Book 10: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Completed February 4th



I love John Green. I love him as an author, a philanthropist, a decreaser of WorldSuck, a creator of awesome, and the father of Nerdfighteria. Looking for Alaska is in my top 3 favorite books, if not the favorite. So I had high expectations for this novel. Before I go further, let me say that I read this when it first came out and was severely disappointed. Something about it stuck with me though, and I wanted to give it another try.

Okay so this book is written in alternating chapters by John Green and David Levithan. Green writes from the view of Will Grayson, who is a social outcast and just tries to pass through life unnoticed. (He also has a best friend named Tiny Cooper who will become important later on in this review/summary/thought thing.) Levithan writes from the view of another character named Will Grayson, who is an angsty, closeted gay teen. Both Wills meet eventually and their lives begin to change, leading to epiphanies on both their parts. (There's also a character named Jane who is a music snob and I'm left wondering why she was included at all. Her relationship with Will was unrealistic and too forced for my taste.)

Tiny Cooper is gay and "out and proud" in the biggest sense of the phrase. Green and Levithan use Tiny to bring about both Wills' epiphanies. Green has said that Tiny is his favorite character that he has written...and I have to wonder, why? Now don't get your dander up and wonder if my dislike of Tiny has anything to do with him being gay. If you know me at all, you know I am a HUGE supporter of the LGBT community and am pretty involved in it. There's just something that rubs me the wrong way about Tiny. He's loud and self-absorbed, yet other characters seem to gravitate toward him.

And the way Green's Will Grayson describes Tiny annoyed the hell out of me. Green writes, "Tiny Cooper is not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large." The enormity of Tiny is reiterated ad nauseam. I understand that the reader needs to remember that Tiny is a big guy in order for Tiny's spiel about his struggles and loving himself to have an impact, but my God. I get it, Green. Let's move along and talk about something other than the miracle of Tiny fitting himself into a car or how he eats 10 hotdogs in 1 sitting or almost breaks the swing set when he sits down. The introduction to Tiny is memorable enough for his hugeness not to be mentioned every few pages. Trust the reader to remember.

That being said...I enjoyed this read-through a helluva lot more than the first, when my reaction was pretty much, "What the hell did I just read and why does it exist?" I really liked Levithan's Will. He was angsty and brooding and is able to pass as a teen with depression. He's not just sad or upset with life, he actually has a mental illness.

A couple quotes stood out to me:

• when things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it's because a little piece gets lost -- the two ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed. (Levithan's Will, whose chapters are written in lowercase letters)
• i will admit that there's a certain degree of giving a fuck that goes into not giving a fuck. by saying you don't care if the world falls apart, in some small way, you're saying you want it to stay together, on your terms.

Overall this is my least favorite John Green novel, but it made me interested in reading more of David Levithan's work.

Rating: 4/10