Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Yeah I figure I should blog about it.
The thing is, I can't decide how I feel about it. I've been looking at reviews that rate the book poorly to see if I'm offended or if I agree. The unfortunate thing is WG,WG's readers are mostly made up of John Green's loyal fans, would say they loved Twilight if John Green wrote it.
Most of the bitching comes from David's lack of capitalization or the fact that the two Wills weren't "changed" drastically after their meetings. Neither of these things bothered me. I didn't like David's lack of capitalization because his will didn't care about jack shit, which bothered me.
I sort of wish there was more collaboration in writing the chapters. Instead of just two writers writing their own stories, I would have liked to see more interconnected motifs or symbols or something. There was no glue holding the two Wills together until they met, and then their glue was Tiny. It felt sort of half-assed to me. It's not that they met and became best friends forever. It's not that they met and never spoke to each other again. They met, and then knew that the other existed, and that was pretty much it. It was so... lame. And every so often John and David would use the same word here or there, which just made it feel awkward. It felt like two separate pieces of fabric loosely tied together that didn't really go together and the attaching string was falling out.
The other thing: people say they hated Tiny. I can't say I cared. I didn't care about Will or will or Jane or Gideon or Maura -- I didn't care about any of them. No one was very compelling, or interesting, or different. I could describe them all in less than 10 words. Maybe I'm sick of John's constant use of the dubious narrator (Pudge, Colin, Quentin...); maybe I just don't care about the character whose main description was "big and gay."
I also hate hate hate both narrations use of the "Big Realization." The reader is supposed to be the realizer. If the narrator realizes what the reader is supposed to, it just makes it look like the writer doesn't respect his reader's intelligence to figure it out. Other things I hate: dream sequences. Writing about writing. Overuse of exclamation points. Not that any of that is relevant, but still.
To summarize: I didn't like it all that much. Not horrible, fun to read, but not the best thing ever. Not that anyone cares.
The thing is, I can't decide how I feel about it. I've been looking at reviews that rate the book poorly to see if I'm offended or if I agree. The unfortunate thing is WG,WG's readers are mostly made up of John Green's loyal fans, would say they loved Twilight if John Green wrote it.
Most of the bitching comes from David's lack of capitalization or the fact that the two Wills weren't "changed" drastically after their meetings. Neither of these things bothered me. I didn't like David's lack of capitalization because his will didn't care about jack shit, which bothered me.
I sort of wish there was more collaboration in writing the chapters. Instead of just two writers writing their own stories, I would have liked to see more interconnected motifs or symbols or something. There was no glue holding the two Wills together until they met, and then their glue was Tiny. It felt sort of half-assed to me. It's not that they met and became best friends forever. It's not that they met and never spoke to each other again. They met, and then knew that the other existed, and that was pretty much it. It was so... lame. And every so often John and David would use the same word here or there, which just made it feel awkward. It felt like two separate pieces of fabric loosely tied together that didn't really go together and the attaching string was falling out.
The other thing: people say they hated Tiny. I can't say I cared. I didn't care about Will or will or Jane or Gideon or Maura -- I didn't care about any of them. No one was very compelling, or interesting, or different. I could describe them all in less than 10 words. Maybe I'm sick of John's constant use of the dubious narrator (Pudge, Colin, Quentin...); maybe I just don't care about the character whose main description was "big and gay."
I also hate hate hate both narrations use of the "Big Realization." The reader is supposed to be the realizer. If the narrator realizes what the reader is supposed to, it just makes it look like the writer doesn't respect his reader's intelligence to figure it out. Other things I hate: dream sequences. Writing about writing. Overuse of exclamation points. Not that any of that is relevant, but still.
To summarize: I didn't like it all that much. Not horrible, fun to read, but not the best thing ever. Not that anyone cares.
