in which Judy Blume and Beverley Clearly are bitch slapped, then make out

In my period of chilling, I have begun to make my way through the "to read" pile of books. I have a ridiculous pile of books as since I got the iPad I have not been turning to paper pages for reading. At the top of my "to read" pile is a teen/young adult novel given to me by my niece as a must-read. It's one of her favorite books, by her favorite author, and it's totally a big deal. It's all the rage. It's the best book ever.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is co-authored by John Green, one of the Vlog Brothers, and whose brother Hank named his most recent album after my aforementioned niece.

She is very cool.

So, I'm about one-third of the way through the book. I'm enjoying it. I'm not losing my shit over it like everyone else, but still, it's very entertaining.

This is a teen novel. The characters, like my niece, are sophomores/juniors in high school. I am struck, deeply, by two aspects of this book. It is NOT the teen literature I grew up on.

(1) There is a lot of cursing and sex talk in this book. Dicks, girls, sex, jerking off—lots of jerking off references. Lots of copulation discussion, but no actual sex (so far). Well, "lots" by comparison. Even Margaret didn't ask God about what might go into her vagina just what started coming out of it. Even in college we didn't talk about masturbating. And guys would still pretend that they didn't. As if. (Granted, I was excluded from some of the "mutual" recreations in college and the fraternity as the guys thought I wouldn't be able to deal with it because it seemed a bit gay. That's how far in the closet I was.) But I digress. My point is, teen novels when I was a teenager did not have a lot of sex references. Much less, the casual coming-of-age and part-of-life tone included here. Anything we saw in the early 80s was more akin to a Very Special Episode. Sort of like mental patients have "episodes."

And then I think, this book was given to me by my niece. She's awesome, but like her father, I want to cover her in a burka and send her to a convent for boarding school. In my mind she's still the little wholesome Cindy Lou Who and I want to play offensive lineman to block her from anything more scandalous than Hello Kitty, even though she sometimes draws Hello Kitty with a rifle on the back of a shooting target.  And I'm the Hardcastle child who has friends who refer to their "dungeon" or "playroom" as casually as other people say "home office." Who knew I could be so conservative?

(2) Of the five main characters, sophomores or juniors in high school mind you, in this insanely popular book (debuted at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list for children’s chapter books)—of the five main characters, two of them are gay. Like really gay. And it is no big deal. Holy frakking shit. I was shoved so far into the closet in high school I was in goddamn Narnia. My life in an ultra-conservative, southern, all-boy prep school could only lightly be referred to as "angsty." I'm amazed that my nephew-in-law could come out last fall, at 16. Good for him. I am both jaded and jealous.

So far, these observations notwithstanding, it's a cool book, and an interesting story, and the collaboration is unique and works well.

From the Wikipedia page: "In designing the plot for the book, the two authors decided to split it evenly in half. This also held true for the main characters' names, with Levithan choosing the given name and Green the surname. The only plot they decided on together was the fact that the two characters would meet at some point in the novel and that their meeting would have a tremendous effect on their lives. After this decision, they separately wrote the first three chapters for their half and then shared them with each other. After sharing, they then "knew immediately it was going to work", as stated by Levithan."

My favorite line so far is from the first page: Tiny Cooper is not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe that he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay and the also the world's gayest person who is really, really large.

Holden Cauffield has nothing on Will Grayson. Either of them.

Update:  Okay, it seems I wrote this post just before I turned the page to the awesome part.  Now I can't put it down.  The two meeting chapters alone are worth the fans' devotion.  Shiny.

Update:  Goddamn teen novel has gone and made me cry.  It's like the nosey TSA has rummaged through my emotional baggage.

Update: Couldn't put the damn awesome thing down and stayed up to 1:30 this morning finishing it. I now happily join the ranks of those, who at one point or another, lost their shit over this book.  I am glad I put down the iPad and starting reading books again.