First Read Books ~Running Commentary~

Other Thoughts:

Cancer:

What is becoming clear more and more – perhaps more in this chapter than the previous two – that, more than a ‘cancer story’, The Fault in Our Stars ought to be recognised as a ‘disability story’. That is, as a result of her cancer, Hazel is a sixteen year old girl whose greatest obstacles aren’t whether or not she will ace her final and qualify for the career she’s always dreamed of, but being able to breathe with the help of her apparatus and whether or not she will have the energy to do anything she wants to do. It’s for this reason, as well as the fact that cancer is often categorised as a chronic illness, that I consider Hazel to be a disabled character.

For the record and use in reality, I believe it’s best to refer to someone who has disabilities as a ‘disabled person’ rather than ‘handicapped’ (or ‘handicapable’) or as ‘someone with a disability’ – using ‘identity first’ language rather than ‘person first’ language. I don’t speak for every disabled person by any stretch, but this preferred form does recognise the fact that someone’s disabilities are a part of their identity without extending undue pity or insinuating that you want us to be cured of our disabilities or that they are somehow separate from our being. I know I am attempting to condense what is a complex conversation, one full of nuance when it comes to the social dynamics that have to be traversed as a disabled person. Our community is diverse, and we all have different prejudices to deal with in that respect. In other words, playing the ‘who has it harder’ game is both impossible and doesn’t actually help anyone; one person’s ‘hard’ is another person’s ‘easy-peasy’. With this in mind, the conversation in disability will be an ongoing one for this book. This isn’t ‘finished’, this is ‘just for now’.

Considering this summary is focused on a fictional character, here is a note for actual day-to-day practice: different people use different labels in regards to disability, and my labels aren’t necessarily the ones another disabled person will use. However well you know someone, if they identify as disabled, don’t challenge them. They know who they are and what they are talking about.*

Again, this is simplifying a far more complex issue. The disabled experience is characterised by living in a society that prioritises the able-bodies and neurotypical. Just two distinct flavours it tends to come in are: 1, ‘Disabled people are inherently inferior’, in which able-bodied people basically decide that anything short of conforming to the physical and neurological standard they have set is grounds to decide that you are not worthy of life, respect, or dignity. 2, ‘Disabled people are my inspiration’, in which the idea of being disabled is so repugnant and tragic to the able-bodied/neurotypical that seeing a disabled person carry on and live their life anyway means that person must be ‘so strong’ and ‘brave’ when all they did today was buy milk. This second flavour, while seemingly positive, finds disabled people inspirational because the disabled existence (whatever that means) is seen as burdensome, and ‘worse than death’. It is also objectifying. 

What happened in this chapter with Hazel, to me, seems to be a mixture of the two. First, let us get down the facts we know:

As a result of the cancer Hazel is currently in remission from, she has difficulty breathing – which is shown visibly with the apparatus she carries around – and she has chronic fatigue. Not only that, but she also has depression.

These conditions weaken her physically and – as acknowledged many times in chapter 2 – can make her vulnerable. That is no surprise: in the US, disability is an intersection that can make a woman or girl three times more likely of being assaulted. Highlighting her vulnerability in comparison to Augustus, who could take advantage of that, is disturbing enough.

She considers herself, as a result of her illness, a burden on her parents (who in turn are only defined by the functions they provide as caregivers). This is damaging considering society labels disabled and neurodivergent people as burdens by default.

At this moment in time, in chapter 3, she was reading her book at the mall when she is disturbed by a little girl asking her ‘what’s in your nose?’, referring to the cannula she uses to breathe. While yes, Hazel seemed to be fine with the interaction in which she acted as a teachable moment, you can typically guarantee that most disabled people won’t be. We’re busy.

Ableism doesn’t just exist as abled people denying disabled people access and support. It can also exist in moments of entitlement like this where abled people decide that now is the time they’re going to ask a disabled person they don’t know about their origin story, now is when they’re going to waste a disabled person’s time and energy to get information they’re not entitled to, now is when they are demanding an education from someone who is not even getting paid for it. It’s objectification to treat people like a means to your own ends. If this idea doesn’t make sense to you, compare it to what typically happens when a cis person finds out that someone is trans: regardless of how well they know them, they end up asking about genitals and surgical procedures. Just as it’s cis entitlement to demand such personal information from a trans stranger, it’s abled entitlement to demand such personal information from a disabled stranger.

