Will Grayson, Will Grayson

For the record, every time I saw the title of Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan I thought it was one of the least inviting titles for a YA novel that I'd ever seen. Yes, there are two characters named Will Grayson and they meet. But then I got to page 307 of this 310-page book, and I immediately loved the title; it actually kind of brought tears to my eyes.

The circumstances under which I read the book certainly contributed to my enjoyment of it; every two years I go with a group of college friends to one of the many barrier islands around Charleston, South Carolina and we rent a couple of houses, go to the beach every morning, see the sights some afternoons, eat at seafood restaurants, and play card games or drink and chat most nights. It's always a perfect week, and this year the weather was also perfect--hot and sunny every day. We were coming back from dinner one night, six of us, and I said "I sleep so deep[ly]* here, and I don't think it's just the drinking...." Amid the laughter came a challenge to "put THAT on your blog" to which I've just responded.
*I said "deep" which is fine in conversation, but looks like a mistake when it appears in writing.

Anyway, there were nine people staying in our house, and I kept reading a bit of Will Grayson, Will Grayson while waiting for someone to walk somewhere with me or for my turn in the shower.

Even though I don't agree with this snotty adolescent view, I enjoyed coming across it:
"now, if there's anything stupider than buddy lists, it's lol. if anyone every uses lol with me, i rip my computer right out of the wall and smash it over the nearest head. i mean, it's not like anyone is laughing out loud about the things they lol. i think it should be spelled loll, like what a lobotomized person's tongue does."
If I ever type "lol" it's because I really am laughing out loud, as I did at that passage.

I also like the adolescent take on what the other Will Grayson's living room is used for:
"the room where the nonexistence of Santa is revealed, where grandmothers die, where grades are frowned upon, where one learns that a man's station wagon goes inside a woman's garage, and then exits the garage, and then enters again, and so on until an egg is fertilized...."

What I love most about this novel is the transformation of the lower-case Will Grayson's view of love and possibility. He goes from the kind of clueless--and not very well-read--adolescent who thinks that other people can live in a
"musical cartoon world, where witches like maura get vanquished with one heroic word, and all the forest creatures are happy when two gay guys walk hand-in-hand through the meadow, and gideon is the himbo suitor you know the princess can't marry, because her heart belongs to the beast. i'm sure it's a lovely world, where these things happen, a rich, spoiled, colorful world, maybe one day i'll get to visit...."
to the realization that maybe the world that the lover he has rejected keeps offering him is actually a real world, if he has the courage to help dream it up and believe in its magic.

I simply can't fail to love a novel in which an adolescent character is capable of making this kind of distinction between philos and eros:
"I don't want to screw you. I just love you. When did who you want to screw become the whole game? Since when is the person you want to screw the only person you get to love? It's so stupid, Tiny! I mean, Jesus, who even gives a fuck about sex?! People act like it's the most important thing humans do, but come on. How can our sentient fucking lives revolve around something slugs can do."

Most of all, given my circumstances, sharing a house with people I've known since college, with all our kids going off together to the lower level and getting along so well we occasionally called them up to see a little more of them, I loved the passage in which upper-case Will Grayson says to his friend Tiny
"I want you to come over to my house in twenty years with your dude and your adopted kids and I want our fucking kids to hang out and I want to, like drink wine and talk about the Middle East or whatever the fuck we're gonna want to do when we're old."
And that is exactly what Ron and I were doing, with two other couples who are married to people of the opposite sex and one same-sex couple who have been together for sixteen years and would like to be married. We talked, sunned, built sand castles, walked, ate, and drank wine.

And I finished reading this excellent book, whose excellence is not only due to the circumstances of the reading, although those were pretty close to optimum, in the world I'd created for myself: hot and sunny, beside the ocean, with some of my best friends. What are the basic components of the happiest "musical cartoon world" you can imagine for yourself? And how often do you get to be there?

See the Movie First

This fall, I've seen two movies that couldn't possibly live up to the books, City of Ember and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.

To use Eleanor's word, City of Ember is "cheesy." There was no reason to add huge, bloodthirsty animals except that it added some excitement to the movie. If you like that sort of thing.

There was definitely no reason to follow Norah's friend Caroline throughout the movie version of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist when she's out of the picture fairly quickly in the book, particularly as it led to one of my all-time least favorite scenes in a movie ever--the close-up vomit scene.

Luckily, I saw the Nick and Norah movie before I read the book, and that's the way to do it, if you want to enjoy the movie. (Isn't that pretty much the rule with all movies--are there any movies that are actually better than the book?)

The book is wonderful! It alternates chapters between Nick, written by David Levithan, and Norah, written by Rachel Cohn. Early on in the evening, Nick is trying to talk to Norah about where they could go next, and the conversation culminates in this exchange:
"Know any other bands playing?"
Tumbleweed blowing down the armrest between us.
"Wanna watch some nuns make out?"
Am I even speaking out loud?
"Maybe see if E.T. is up for a threeway?"
This time she looks at me. And if she isn't exactly smiling, at least I think I see the potential for a smile there.
"No," she says. "I'd much rather watch some nuns make out."

Later Norah refers back to the E.T. proposition in a charming way that makes you realize that she was, in fact, paying very close attention to everything Nick has said the entire evening. I also enjoyed the movie quotations they each throw out, to see if the other one recognizes them, especially this one of Norah's:
I stand up from the table and wiggle my index finger at Nick. He'll never get it, but I borrow from Heathers as I leave him to follow Tris. "A true friend's work is never done," I singsong.
"Bulemia is so '87, Heather," he answers.

There are several almost-sex scenes, including one from Norah's perspective, against an ice machine in a hotel, where they're discovered by an elderly couple and Nick says:
"would you be a dear and shut the light off again on your way back out?" and then the elderly woman says "Oh my"...but bless her heart, she does flick the light switch back off, but not before shooting me one parting look, and I swear in that last lingering second, I see that she recognizes my hunger because she's felt it at some point in her life, too, and she winks at me before they're gone....
I also like it that they don't end up having sex on this particular night, and that Norah says "I want him so very much, but it's too soon. I have to figure, with this many stops and starts, surely this train will pull out of the station eventually. What's the big fucking rush?"

The way the novel gets its title is also a nice part of the story, and Nick tells it. He's been writing a song for Norah, and says "I shouldn't want the song to end. I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist."

Many of us have songs that we associate with certain periods in our lives. Sometimes there's an interesting overlay, like how the music I was listening to in the car with Walker this summer--the soundtrack from Mama Mia--made me remember dancing to ABBA's "Dancing Queen" the year I was seventeen and also made me think of last winter, when I adopted the Scissor Sisters' "I don't feel like dancing" as my theme song during my recuperation from knee replacement.

So, two questions for you, dear reader. Is there a movie that's better than the book? And is there a song or musical theme you associate with a certain period in your life?