I just finished reading John Green's "Paper Towns" and I am still digesting it. To be completely honest I do not really know where to start or even finish with my thoughts on such a great book.
I originally picked it up because John and his brother Hank are known as the Vlog Brothers (http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers) on YouTube. I first heard of them when Hank sang "Accio Deathly Hallows" in 2007 for John. Then I heard from the Pottercasters and others his books were reallllly good too. John, not Hank. And they invented being Nerdfighters.
As Green's agent says via telephone in his Amazon.com video (link below) promoting the book, "It's the funniest serious mystery novel ever written about love and Walk Whitman."
This truly does summarize this book, yet it does not.
A few stanzas from Whitman's "Song Of Myself" are used as clues at one point in the novel yet the entire poem becomes studied and analyzed throughout the book. This actually made me interested in reading it, though poetry often is hard for me to sit and ponder on. Either way, I will read it eventually.
But on to “Paper Towns.”
The Author (@realjohngreen) and his (paperback) book.
First you meet a nine-year-old Quentin and Margo in the prologue. They discover a body in their Orlando neighborhood park while playing. Each has a different reaction to finding the deceased Robert Joyner, who shot himself. Margo is taken in by the mystery and detective work she does as to “why” (by asking around) and then adding her on theory as to why the man would kill himself.
“Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.”
And thus comes the bulk of the book, in three parts.
Part One “The Strings” finds Quentin as a high-school senior near the end of the school year. He and Margo have grown distant though they remain neighbors. He is the geek or non-popular guy and she is hot-stuff on campus. Quentin (or Q as he goes by mostly) hangs out with a lot of band people - though he himself isn’t in band - which includes his best friends Ben and Radar. Ben and Quentin have been friends since fifth grade and along the way picked up Marcus. Marcus, however, goes by Radar because - outside of the fact that he is black - as a younger lad he resembled the M*A*S*H* character. Oh, his parents own the world’s largest collection of black Santas too. Ben himself has a nickname, but one given for reasons outside of his approval as a sophomore. Poor guy has one kidney infection ...
Anyways, this is the crew. Quentin doesn’t believe in prom, Radar has a girlfriend and thus a date and Ben has the car they all ride around in, when it starts.
Late one night Margo bursts into Quentin’s window late one night dressed as a ninja and the two use his mother’s minivan for an evening of personal payback on those who wronged her. There are hidden fish, surprise photographs and escapades like breaking into Sea-World into the late hours of a random school night.
And thus comes the mystery side of the novel. Because Margo simply disappears.
Part Two “The Grass” explores how friends, former friends, parents and the student body deal and react to Margo's departure. It also more importantly explores how Quentin (and his friends) search for Margo following clues including but not limited to Woody Guthrie and Walt Whitman to figure out where she went.
Part Three “The Vessel” should remain spoiler free and deals with maters once the clues are figured out. The dialogue alone in Part Three is worth reading the book. For instance, Ben has to pee. A lot. And has to on a road trip and only has a beer bottle available.
But Radar feels differently. “If you don’t throw that shit out the window right now, I’m ending our eleven-year-friendship,” he says.
“It’s not shit,” I say. “It’s pee.”
“Out,” he says. And so I litter. In the side-view mirror, I can see the bottle hit the asphalt and burst open like a water balloon. Radar sees it, too.
“Oh my God,” Radar says. “I hope that’s like one of those traumatic events that is so damaging to my psyche that I just forget it ever happened.
At the same time deep points are made during this road trip.
“The thing about That Guy Is a Gigolo (a game the characters invent),” Radar says, “I Mean, the thing about it as a game, is that in the end it reveals a lot more about the person doing the imagining than it does about the person being imagined.”
Throughout “Paper Towns” there is theme exploring the "idea" of who Margo is to each character, but mostly Q. had of Margo. The idea of who she was and what people thought she was. Q likes his idea of Margo but realizes he does not know her really at all. He begins to know the real her, or at least figure out some of who she was, as the book progresses via introspection and clues, especially as he reads more than the few lines of "Song of Myself" left as a clue. Yet he still does not know her.
I quite enjoyed the characters because to me they really are believable. The last few years have been spent reading books about an orphaned wizard who bears the mantle of responsibility to defeat a dark wizard; a human who falls in love with a sparkly vampire but is loved by an Indian who shapeshifts into a wolf; two characters known simple as the Man and the Boy in a post-Apocalyptic America walking down a road; a murdered girl watching her family and friends’ lives change after her murder or even a zombie-love-quest book. “Paper Towns” is a believable tale with developed characters that are not out-of-the-ordinary.
We have a main character who really finds himself while searching for another; best friends whose traits, mannerisms and quirks as friends are realized by Q and then settled upon and finally a girl who hid her true self from everyone and that she was “the flimsy-foldable person” to the world, not everyone else.
By the end of the book I was pondering about the idea's of people I know. There will be a girl I am interested in but to me I am infatuated, interested or crushing on the "idea" of her rather than the her herself. Why? Because I don't know the real her. Maybe that's why I like the Dave Matthews Band song "Idea Of You" so much, because I identify. I like the “idea” of her before I know the real her. I suppose that’s where you learn if you like the real her though.
But, like Ben says late in the book, “People are different when you can smell them and see them up close, you know?”
And thus leads to the conclusion of the book, which - as spoilerfree as I can say it - I liked and understood it. One line makes me know how it ends. It made sense and fit rather well. Again, believable rather than fantastic.
I too shall participate in self-photography with "Paper Towns" as others have.
I honestly plan on reading “Paper Towns” again so I can pull more from it because I honestly did feel as if it is more than just a mystery novel. There are some lessons I can take away from it that I will only learn when I slow down my pace and take the book in as you would Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”
What those lessons are I am eager to realize, but I really hope to think about “Paper Towns” and moreso, being paper myself.
I just hope John Green doesn’t think this is all rubbish writing, I just really want to ponder about it all more.