And this is the problem about this scene: as a disabled main character, the worry here is that her experience is being treated as the quintessential experience. Yes, Hazel calls herself a ‘professional sick person’ and throws other teens like herself under the bus if they don’t suffer to her standard, but Jawn is setting her up as the representative of all disabled teenagers. By having her be perfectly accommodating in such situations as this one, in which she is being called upon by a child to sate her curiosity regarding her disability while the girl’s mother fails to teach her daughter that disabled people don’t exist as teachable moments or Disabled Google, my concern is that Jawn is setting up an expectation of his readers to treat the disabled people they meet as Disabled Google as well. My concern is that readers will see her accommodations and attitudes as a disabled person and expect every disabled person to be such an inspiration.

We have better things to do than explain to an abled person how and why we’re disabled just because they asked. We have better uses for our energy and for our time than educating anyone who asks or giving strangers our origin stories.

The blog ‘Literary Starbucks’, which combines my two favourite things, is releasing a book August 23rd. Delight as your favourite literary authors and characters order coffee and frustrate the barista. It’s available for pre-order online and wherever good books are sold.

Go here to call dibs on your copy today! Visit @literarystarbucks to see what the fuss is all about!

However, considering the release of the deeply disturbing film ‘Me Before You’ and the commencing of all the Superhumans ‘Yes I Can’ Rio 2016 Paralympics adverts, this discussion clearly needs to be had.

Agree? Disagree? Have a better series in mind? Share your thoughts.

Now that I’ve had a three day weekend languishing in boxes and bags and I’ve rested, I’ll be working on the last of the Chapter 3 summaries. Hopefully, I will have the next one up by the weekend.

Other Thoughts:

In-Universe Book - Max Mayhem

As we know so far, this book series was introduced back in chapter 2, when Hazel insisted that Augustus read her Capital G Great Book ‘An Imperial Affliction’ and in return he decided that she should read the first book in a series adapted from his favourite video game. Because I guess that’s the sort of books boys typically like? (Which I don’t understand: For one thing, one of my brothers just doesn’t read for pleasure, and even he has read J. R. R. Tolkein’s ‘The Hobbit’.)

This is, so far, what we know about it:

The book itself is The Price of Dawn, which stars the eponymous Max Mayhem (whose mother should have plainly realised he was going to grow up to be a main character).

The book is violent, with a kill-count that apparently rivals any one book of GRRM’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’: while Max Mayhem levels a kill at least once per page by Hazel’s estimation, George at least made time for backstory and gorgeous world-building.

We know it is utterly deplete of adjectives. Apparently. I know King always advises to kill your adverbs as quickly as your darlings, but a book written entirely without adjectives sounds like a feat for a battle-stormer. ‘Scarred’, ‘bloody’, ‘angered’, ‘eviscerated’ – these are all adjectives.

(Yes, I’m aware this is probably an exaggeration, but considering Hazel seems to tout herself as an expert on everything in this universe, colour me as only playing along sarcastically.)

Max Mayhem is apparently the protagonist, some sort of Special Forces soldier-type on a mission to thwart… something. Green isn’t entirely clear, but we can be assured that it is apparently worth remembering.

Clearly, it’s supposed to play the anti-thesis to the other in-universe novel, An Imperial Affliction. The Price of Dawn is a commercialized novelization of a video game (which would categorise it as ‘low culture’) likely kept near the graphic novels in the Barnes and Noble or something. The Assassin’s Creed novel series would be just one example; my other brother has a whole bookshelf of these types of books sat right alongside his so far complete collection of A Song of Ice and Fire. An Imperial Afflicition is classified as a Capital-G Great Book, sold on obscure cult rumour more than good PR and social media (snrk snrk), which would classify it as ‘modern literature’ and probably only available to buy on Amazon when it isn’t in book shops as part of a collective sale effort to get rid of all the other obscure, hard to move titles in time for Summer. The only real world example of this would be the one I’ve mentioned once or twice, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, an obscure-ish cult hit I only learned about from TV Tropes before receiving it for Christmas in 2012 and reading it three times before stopping. I will save the comparisons there for the next chapter, when I imagine I’ll save a spot in the summaries to talk about it.

More to the point, I cannot see how I’d be wrong to believe that this book is, in actuality, representative of Augustus himself. I suppose I’d only be wrong to believe this if Green decided that this symbolism was too transparent and obvious to own up to. Then again, I’m not an English Literature student by trade. What do I know?

