ve encountered (sorry, Peeta and Katniss). It’s a well-written book, full of tender moments and the penetrating shadow of Hazel’s illness.
“The Fault in Our Stars” hints at a pattern running throughout Green’s books. Of the six I read — John Green’s five solo novels plus “Will Grayson, Will Grayson,” his collaboration with “Boy Meets Boy” author David Levithan — classic young adult tropes are, without fail, set against a background of far-reaching existential anxieties.
Protagonists like Hazel dot the landscape of Green’s books: young people exposed to first love and questions about their mortality or identity. Colin Singleton, the main character of “An Abundance of Katherines” considers his place as a former child prodigy while trying to get over a series of failed relationships with girls named Katherine. Aza Holmes of “Turtles All the Way Down” begins dating the son of a disgraced millionaire and battles her worsening OCD and anxiety. Miles ‘Pudge’ Halter, the famous quotation-obsessed protagonist of Green’s first book, “Looking for Alaska,” falls for a girl at his new boarding school before a tragedy forces him to contend with the meaning of grief and hope.
It’s in this uneasy middle ground between heartthrob romance and literary fiction pretension that Green thrives. Yes, he can craft a heartfelt high school drama. At the same time though, he cuts through to more complex themes with a surprising deftness. His books put lighter issues in direct conversation with the broader malaise of their protagonists. Teenage drama forces his characters to consider their place in the wider world, centering the somewhat broader concepts of Green’s novels in something real and tangible while elevating the more cliché moments beyond melodrama.
His style acknowledges the validity of two very different but interconnected parts of growing up in a way that only a few young adult authors I’ve read seem capable of. There’s the typical stuff — overactive hormones, friend group tension and first love. But for a lot of people, growing up also entails asking a lot of the big questions that seem to interest Green so much: questions of mortality, conformity and identity.
I think it’s through acknowledging the depth of coming-of-age that Green becomes so relatable, if not to the generation of teenagers that first fell in love with his writing, then certainly to anyone considering giving his books another chance. There’s plenty to satisfy the simple, wonderful pleasures of teen romance. Yet it’s these unanswerable questions that make him worth the read, even now — Anne Frank House notwithstanding.
Daily Arts Writer Alex Hetzler can be reached at alexhetz@umich.edu.