Why John Green is Overrated

 

     I read John Green's most famous book a few years ago, 'The Fault in Our Stars', and despite the many great reviews given, I found it unappealing. The first chapters were exciting and interesting, a dramatic story about two cancer patients falling for each other, but little things bugged me and the dramatic writing got annoying. John Green is a great writer of this time, bringing sensitive topics into his book, contributing to the integration of such topics in mainstream culture, however, I strongly believe that he could have done much better. Although the majority of his novels are interesting and have fun plots, the areas in which he falls short or goes about subjects wrong brings down the rest of the book. I am going to explain a few reasons on why I believe John Green is overrated. 

    I will start with one of his earlier books, 'Will Grayson Will Grayson'. This novel has a clever plot, focusing on two teenage boys living in Chicago suburbs, both named Will Grayson, who are friends with "massive and massively fabulous" Tiny Cooper. This novel is co written with David Levithan, where he and John Green alternated chapters, each pertaining to a different Will Grayson. Throughout the book, it becomes clear that the novel centers around Tiny Cooper and he is present in the majority of the book. As I read it a week ago, comments about Tiny's weight came up often, but I brushed it aside because inclusiveness is great, and I was glad that they were making moves to undo the harmful notion that being fat is disgusting. Still, the comments and jokes started to build up, and if looking for them, one is on almost every page with Tiny. You get the strange feeling that these two authors are almost obsessed with Tiny's weight. The mentions also get worse as you go on, starting with teasing things such as "massive and massively fabulous" (very punny)... leading on to things like "I am somehow not feeling as repulsed as I should feel around someone three times my size" or "he looks like he would break a sweat lifting a twinkie to his mouth" or "Tiny's legs look like sausages when he wears jeans". These small phrases bring the entire book down with them, making overweight a personality trait of Tiny, the idea that the book is supposedly trying to take down. Despite the sentiment in the end  attempting to salvage Tiny's experience embodying body positivity, the novel was already telling the many young readers that being overweight is repulsive. Although John Green and David Levithan seem to be wonderful people, this book, disguised as body positive, constantly hints and influences impressionable minds that a body type is incredibly undesirable. Clever idea and great goal, but incredibly harmful once executed.

    Next, the first book I read by him and most famous, 'The Fault in Our Stars'. Yet again, a sweet and

clever premise; two cancer patients falling in love, yet falling short in some areas. The novel is a great escape and romantic adventure for us couch potatoes to read, Green displays his skill in writing escapist books with a type of fanfiction-like energy to it. It seems to be a fantasy of Green's, a story quickly written to fiction and daydream about the romance he wants without the often-feared commitment. Unless it isn't his quickly written daydream. If that likely scenario is the case it displays his skill in writing earnest adolescent plots that reach bestseller only due to of the many romantic teens. I believe that he is an amazing person with great ideas for fun stories teens will like, but if he continues to produce books that consistently fall short in areas and are overall earnest and silly, I will be worried for the young minds consuming these books just for the plot and romance. An article from The Michigan Daily by Lillian Pearce, a cancer survivor, reevaluates the book thoughtfully after rereading in 2020. She goes into an aspect of 'The Fault in Our Stars' where the two main characters share their first kiss within Anne Frank's house, and explains how it is questionable, inappropriate, and an entirely unnecessary setting. It seems to insinuate that the sickness and risk of death at an early age due to cancer is similar to Anne Frank dying of sickness at an early age. The only difference being, that Anne Frank was killed in one of many horrifying concentration camps. Despite the depressing number of children who die from cancer, comparing the two is incredible inappropriate and immature, a comparison a child might make without proper understanding of the subject. Perhaps that child had read his books. Lillian Pearce additionally brings up the cure of cancer from the book, Phalanxifor. With no special cure in real life, the fake medicine "glamorizes the scarce miracles and hope some cancer patients may have". 

    John Green's more recent book, 'Turtles all the way down', is a refreshing improvement to some of his other problematic novels, but is a good example of his cliche characters and their unrealistic behaviors. The book follows a 16 year old girl, Aza, who suffers from severe OCD. She and her friend go on an adventure to find the missing billionaire dad of an old friend. As expected, the old friend and Aza get together in the middle. I really enjoyed the representation of a character with OCD in his book, and the story ended in the way it does realistically, but the way the characters act started to bug me. From the very beginning, cringy aspects are snuck in, such as when Aza's friend asks her if she is experiencing intrusive thoughts and Aza nods and refuses to talk. Something about the way this interaction was written made me very upset, it might just be because it made me imagine her doing the Debby Ryan hair sweep. Still, refusing to talk seems to be very dramatic, especially accompanied with earnest and silly "poetic" phrases inside her head written by John Green. This continues throughout the book, leading to another silly scene. After recently meeting up with her old friend again, Aza and him lay by the lake, looking at stars holding hands. Cute, right? It might be if it wasn't so incredibly sudden and unrelated. They had been only talking about his billionaire dad and catching up before then. Then, the two go on to hold hands and exchange fake poetic and extremely cringy phrases. To paraphrase; "Aza, I know I haven't seen you in like 5 years, but,..... you're........ different than everyone else [blinks eyes]" or "You know, we are like nebulae, no one understands us [brushes hair to the side like Debby Ryan]". The unrealistic phrases and behavior drives me crazy after some time. No one ever has unironically said or done stuff like this (except maybe John Green).

    I believe that this author is a pretty cool person, has nice viewpoints and clever ideas, but is not good at realistically, unproblematically, thoughtfully, and eloquently writing novels. From the problematic and poorly thought-out 'Will Grayson Will Grayson' and 'The Fault in Our Stars' to the cringy and unrealistic 'Turtles all the way down', his books are very much overrated, and not deserving of being so well known and consumed by young minds. I give John Green a 10/10 Debby Ryan hair sweeps for personality, goals, creativity, and viewpoints, and a 2.5/10 hair sweeps for his novels.

If you would like to read more from Lillian Pearce's interesting view, here is the article:

https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/its-time-to-talk-about-john-green/

 

-Diza :)