The real question is "how the hell do we get the pixie dust off our clothes?"

[renay]

A few days ago Aarti posted a review of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I probably wouldn't have noticed, but I was alerted that the review was imminent and was specifically watching for it after being told it was similar to my own.

Ana and I reviewed the book in 2010 and had mixed feelings about it. I came away feeling like I was missing an emotional connection with the characters. The fondness I normally have for John Green's characters never quite jelled, and I didn't expect them to jell with David Levithan's but was proven wrong, because over a year later I still like Levithan's Will the best. The review posted a few days ago reflected my feelings accurately, and many people say similar things about how the book was tricky, suggesting one conceit but then delivering the Tiny Cooper Variety Novel instead. It's still a great story and says interesting things about friendship and first love and companionship, but it misses the mark emotionally as Tiny eclipses the other characters in the narrative.

Of course, then I had to go read the comments. It should be a rule for me on reviews of YA novels in spaces that don't often review specific types of YA because I often come away with all the feelings. Don't Read the Comments™, Renay! But I did!

[....] people say he uses females more as props than real characters.

I found it silly that this upset me so much. I closed my browser and I walked away to think about why this comment, why these referenced "people" had bothered me enough to dump a 900 word reply into a text box in the comments before I backed away. I admit readily that I am a John Green fangirl. He is one of my favorite authors and he re-introduced me to a reading category I thought was no longer accessible to me. In many ways, gave me the joy of reading back, because before I picked up An Abundance of Katherines I wasn't reading at all, burnt out by university and stories that felt empty. I picked his work up because I started watching his video blogs with his brother in February 2007 and I liked his thoughts and I never looked back. So why did that comment jam my buttons so hard? Oh, god, have I become one of those fans?

(Please, no.)

To be specific, I wasn't upset at anyone in the comments, or at Aarti, who was only repeating specific impressions of thoughts from other reviews by other bloggers (or so I assume). But it does leave me filled with frustration at the others bloggers because it's unfair to characterize John as the type of writer who uses girls as props in the sense that the comment gave. It gave me a "typically not an integral part of the thing supported" vibe versus "a person or thing giving support, as of a moral or spiritual nature" vibe. The first may be a good reason to stop reading an author if it's a trend. The last one I believe deserves proper context, and of course I believe that if we're going to start discussing girls and women as props, we need to define the way we're using "prop". Because there are plenty of places to see girls as that first kind of prop (Hollywood, comics, choose your own adventure) and I don't believe John Green's novels are one of them; his girls, if they are props, are the second kind, the human kind. They're the kind that can create interesting discussions around gender and humanity the way the first kind of "prop" will fail to do, because the writer didn't give them any humanity at all beyond pure sexual objectification.

It does a disservice to his female characters to define them the first way, dehumanizes them and erases them from the narrative of which they are an integral part. It takes away the actual agency that I believe every female character John has created retains in the face of whatever inexperience that caused him to write girls as vehicles of discovery and insight for dudes. Yes, his female characters aren't perfect, but demanding perfection in female characters from anyone in our culture, regardless of their gender or personal identity, is like demanding they dam a river with only their bare hands. I would much rather ask for thoughtfulness and the ability to accept criticism. Because of the ongoing discussion about girls in YA, when a male writer has issues with female characterization, it's starting to feel to me like he's quick to be written off. With him go the female characters he's created who are, if flawed, still more interesting and well-rounded than other female characters created by male authors or creators who don't actually give a damn about how they represent girls and don't care to hear your thoughts on it, either. There's plenty of those. We don't need to start putting male authors who aren't like them in the same category.

Obviously, John can speak for himself on the issue and has spoken with regards to this, several times:

"I'm fascinated by the way the contemporary world has constructed this manic pixie dream girl (to use a term coined by Nathan Rabin) who flutters into the lives of men and changes them forever with her moodiness and mystery. This idea has become the kind of female Edward Cullen, and I am of course drawn to it myself but also really troubled by it, because I think it's just a new kind of objectification of women. So I think I wrote about that in Paper Towns not because I saw it in my own life but because I saw it in my first novel, Looking for Alaska, and because in the years after writing that story, I became more and more troubled by the book's failure to point out that, like, the idea of the manic pixie dream girl is not just a lie but a dangerous one that does disservice both to the person doing the imagining and the person being imagined." [source]

Like everyone else, he's is a product of this culture. Yes, he has a manic pixie problem, but as exampled, he's grown with time and experience. He's very obviously an ally and thinking about gender and the complexities of interpersonal relationship in the context of gender. Shutting out allies with problematic and oversimplified criticism is a great way to lose those allies, deprive readers of an author who will engage with his own flaws very openly, and who is doing great work creating stories that, while not for everyone, do seek to be thoughtful considerations of the world and the people in it.