That being said, my deciding to talk about this book rather than the developing Romance was a good idea; while I originally thought that Augustus’s relatively minute presence meant that nothing had changed in that department, in reality Hazel’s new-found love for commercial novelizations of video games she never plays would be representative of her new-found desire for the bad boy Augustus Waters. He’s supposed to be someone she’d never typically choose for herself, a ‘typical’, conniving boy whose only commonality with Miss Lancaster is his cancer history and his penchant for pretentious phrasing and drawn-out speeches (which I’ve said enough about how weird that is). That she went out and bought more of the series… is this supposed to show her yearning for more contact with the boy, you know, without voicing her yearning for more contact with the boy and making her sound desperate or something?

Mark Z. Danielewski, author of the oft-mentioned ‘House of Leaves’, explains why he won’t be attending a book tour date in North Carolina, and why his decision to boycott the Tar Heel State in light of the passing of the aggressively regressive HB2 matters.

Other Characters:

Kaitlyn: 

As far as I can tell, Kaitlyn has very little (if anything) that could amount to even a two-dimensional character. She has a first name and a few character traits, but from her first appearing chapter, she has no expressed goal that influences her actions or that will impact the storyline. Her being a social butterfly pressured for time has a merely circumstantial impact on Chapter 3 – that impact that is only felt by her screen time. She walks in as evidence of her existence, and walks out the moment she’s expended just enough lines to keep the typical reader satisfied. She’s essentially a prop kept backstage, filed under ‘B’ for ‘Busy high schooler with fake accent and closed-toe shoes’. She’s less a victim of circumstance than a tool for it.

What character traits does she have, then? So far, we know that…

She has anxiety regarding her second toes, which Hazel refers to/diagnoses as ‘toe-specific dysmorphia’. To this, there is nothing much to add other than that it is often treated as an off-shoot/often comorbid feature of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

She puts on a vaguely ‘British’ accent, and has everyone believe that she’s a ‘sophisticated 25 year old British socialite stuck in the body of a sixteen-year-old from Indianapolis’.

She wears shades indoors.

The second quality needs its own paragraph, so I will focus on the first one now.

Let’s talk about the British. To paraphrase HBO’s Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, his role as a White British actor in New York seems to fall into the category of ‘playing the Caucasian foreigner’. Other to remind Americans about a Revolution and the time crates of tea were dumped into the bay, Britons tend to exist to Americans as walking stereotypes of a culture that has been romanticised (even exotified) to such a ridiculous degree that Americans are only 100% anti-Britain on the 4th of July (which is ironically the only date in the American calendar expressed in British dating terms).

As the ‘Caucasian foreigner’ – and I say this recognising that while we have innumerable Britons of Colour, this trope tends to solely apply to the Anglo/Celt of us – we’re generally cast as the ‘right kind of foreigner’, with an idealised, assumed monolithic accent ready to be fetishized; an assumed culture of elitism and ancient history that Americans seem to strive for; while still being White enough that the presumed majority White audience will always be capable of empathy. As explained in an earlier ask, this social context means we’re perfect for two states: the Insta-Villain characterising the antithesis of everything America holds dear, or the Friendly Foreigner. The latter comes in two flavours: token friend, or the exotified Charming Sex Poppet. For the Brit and famous, whichever one they fall into depends on the gender: for famous British women, the category is almost always Charming Sex Poppet; for British men, it can fall either way depending on the eye of the beholder.

All this being said, Kaitlyn is not British. She just seems to be pointedly taking advantage of an outdated, rather xenophobic trope. She uses a fake accent based on the assumed monolithic ‘British’ accent, wears sunglasses indoors (a stereotype associated with Central Londoners, and not in a kind way), and uses vaguely British expressions in order to cast the illusion of being the token foreigner. Being a British person who is aware of the advantage I could take of this trope if I was ever Stateside and careless, I have to consider this a greater sin than if he’d actually given Hazel an ex-patriot for a bestie. It’s lazy: ‘she should be British… but fake British! There! Now I don’t have to do research for something when I’m going to ignore it anyway! Now no one has an excuse to criticise me!’ Instead, he’s facing criticism from me for not actually giving enough of a shit to take the time.

