John Green Knows a True Hollywood Ending is Complicated
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I'm Winna Liu. I write the game Connections, one of the puzzles from New York Times games. And I love horror movies. I love my dog. And I love trying to trick you. I'm Tracy Bennett. I get to pick the wordle word every day, which is not as easy as it sounds. The fun fact about me is that I am descended from a witch who was put on trial in Salem. New York Times games are made by people, like the ones you just heard from. Go to nytimes.com slash games to start playing today.
I'm MJ Franklin, and this is The Book Review from The New York Times. Today, we have two interviews for you. I recently sat down with the best-selling author John Green. He's known for his young adult novels, but now he is out with his first work of fiction for adults. I'm excited to share our wide-ranging conversation about writing, fame, and the books that made an impression on him when he was young. That's coming up in a bit. First, Dwight Gardner is a longtime staff book critic at The New York Times. Recently, he reviewed Marlon James' new novel, The Disappearers, and spoiler alert, he loved it. He called it, quote, a masterpiece, the novel of the decade and possibly of the century thus far. That's high praise from a tried and true critic.
So today, I wanted to bring Dwight into the studio and peek behind the curtain a little bit. I wanted to chat with him about what this book is, what makes it so good, and more broadly, what's it like to write criticism today? Dwight, thank you for joining us. It's great to see you, MJ. Nice to see you too. And wow, this review, it is superlative in so many ways. I think it's the most positive review of yours I've seen. New York Magazine has this great books newsletter called Book Gossip, which pointed out that this review seems to have concretely moved the needle in terms of book sales and cultural impact in ways that few reviews do anymore. So it's a prelude in that way. You say the book is a banger, but so is this review.
How are you feeling? Well,
thank you, MJ. I appreciate that.
What does Dwight Garner say makes Marlon James’s *The Disappearers* a masterpiece?
You know, it's the kind of review that a critic, at least me, only gets to write once in a career. I mean, I've never written a review like that. But then again, I haven't been able to review a book like this, you know? And so you have all these... It's a long book. And I went back and reread the previous book. So, you know, that's about 1200 pages right there. So it took a long time to read. And then I sort of paced around the room for a couple of days because I sort of was scared to write what I felt like writing for two reasons. One, you're sort of walking on a wire a little bit. And I was worried, too, about sort of adding pressure to Marlon James. It's got to be harder to write with that sort of bearing down on you.
And it's probably some literary envy that comes with having things like that said about you. But in the end, I don't write for writers. I write for readers. And this is just one of the rare reading experiences of my life. And I just felt like it was time to come out and say it.
Yeah, you said you only get to write one of these types of reviews in your
career. What do you mean by that? Well, I suppose you could have two or three. I mean, I think Pauline Kael probably did. But I've just, you know, I've liked a lot of books. I'm not a hater. I tend to look for things to like in a book. So, you know, I like to read. But I haven't had an experience like this before, reading a novel that I was assigned to review for The New York Times. And on some level, I forget who said it. It may have been Nabokov. In the end, you go by the prickle on the back of the neck. This is one of those books that it starts slowly. You know, a lot of people are going to put this away after 75 pages, I fear their loss. And, you know, there are some times in the book where you feel like it's starting to slacken a little bit.
And then suddenly you can't believe that you're back in this maelstrom again as a reader. And then this happens again and again and again, and it keeps ratcheting up. And it's just one of those experiences that I'm just glad that I was able to read that book.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:03
2
What does Dwight Garner say makes Marlon James’s *The Disappearers* a masterpiece?
2:03–7:24
3
How did Dwight decide to write a review that could change a book’s cultural impact?
7:24–11:11
4
Why did Dwight feel he could only write one review like this in his career?
11:11–21:17
5
What is *Hollywood, Ending* about and why did John Green add a comma to the title?
21:17–36:21
6
How do Kai and Juniper’s stories explore fame, trauma, and love in the Hollywood machine?
36:21–52:12
7
Why did John Green choose Andy Warhol as a central figure in his new novel?
52:12–59:06
Speakers
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