I'm sensitive about author critique. Oh well.

I was so upset over this issue that I sat down to think of what order I would recommend people read John Green's work in. I have a list like this for Maureen Johnson, but not John because he doesn't have as many titles. And I have not yet read The Fault in Our Stars, so this list is going to be awkward, but I can revise it later. For maximum Green enjoyment (as prescribed by myself, feel free to disagree in comments):

1. An Abundance of Katherines: excellent introduction to the comic aspects and quirky nature of his writing. Eases you into the particular tone Green employs in future novels, which is vaguely pretentious. I love a good pretentious tone, so that's probably a warning in itself. Colin is like Virgil, in a way.

2. Looking for Alaska: allow him to rip your heart out for a few hours and stomp it and then put it back together with the last words of dead people. Makes more sense in context.

3. Paper Towns: I really think this is most valuable read after Looking for Alaska. For reasons that are spoilerish. Watch out for farm animals and prepare to spend a lot of time on Wikipedia reading about copyright.

Interlude for short stories! John has written stories in several anthologies like Let it Snow, Geektastic and a few others.

4. Will Grayson, Will Grayson: for a myriad of reasons, I feel this is best experienced with the short story palate cleanser. To prepare further, you might also read one of David Levithan's co-authored novels with Rachel Cohn at this point to get an idea of his narrative flavor and mingle it in your mind with John's, like a delicious literary soup¹. I recommend Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List, because it was the best (IN MY HEART), but Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist was more beloved.

5. Zombiecorns. Really. No, I'm serious. I have feelings about Zombiecorns, okay? So many feelings.

I don't know where The Fault in Our Stars would be on this list. Ana, you'll have to come along and correct me if I've made a terrible mistake. But this is how I would present John Green to someone new, who had never read his work. Will Grayson, Will Grayson would never be an introductory novel (sorry) but it does have its place. You might also take the dust jacket off to hide the blurb. Complete ignorance might help, too.

Ultimately, what I learned from my reflection over one comment is that author critique is probably never as easy as it seems to be in the thick of a review of a book that didn't live up to expectations. It's easy to give false impressions, or incomplete impressions, of really great work by not being thorough. I think it's useful to critique authors and hold them accountable for weak writing, shallow characterizations, and failure to render particular characters thoroughly. However, I especially believe we should always critique with a nod to the humanity those characters can come to possess once we meet them. It's worth that serious examination in today's culture and environment that is hyper-focused on these issues of representation, especially for girls, to do so in an even-handed, thorough manner for everyone.

In closing, I have a lot of emotions and tl;dr, as per usual.

¹ Please do not lick and/or eat the authors.

Comments

[myfriendamy]

This is so thoughtful and considered as usual. I guess we do have a responsibility to really look at an author's body of work if we are going to say anything in general about the way they write, and of course I think it's always useful to look at what something has to OFFER even if it's not perfect.

Regarding the prop thing...I mean is it just like saying the girls are supporting characters? I remember thinking recently that I tend to like books where you might say the boys are mostly props or supporting characters, and feeling a bit bad about it. I'm probably not deep enough for this conversation.

[renay]

I am honestly not innocent of this behavior at all. I wince to think of how I treated Stephenie Meyer in conversations about her work in the past because of the content of her books. (Oh, growing up! Oh, learning.)

I did link the post in question where the comment was left. To reiterate, it wasn't that the comment itself bothered me, but what the comment was suggesting: that out there in the great wide somewhere people are claiming that John Green writes girls as props. But because these conversations weren't cited, my first assumption is that the claim reflects the first definition of prop I provided. Girls with no value to the narrative other than supporting the journey of a male character is what I took away from that.

But then we get into the sticky business of defining what that support means, how the girls are portrayed in the text, and what their agency is outside of the boy's journey. My rule of thumb is to ask if the story is also portraying the girl's journey as well, or if everything is subsumed by the journey to Knowledge and Light by the boy. First instance, 500 Days of Summer, which Ana has discussed several times, I don't believe shows the girl's journey at all. It's all about the journey of the dude. I think you've seen that, right? So it would give you a frame of reference.

