The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

It’s a passage, from my memory, in Shakespeare’s Julius Casear. That’s my version, straight out one of my lectures, or something. Hint: might be misquoted a bit.

The book was a big-time bestseller, ostensibly, I’m guessing, classed as a YA type novel, but I’m not sure of that. Looking for something else, I found the book on sale, at a “pulp” or paperback price of $2.99, so I opened it up and read the first few pages, then bought the digital copy.

    “That’s the thing about pain,” Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. “It demands to be felt.”

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green, page 103.

Obviously, I’m late to this party.

    “Don’t worry. Worry is useless. I worried anyway.”

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green, page 134.

    “What a slut time is. She screws everybody.”

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green, page 175.

There comes a point, forgive me, reminds me of Richard Dreyfus in a Tom Stoppard movie, Dreyfus playing the player in Hamlet, story in a story, dangerously close to meta-fiction.

In places, it was like the author was deliberately generating quotable quotes.

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green

It’s a quick read, and offers to push all the correct emotional buttons. For me, the first two hundred pages, first half of the book, were about black humor and snarky teens being even more sarcastic about debilitating circumstances. I was stuck wondering how a person could write a YA darkly noir novel that was funny, about cancer.

The Fault in Our Stars – John Green

The Fault in Our Stars

Another John Green attribution?

“Writing is something you do alone. It is a profession for introverts who want to tell a story but don’t want to make eye contact while doing it.”

That resonates with my internal writer.

#Books

About the author: Born and raised in a small town in East Texas, Kramer Wetzel spent years honing his craft in a trailer park in South Austin. He hates writing about himself in third person. More at KramerWetzel.com.

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