What’s pointedly worse than that sin is the way in which it was delivered. She’s not ‘pseudo-British’, she’s ‘a 25 year old British socialite stuck in the body of a sixteen-year-old from Indianapolis’. The use of this phrase strikes me as nothing less than deliberate. This metaphor is so infused with the trans experience – or, the cis-washed, entirely incorrect understanding of the trans experience – that its very mention brings transness to mind. In fact, if Green messaged me tomorrow to say that it wasn’t intentional, I simply would not believe him; if anything, the association of trans people with this phrase has only grown since the book’s publication as trans people and our issues have been thrown more and more into the limelight. Yes, it may help you understand in basic terms the intricacy of transness, but its very use does the one thing it shouldn’t: invalidate trans people. It’s a perfect excuse to say ‘well, she’s really a boy’, and that’s how trans people’s (particularly trans women’s) unemployment, assault, murder, and humiliating theft of basic rights are justified. That’s right: even though I spouted enough about this in the ask reply and the earlier post, I refuse to let this pandering shit go.

In the end, what does this mean? It means that Green has somehow been able to cast the illusion of diversity in his cast. With nothing more than a few ‘well-chosen’ words, he’s given us a character that pricks the parts in our minds that associate her with ‘British’ and ‘trans’, all without introducing an LGBTQIA+ character of any stretch. Even worse, she plays the role of a token despite being white, cis, straight, and able-bodied. It’s infuriating enough to wish that he’d actually committed the cardinal sin of gay-baiting.

Remember that it’s possible to make your dreams a reality, and live for the benefit of all.

Other Characters:

Mrs Lancaster:

This is the first summary dedicated to just one of the Lancaster parents, so I’m afraid this is going to be a case of asking more questions than I will realistically be able to answer at this point.

The first thing that strikes me about Mrs Lancaster is that she is a character defined by the functions she performs. In chapter 1, she functioned as a chaperon, a carer, and the kick in the ass Hazel apparently needed to attend Support Group. In chapter 2, she was only present in flashback form, in which she acted primarily as a carer to Hazel. “But she’s her mother; caring is what parents do”. That is true, but even the most dedicated parent is a person outside of parenting. In this chapter, we see that she acts not only as chaperon, but as bill payer, as the reader of the paperwork. She does all these things for Hazel, as any parent would, but we don’t actually know much about her as a person.

For one thing, we don’t actually know her name. That is, if her first name has been mentioned in the last three chapters, I genuinely do not remember it. I have this nagging feeling that it might be ‘Linda’, but then ‘Linda’ is a name I associate quite strongly with mother characters in YA fictions for no discernible reason (unless the reason is because my first boyfriend’s mother was named Lynda, but that’s ancient history). To me, that says a lot: for a relatively young person, I tend to judge parent characters – especially when written from the point of view of their child – by whether or not their first name is known or given. It tends to indicate whether the kid sees their parents as people as well as functional Mummy and/or Daddy, that they acknowledge that their parent(s) had a life before they became a parent. If Hazel really hasn’t given her mother’s first name, it just shows that she as well as the author doesn’t value Mrs Lancaster outside of her Motherly Duties.

Outside of her motherly duties, what we do know is that she has a deep and abiding love of festivities. If Green is right in his portrayal, and a holiday is marked on the calendar, then Mrs Lancaster has probably got a function of some sort planned on that day. As to whether that seems in character for her, I suppose it is in the sense that her festive fancy can be interpreted as her grabbing time while it’s precious and quite literally celebrating every moment she has with her daughter while she has the chance. Which is admirable; when you know your time with someone is limited, it is only good to leave nothing undone, and leave nothing unsaid. There is, however, a nasty side to this: like most White Americans, her manner of celebrating Columbus Day seems to go without mention of what an atrocity it truly was – a lack of awareness that seems to have passed to her claiming-to-be-socially-conscious daughter. It doesn’t set a good example.

Speaking of, how extensive is her festival fancy, anyway? Does she, for example, celebrate LGBTQIA+ holidays as an ally? Spirit Day? Pride? Trans Day of Remembrance? Does she do anything for Black History Month, like learning the history and contributions of Black Americans? Only read books by black authors? Only watch films and TV shows starring black actors, made by black directors? What about days and weeks of awareness marked by ribbons? For AIDs, the various cancers marked with ribbons, child victims of abuse, survivors? Is she does, does she do so as an ally, or just as a reason to put on her party shoes?