And we don't allow that kind of talk here! ;) You're plenty deep enough for this conversation if I am. ♥

[zooey_glass]

I'm glad you posted this, because I read Paper Towns recently (my first JG novel) and had quite mixed feelings about it, and was disappointed since everyone I know and love has been telling me how great he is. This post helps me hit on some of the issues I had with it, I think - it seems to me that one of the things that comes out is the way that magical pixie girl narrative is quite thin and self-centred, and the thing is that when you explore that you walk the line between thinking about that and just making your character quite unappealing and self-centred. I think that may have been one of the elements which made me ambivalent about the novel.

Mind you, it is the first YA novel in a long while that made me feel old I was really bothered by them skipping out on their graduation - I just kept thinking 'But their poor parents have been waiting to see this great moment in their lives!'. So, lol, I may just have been in the wrong frame of mind for the book!

I really want to read Looking for Alaska now! It's been on my list since forever.

<3

[zooey_glass]

PS this comment is not very coherent! I am tired /0\

[renay]

I don't know that I would have liked Paper Towns as much as I did without Looking for Alaska first. This is particular to me, but those novels are really connected in my head in a way I can't seem to shake. My feelings about Margo centered on how huge the narrative made her seem, but also rather cold, like you couldn't quite touch her. I agree with you definitely about the self-centeredness, but one thing I found interesting is that by the end of the novel, I didn't feel like I knew Margo at all. I just knew Q's interpretation of her, and that, to me, isn't necessarily subverting the idea of the manic pixie dream girl as much as it is falling in the rabbit hole and tunneling deeper.

I like novels that make me think, though, and argue with them, and consider them long after I've read them. Green is definitely an author that provides many, many avenues of discussion and the chance for me to vomit words. As I do. >.>

Do read Looking for Alaska! I would love to hear your thoughts. :)

[phoebenorth]

Interesting post! I read Paper Towns first, and without an awareness of Green's infamy for MPDG. And I found it to be a stellar example of a MPDG nevertheless: Margo is absent for most of the novel; she provides motivation for the male characters but her needs are subordinated through the text; the novel ends somewhat inexplicably with the promise of a romantic relationship between her and Q. I think Green's awareness of these issues encourages me a bit (and I need to read TFioS, but I'm avoiding it right now for trigger issues), but I'm not sure that I feel that Paper Towns really addressed these issues so much as perpetuating them despite his awareness of them.

But your emotions are fascinating and interesting.

[renay]

Yes, I absolutely agree that in subversion, it kind of went off the rails, into the wilderness and back into the land of pixie, but appreciate the effort nonetheless, as it allows us to examine why it failed in what it was doing.

I suppose I didn't clarify my argument well enough, since I believe that although MPDG's can be prop-as-object, generally I think they tend to inhabit the second definition through their role in the story. In other words, I would rather have a MPDG than a prop (first definition), as I still believe that although there's a lot of problematic elements, oftentimes they can still come to have their own story and their own agency if an author is aware enough of what they're doing. I don't think Paper Towns is a great example, but yes, I definitely want to emblazon the last sentence of your first paragraph somewhere. It's one thing to be aware, and another thing to address.

I really like rewarding trying with discussion and fair play! (Obviously.) So many people don't try and that makes me tired and sad. Trying and failing is inherently more rewarding to me than never trying at all, and I will champion the attempt for as long as authors who want to step out and take the risk want to make it. It's a really scary, brave thing. I'm really interested to see where he goes in his future work (I have high hopes for TFioS given that Ana had FEELINGS about it), but I believe in one or two more novels we're going to see real, traceable development in how he portrays his female characters. I am excited. And will clearly be having this debate when I'm 40, as that's how long it will take him to write two more books.

Thank you! I really appreciated you putting those problems with Paper Towns in such a clear way. :)

[phoebenorth]

Oh, of course!

I think a similar example of subversion-of-the-MPDG-trope-not-quite-working was Clementine in Eternal Sunshine. Like Margo, we're told that she's a fucked up girl with her own problems--her own story, essentially, outside the male protagonist's. In both cases, we see hints that that effect.

But I suspect the problem is a writing problem, rather than one of intent. We're largely told these things, rather than shown them. The larger argument of the work feels very close to a typical work exemplifying these tropes than anything else.

