What matters: how much a character wants something. Eleanor and Park is transcendent because of how much Eleanor wants freedom from her terrible, punishing home. The size of Eleanor’s want makes her matter to me. I want her to be free, too. The other thing that makes her matter is the specificity of her character: her red hair. Her playlists. Her courage. Her cool ideas.
Category: Books and Movies
Thoughts that have helped me recently: we read to make sense of our experience, or to help ourselves endure it. Which explains why I loved The Fault in Our Stars. I was impatient to the point of bad-temper with John Green’s plot, which seemed so contrived: girl dying of cancer meets boy dying of cancer and falls in love with life. But I was mesmerized by his language, his respect for his characters, and his deep wisdom about being human. At the moment I need wisdom, most of all.
I was reading The Creative Compass. The writer said we often turn to books about writing because we are looking for permission to write, a strategy for approaching it, courage. We fail to realize that the most important place we get permission, maybe the only place, is in the act of writing itself. By writing, first and foremost, we learn how to write, how we write. Today, in this moment in history, the message seems urgently important: write. That’s your only way forward. Don’t read a book about writing. Don’t wait for courage or permission. Write.
Which books have made me want to write, or read, or just glad to be in the world?
Wonder.
Fault in Our Stars.
Looking for Alaska.
It’s Kind of A Funny Story.
Okay for Now.
Eleanor and Park.
Also:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Treasure Island.
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.
The Art of Fielding.