{"id":2744,"date":"2017-10-12T22:04:40","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T16:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/?p=2744"},"modified":"2017-10-12T22:04:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T16:34:40","slug":"john-greens-new-book-not-quirky-sad-romance-existential-teenage-scream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/john-greens-new-book-not-quirky-sad-romance-existential-teenage-scream\/","title":{"rendered":"John Green\u2019s new book is not a quirky sad romance. It\u2019s an existential teenage scream"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Green is popularly perceived as \u201cthe sad teen book guy.\u201d He writes books about quirky sad teenagers who fall in love and then die, goes the general pop culture osmosis understanding in a post-The Fault in Our Stars<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/a>world, and then the teenagers who read the books get sad too, and it\u2019s all extremely adolescent and self-indulgent.<\/p>\n

What can get lost in that image, though, is the fact that Green is a genuinely good writer for teens. He hooks himself into the questions that consume adolescence \u2014 Who am I? What is my purpose? Am I a disgusting monster, or the single most important being in the universe? \u2014 and worries through them with the kind of single-minded intensity that would do a teenager proud.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s true that Green\u2019s books are about teenagers, that they\u2019re often sad, and that they can be self-indulgent \u2014 but they\u2019re self-indulgent in their sadness in the way that teenagers are self-indulgent about their own adolescent angst: innocently, as if they are unaware there could be another way to feel.<\/p>\n

In his new book\u00a0Turtles All the Way Down<\/em><\/a>, out this Tuesday, Green turns his single-minded intensity to the question of what it is like to be a teenager struggling with an anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The result is deeply claustrophobic and resolutely unromanticized: Green\u2019s signature whimsy pops up from time to time in his characters\u2019 conversations, but his depiction of mental illness focuses on the sheer monotonous grind of it. It\u2019s less a sweet love ballad than it is a scream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Green is popularly perceived as \u201cthe sad teen book guy.\u201d He writes books about quirky sad teenagers who fall in love and then die, goes the general pop culture osmosis understanding in a post-The Fault in Our Stars\u00a0world, and then the teenagers who read the books get sad too, and it\u2019s all extremely adolescent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2745,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[283,287,285,284,286],"class_list":{"0":"post-2744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-bollywood","9":"tag-fault-in-our-stars","10":"tag-john-green","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-turtles-all-the-way-down"},"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Turtles-all-the-Way-Down-writing-geeks.jpg?fit=650%2C450&ssl=1","author_info":{"display_name":"Writing Geeks","author_link":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/author\/writinggeeks\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Turtles-all-the-Way-Down-writing-geeks.jpg?fit=650%2C450&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uhmH-Ig","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2744"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2749,"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744\/revisions\/2749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writinggeeks.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}