But I agree that Green is a smart cookie, and an ally, so I'm going to keep trying with his work. He's obviously invested in examining his own biases and the problematic aspects of his writing, which is more than I can say for many other writers. He deserves more than a quick dismissal.

[renay]

I believe I need to cave and watch that movie! This is the third time in 2012 someone has cited Eternal Sunshine at me. That's got to be a sign of something. *g*

I have been thinking about your point re: show versus tell and agree. It's one thing to say "I am subverting this trope by telling you Girl X is totally having adventures while Boy X angsts over here and I tell his story." and another to forgo the boy completely except as part of the girl's story. Is it really subversion if the story is about the angst and not the adventures? (I say no.)

[chaosraven]

Some of what makes John Green's manic pixie thing okay for me is learning about his life via his hankgames videos. The story he tells about one of his old girlfriends was really telling to me wrt his understanding of or experience with women.

I read Katherines first, because it had just come out when I started watching the vlog brothers videos and while I liked so many aspects of it, I was so disappointed at the end when, instead of Colin learning his own lesson and not defining himself by his relationships, he continues on the same path and doesn't grow at all. But that's a critique I have of romance as a genre, and not specific to John's writing.

I feel like the "manic pixie" issue is only that it's a reversal of genders. People are used to the manic pixie being a male character (see the Edward Cullen example above <3) and so we're all thrown when the most special snowflake is a girl. But again, given the way John talks about the women in his life, I think that has been his experience.

I am really interested to read TFiOS (other than the part where it will make me cry forever) because I feel like the specialness of the characters is more evenly distributed. Both Hazel and Augustus have a lot of charm and because Hazel is the POV character, we get more impressions of her flaws than we would if the narrator had been Augustus which I think will diffuse the impression that she's the most special ever.

I feel like my point has gotten away from me. But I do agree that it's hard when people take their experience with one book and generalize it over an author's entire library. And, from that review particularly, only using wgwg as a sample is totally disingenuous. That would be like deciding you don't like Neal Gaiman's work based on disliking Good Omens. The work he does singly is completely different. Not that I think anyone is obligated to like John's work, but disliking it based on a book he didn't write by himself just doesn't sit well with me.

I hate to point this out but it's "dam a river" not "damn a river".

[renay]

Drive by as I am going to wash $dayjob off, but I checked my first draft. I actually put the typo in after I wrote the first draft.

In other words, I'm super amazing.

[renay]

Ah, yes. I hadn't thought about that critique of Katherines until you mentioned it. It might even be more disappointing even with romance as a comparison, because if Colin had escaped the romance bit, it would have elevated a non-romantic relationship (which I wish more YA would do between boys and girls, make friendship be just as valuable as anything else) and allowed Colin to break out of the relationship tango. I don't agree that he doesn't grow at all — he's broken one cycle — but all he's done is ended up in another one. SIGH.

[chaosraven]

It's really the only element of Katherines that I didn't like. He might be free of his Katherine pattern but he still hasn't escaped his girlfriend pattern. It drives me nuts when characters are defined by their romantic relationships and it's even worse that he does it to himself. I would have loved it if Lindsey was like: actually, you're way too neurotic for me to date, grow up a bit first. I mean, I appreciate that she made her own choice, I just think it would have been more compelling if she'd made a different one.

Spoilers for those who haven't read Looking for Alaska

[bookgazing]

I love how what you say about MPDG's having agency and being integral to the narrative applies to 'Looking for Alaska'. Alaska is the MPDG of Miles dreams and in the After section he does kind of appropriate the meaning of her actions, like he makes her death all about him. Green's narrative kind of does as well, by creating a hero who sees his mysterious female friend die and just happens to be totally preoccupied by last words the death, that kind of furthers Miles own journey as he tries to navigate life and death.

At the same time, outside of Miles' own head Alaska's death is so not about him at all, it is all about her and I guess it is her (tragic) way of using her agency in this narrative. And although the reader can't really get close to her because Mile's and the narrative's attachment to her as a MPDG, blocks us from seeing more of her even through the Captain's eyes, she does have agency in the Before section. We can kind of see, from everything Miles doesn't understand that she is off having a life that doesn't relate to him at all, even though he continues to...not exactly use her, but like to draw lessons from her, rather than be seriously interested in finding out about her.

Tangent note: Although I know there are some really skeevy representative issues of a narrative having a guy use a girl's death to further their development, I think it's also pretty common to find people naviagting their own lives through other character's deaths in novels (and films) because that's how we react to death so often - it's all about us.