tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post1057503531066105930..comments2023-07-03T20:52:49.846-07:00Comments on The Author's Files: Why Does(n’t) Everybody Hate John Green?The Authorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06348542336556124585noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-10627542438420000252022-10-10T00:30:49.064-07:002022-10-10T00:30:49.064-07:00What a peculiar comment. Your comment includes vag...What a peculiar comment. Your comment includes vague allusions to an unspecified woe (or series of them) that occurred within the last 5 years.I would have liked it if your comment included more clarity on that, because it reads as addendum to some non-existent anthology of human irritants and insults, and is an incomplete thought. The insults towards the blogposter are rather petty, but that's rather ordinary. <br /><br />The most interesting part to discuss is John Green's skills as an educator. I have had the displeasure to actually watch the majority of his crash course history videos, and while they might act as a half-decent introduction to history, they are incredibly biased towards his particular worldview, and I ambivalent as to whether complete ignorance of history would be worse than an distorted understanding of history which uses his history videos as a foundation.<br /><br />I won't comment on his skill or merit as an author, because I can't speak to that, but I have watched the adaptation of his book "Looking for Alaska", and I wonder if his book was frustrating to read as the adaptation was to watch. The continual subversion of expectations leaves behind no satisfaction, which makes it thoroughly unenjoyable, though perhaps that was the goal all along.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-43955236088433434162021-06-24T13:29:52.919-07:002021-06-24T13:29:52.919-07:00If you hate hearing opinionated know-it-alls compl...If you hate hearing opinionated know-it-alls complaining about the<br />"cancel culture," then make some attempt to stop BEING the<br />"cancel culture." The attitude of "If you don't agree completely with<br />me, your ideas are worthless and from here on out I will not deign to<br />give you the time of day" is itself not worth the time of day from<br />ourselves. To say that I strongly dislike John Green books would be<br />a huge understatement, but I have read more than one of them, and<br />have seen two of them (yes, there is overlap) as movie adaptations.<br />I am in no way trying to put on airs as a self-proclaimed expert,<br />but, considering briefly the huge amount of failures to communicate<br />across political rifts (John Green seems particularly unhelpful here),<br />I can only say with great disappointment, "What kind of stuff are<br />we defending?" A site and author with whom I have little in common<br /><br />https://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/most_contemporary_literary_fiction_is_terrible/<br /><br />has bravely stated something that, in this one special case, definitely needs saying. I loathe the term "echo chamber" as used in<br />current political and literary discussions even though I know that<br />those I am (mostly) inside are also echo chambers. Literary fiction<br />should be for breaking out of these echo chambers, not reinforcing<br />them; the attitude of "I don't have to listen to you" not only<br />reinforces them, it comes close to hermetically sealing them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-43630384772406725282021-05-24T11:05:00.674-07:002021-05-24T11:05:00.674-07:00Oy vey this post has not aged well. The comparison...Oy vey this post has not aged well. The comparisons of John Green to political instigators like Trump and Limbaugh, the insufferable whining about popular literature, the fraudulent claims about how John is incapable of posting educational internet content. If the last five years have proven anything that the author would've neglected to consider when they wrote this, its that public figures like John Green are not the problem. What a happy time it was when taste was the thing we had to complain about. Perhaps the ironic thing that stands out to me is the needless debasing of publishing sites like Tumblr and Youtube as low brow creative outlets when the author's beloved Google blog site contains a warning from themselves sheepishly warning of frequent malfunctions on an already less-than-captivating blog.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-50979763797058279632020-02-01T14:37:38.121-08:002020-02-01T14:37:38.121-08:00It should be obvious: the fact that I myself happe...It should be obvious: the fact that I myself happen to dislike some book does not carry with it the cast-in-concrete verdict that the book under review is automatically bad and should simply be buried without further mention. Many, possibly even most, people like some books that are certifiably trash; my own trash reading consists of the low-end pulp genre fiction from an earlier era without the "doubleplus ungoodthink" mentality I find in and about recent fiction. (This mentality seems to me much more evident "about" than actually "in" recent fiction, but, unfortunately it is _in_ it, too). How could Margaret Mitchell even write _Gone With The Wind_ today? How many years before I have to remove a floor board and seal that old book in a freezer bag to hide it from the Language Police? Even edging away from the Jim Crow scene, there still are (for now) books available from earlier eras that deal with "refs unpersons" though no one dare write one now. Well then--we all are the losers on that account. I thank the kind anonymous commenter for the praise--at least that person gave up some time to actually _read_ what I wrote. True to form, John Green has disappointed me yet again, though hardly in the way I would have expected. I hesitate to mention this, since it definitely is "damning with faint praise," but I found, with the help of a movie, a John Green book that I could actually re-read, if placed in that extremity: _Paper Towns_. This is a dubious distinction, since I would make a point to search the stacks (if need be, all of them) for something better. How sad that he has broken his perfect record of "un-rereadability." I hope that I have angered neither the kind commenter nor the author of this forum by my cribbings from George Orwell, but his jargon terms manage to put into shorthand for me what would merely sound like whining if I would write it. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-34161537661360451452019-05-29T14:30:02.600-07:002019-05-29T14:30:02.600-07:00Oh my gosh, you put into words everything I was fe...Oh my gosh, you put into words everything I was feeling. This is so true. I'll be darned if not the best thing I've read in a whileAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-46685953384561760602018-12-29T14:14:52.146-08:002018-12-29T14:14:52.146-08:00"Does the school have a compelling obligation... "Does the school have a compelling obligation to make any book available for anybody at any time, let alone a book as prevalent and ingrained in contemporary pop culture as A Fault In Our Stars? Wouldn’t the school’s funds be better spent acquiring texts that have been reviewed and studied for longer than two years and have outlasted transient, media-manufactured hype?"<br /><br />I might just as well have confessed that my own<br />writing skills are standouts for their inferiority,<br />but I definitely could not have put this any<br />better myself. I personally endured reading <br />Looking for Alaska, and have seen movies of Paper<br />Towns and The Fault in our Stars--they seem to me<br />to exemplify the literary brain-food equivalent<br />of the drive-through dinner-in-a-bag restaurant.<br />I want to read what pleases my literary palate<br />better than John Green. I sympathize with the<br />complaint that he is riding on the popularity of<br />a fad, with his being an idolized writer whom many<br />people want to inflate to icon status, but--for<br />me? No, no, no. At the same time, this is not even<br />the worst aspect of it for me. It is for me like<br />some skyscraper tucked away in some corner of the<br />downtown of a huge metropolis that has hideous<br />architecture, but which hides in a circle of<br />taller buildings; I do not have to fight traffic<br />and navigate crowded crosswalks just to<br />masochistically get a look at it if I do not have<br />to--unlike the students in the schools, who<br />ironically are like the office workers in nearby<br />buildings who always have it in their field of<br />view, looming over their cubicles. There have<br />been myriads of readers who have loved Douglas<br />Adams' The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, but<br />what I've heard of that book has never impelled<br />me to find it and read it. (I think, though,<br />that I would prefer even that book to another from<br />John Green). At least it sprouted up from the <br />pulp-fiction underground and stands on its own<br />so-called merits, instead of finding an audience<br />of millions of Internet groupies seemingly<br />appearing out of nowhere in order to tell me how<br />good they think it is.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-11048820694580062922018-02-04T09:03:37.509-08:002018-02-04T09:03:37.509-08:00This. Is. Wonderful.
John Green as a person, I do...This. Is. Wonderful.<br /><br />John Green as a person, I don't mind at all. No real opinion for or against. Seems intelligent and friendly.<br /><br />As an author? SWEET JESUS NO. He's terrible.Scout Dawsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01063090851427348684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-91370210836637859932017-10-13T07:44:32.921-07:002017-10-13T07:44:32.921-07:00"Ever the philosopher, John Green can be cred..."Ever the philosopher, John Green can be credited for at least one profundity. 'Some infinities are bigger than other infinities,'"...<br /><br />He didn't even come up with that. I'm guessing he probably spent a late night on Wikipedia reading about infinity and because most of his fan base can't even be bothered with that much reading, he will unfortunately be credited by them as being "deep." Kudos on the curmudgeonly take down of one of the world's most popular pillocks.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-38602273419992332232016-07-15T16:52:49.413-07:002016-07-15T16:52:49.413-07:00On the contrary, of all the hate that's doled ...On the contrary, of all the hate that's doled out daily, John Green receives far too slim a share. In the year of the Donald Trump and the Black Lies Matter rioter, I'm sure that Johnny Boy is actually disappointed by the paucity of hate he's been receiving from the public, as he no longer has a semblance of a license to lament his own victimization by a slanderous and unrelenting pack of haters.<br /><br />Thanks for reading, I think.The Authorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06348542336556124585noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-71838862791826414662016-07-15T12:28:35.052-07:002016-07-15T12:28:35.052-07:00This is terrible, there are so many awful people i...This is terrible, there are so many awful people in the world on which to dole out hate and for some reason john green gets this much of it? He's not nearly as problematic as people want him to be, like please stop thinking it's cool to get all extreme-sjw on men who aren't perfect but try their best to be self aware. There's not many men who even get this far on their journey to not being dickwads, ok?fayfayzeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03253130217973559034noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-84832957788300221002016-01-28T08:34:20.602-08:002016-01-28T08:34:20.602-08:00This is gold.This is gold.Catherine Siborutorophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02022377553540295470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-594519840960962292015-08-01T12:09:49.586-07:002015-08-01T12:09:49.586-07:00Harper Lee. I like her. And TKAM. Who's Joh...Harper Lee. I like her. And TKAM. Who's John Green???Skellerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11021374799688814697noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4674871730026898132.post-79975751207588200142015-08-01T10:09:09.995-07:002015-08-01T10:09:09.995-07:00Did John Green play The Last of Us a lot? I would...Did John Green play The Last of Us a lot? I would think after twenty hours of trekking around a post-apocalyptic hellhole with nothing but "OK" would put anyone off the word, but I suppose not. <br />"John Green, swear to me you will never write a book ever again."<br />"I swear."<br />"Okay."Joelhttp://www.okaywillbeouralways.comnoreply@blogger.com