85. LOOKING for ALASKA

John Green 2005

A young adult book that old adults should also read, if only to remind ourselves of all the challenges we faced as teenagers, or if so lucky, to open our minds that these challenges do exist for a lot of teenagers. Sixteen year old Miles "Pudge" Halter, a collector of famous people's last words, with no friends and 'no life' while living in Florida, is in search of the "great Perhaps" so he decides to attend Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama. He discovers the teenage life away from home, experiences a lot of firsts (some good, some bad, some you know what) with classmates and new friends Chip "Colonel" Martin, Takumi Hikohito, his first girlfriend, Lara Buterskaya and enthralling and beguiling Alaska Young. The book is smartly divided into two parts: Before and After. The 'what' is the lesson.

'The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party. To say that I had low expectations would be to underestimate the matter dramatically.'(opening lines)

'"So this guy," I said, standing in the doorway of the living room. "Francois Rabelais. He was this poet. And his last words were 'I go to seek a Great Perhaps.' That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps."(5)

'The Colonel explained to me that 1. this was Alaska's room, and that 2. she had a single room because the girl who was supposed to be her roommate got kicked out at the end of last year, and that 3. Alaska had cigarettes, although the Colonel neglected to ask whether 4. I smoked, which 5. I didn't.(14)

"He'-- that's Simon Bolivar--'was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. "Damn it," he sighed. "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!"'(18)

"I've maybe read a third of 'em. But I'm going to read them all. I call it my Life's Library. Every summer since I was little, I've gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read. But there is so much to do: cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on. I'll have more time for reading when I'm old and boring."(20)

'You can say a lot of bad things about Alabama, but you can't say that Alabamans as a people are unduly afraid of deep fryers. In that first week at the Creek, the cafeteria served fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, and fried okra, which marked my first foray into the delicacy that is the fried vegetable. I half expected them to fry the iceberg lettuce. But nothing matched the bufriedo,... deep-fried bean burrito, the bufriedo proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that frying always improves a food.(22)

"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining the future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."(54)

'Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war.'(56)

'Alaska is famous for pranking. I mean, last year, we put a Volkswagen Beetle in the library. So if they have a reason to try and one-up her, they'll try. And that's pretty ingenious, to divert water from the gutter to her room. I mean, I don't want to admire it...'(72)

'But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.'(88)

'A pre-prank?... "A prank designed to lull the administration into a false sense of security," the Colonel answered, annoyed by the distraction. " After the pre-prank, the Eagle will think the junior class has done its prank and won't be waiting for it when it actually comes."(98)

'"How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" to a margin note written in her loop-heavy cursive: Straight & Fast.'(155)

"Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I don't want us to forget...'(158)

'... and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.'(218)

'When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and falling. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.'(220)

Speak, Penguin group edition
221 pages
Book borrowed from the library