And then in the days after 9/11, I was alone in my apartment in Chicago watching the commercial-free news 24 hours a day. IРІР‚в„ўd been working on the book with very limited success for about 18 months before September 11, 2001. How did you come up with the bookРІР‚в„ўs unusual structure?Р”Р„. From the very beginning, I wrote the book for high-school students. Did you write it with a specific audience in mind?Р”Р„. I started writing it just a few months after I left the hospital. It was in the hospital that I started to think about writing a story in which teenagers experience loss and a consuming guilt that cannot be easily assuaged. After I graduated from college, I worked for a while at a childrenРІР‚в„ўs hospital, where I encountered the same problem in stark, awful reality. So in some ways, that was the catalyst for the novel. In college, when I started to study religion, that was the question that interested me most. In the study of religion, there is this word theodicy, which refers to the question of why a God who is both loving and all powerful would allow there to be such unequal suffering in the world. The facts, I can assure you, were ignored. Generally, the book is probably more autobiographical than I usually acknowledge. And the physical setting of Alaska is very, very similar to the physical place I attended boarding school. Like Miles, I grew up in Florida and attended a boarding school in Alabama. I have always danced around this question, and I think IРІР‚в„ўm going to continue dancing around it now. In that vein, just how autobiographical is Looking for Alaska?Р”Р„. It took years before I was able to let go of the facts and focus on writing a true novel. When I first started writing the book, I kept thinking I ought to include things that happened because they had happened. One of the challenges in writing Alaska was learning not to overvalue facts.

To paraphrase William Faulkner, I am much more interested in the truth than in the facts. Fiction, on the other hand, is an attempt to reveal the truth by ignoring facts. The other big difference, I would argue, is that lies are attempts to hide the truth by willfully denying facts. Before a reader has even opened the book, the writer has acknowledged that this is a story, and that the story does not faithfully recount events that actually occurred. Like, if I am lying to you about who stole the cookie from the cookie jar, I am not going to preface it by saying, РІР‚СљWhile I am about to convince you that John Doe stole the cookie from the cookie jar, the cookie was actually stolen by me.РІР‚Сњ But when you write fiction, as with Looking for Alaska, it says РІР‚Сљa novelРІР‚Сњ right on the cover. To begin with, when you tell a lie, you generally do not admit upfront that itРІР‚в„ўs a lie. WhatРІР‚в„ўs the difference between writing fiction and lying?Р”Р„. John Green is the author of Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines.

An omnivorous reader, Alaska introduces him to a new set of last words - those of South American liberator SimР“С–n Bolivar - that pose an intriguing question, РІР‚СљHow will I ever get out of this labyrinth?РІР‚Сњ ItРІР‚в„ўs a question that takes on a deeper, more poignant resonance when an unthinkable tragedy invites Miles to examine the meanings of life. There he makes a new circle of friends: his roommate Chip, a scholarship student whom everyone calls РІР‚СљThe Colonel РІР‚Сњ Takumi, a slyly funny Japanese-American rapper and sweet-spirited, Romanian-born Lara, who has trouble pronouncing the letter РІР‚Сљi.РІР‚Сњ But most importantly he meets Alaska, a beautiful girl who РІР‚Сљhad eyes that predisposed you to supporting her every endeavor.РІР‚Сњ Miles quickly falls in love with this reckless, quirky, endlessly intriguing girl. Miles HalterРІР‚в„ўs is knowing the last words of a lot of different people-people like the author Rabelais, whose enigmatic last words РІР‚СљI go to seek a Great PerhapsРІР‚Сњ inspire the sixteen year-old to leave his family home in Florida and enroll in Culver Creek, a co-ed boarding school in Alabama. READERS GUIDE Questions and Topics for DiscussionР”В®verybody has a talent.

Looking for alaska by john green pdf