The Fault with The Fault in Our Stars

WordMaster

            When I set out to read John Green’s runaway bestselling YA novel The Fault in Our Stars last year, I fully expected to adore it. I wanted to adore it. Star-crossed romance? Female protagonist? Teen fiction that actually takes its audience seriously? Glowing critical reviews that included phrases like “heartbreaking”, “brutally honest” and “tough, touching valentine to the human spirit”? It sounded right up my alley, the kind of book I’d fall in love with in a heartbeat.

            For the first few pages, it seemed promising. I enjoyed narrator Hazel Grace Lancaster’s droll tone, her scathing indictment of the weekly support group she attends to appease her mother; it’s like something from J.D. Salinger or Chuck Palahnuik – wordy, clever and cynical, even malicious, but authentically so. As it turned out, though, that was the highlight of the novel. I first felt my spirits sink when Augustus Waters appeared on the scene and Hazel observed, without a hint of irony, that “He was hot.” Not “handsome” or even the slightly more-tolerable “cute”, but hot. What’s more, the description doesn’t go any more in-depth than that, so we have to just take for granted that Augustus is as breathtakingly attractive as Hazel claims. This was probably supposed to be endearing, a reminder that although she’s diagnosed with a terminal illness, Hazel is still a regular person just like you. But for me, it was off-putting and patronizing, a grown man’s lame attempt at impersonating a stereotypical teenage girl.

            Then came the cigarette “metaphor”, which I still can’t think about without rolling my eyes because it makes no freaking sense (a metaphor is a comparison; it’s basic English, dude). And Augustus’s habit of calling Hazel “Hazel Grace”. And Hazel’s favorite book, a made-up novel called An Imperial Affliction that ends in mid-sentence for vague, profound reasons. And the dialogue loaded with periodic all-caps and words like “existentially fraught free throws” that have no business being placed in consecutive order.  And the trip to Amsterdam that culminates with Hazel and Augustus kissing in the Anne Frank house to the applause of their fellow visitors, a moment that’s supposed to be romantic and triumphant but really just comes off as manipulative and insensitive. And the scene where Hazel helps vandalize the car of a girl she’s never talked to or even met because obviously, Monica must be a heartless bitch for dumping Isaac and it can’t possibly matter what her side of the story is. And the part when Peter Van Houten inexplicably shows up in Hazel’s car and we’re not supposed to find it creepy as hell because he reveals some tragic backstory that explains his asshole behavior, except it just makes him seem more pathetic than before and I don’t even care in the first place.

            All in all, it was a colossal disappointment. There were occasional moments that I found genuinely touching, like when Hazel cringes at the painfully insincere condolence messages left behind for a deceased cancer patient, or Augustus’s sweeping declaration of his love for Hazel (Titanic and Casablanca are two of my favorite movies ever, so I have nothing against grand romantic gestures), but those were far outnumbered by the times I had to resist shutting the book out of exasperation. Still, for a while, I put off writing about it. I’ve been trying my damnedest not to be one of those narrow-minded snobs who reflexively dismisses anything aimed at teenage girls, and it’s not like I consider myself superior or more discerning for defying popular opinion; if anything, I envy the novel’s fans, since there are few things as rewarding as literature that burrows into your soul and makes you feel like a somehow wiser, fuller person.

            Yet with the film adaptation out and the hype at full blast, I feel more out-of-touch than ever. The mere mention of John Green’s name or the sight of yet another glossy promotion image of Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort beaming and generally looking like the healthiest people ever is enough to send waves of irrational anger through me. It’s not just the little things that bother me either, the things so trivial and easy to make fun of that it’s not worth bothering – the cigarette “metaphor”, the overly flowery language, which wouldn’t sound natural coming out of a college professor’s mouth, let alone a teenager’s. It’s the constant refrain that if (fictional) kids with cancer don’t make you cry, then you must be a callous robot, the implication that I’m supposed to be grateful for properties like The Fault in Our Stars because they’re explicitly marketed toward women.

            Why should I be, though? Why should I have to settle for this maudlin wish-fulfillment? Because ultimately, that’s what The Fault in Our Stars is: a novel not about cancer, but about two smart, attractive teenagers who fall head-over-heels for each other and spend a few hundred pages exchanging alternately sarcastic and wistful banter and gushing about how epic and timeless their love is. The whole thing is just so unbearably desperate and manufactured, so perfect, suspiciously devoid of conflict or any real suffering, despite its subject matter. Every so often, Hazel and Augustus disagree with each other, but they never get into full-blown arguments; there’s no tension in their relationship, no doubt that they belong together forever.

            To be sure, wish-fulfillment has its place in popular culture; if guys get to have Superman, James Bond and Indiana Jones, then women are more than welcome to Wonder Woman and Katniss Everdeen. But frankly, I’m tired of reading about girls like Hazel – invariably white and heterosexual; intelligent, but hardly immune from the charms of hunky, sensitive boys; introverted, but capable of navigating social situations with no obvious discomfort and always ready with a smart-alecky quip at opportune moments – and pretending to find catharsis in them. They’re what NPR writer Linda Holmes shrewdly calls cookie-cutter nonconformists: rebels in the most superficial sense. Unconventional yet relatable, unique yet universal, representative of outsiders yet also “normal” people, they exist just on the margins, their struggles nothing that mainstream audiences would find alienating or unfamiliar. They’re allowed to be loners, but never lonely; outspoken, but never subversive; troubled, but never, ever unsympathetic.

            If Hazel is America’s Sweetheart/BFF, a thoughtful, charismatic, effortlessly nice Natalie Portman lookalike, then Augustus is America’s Heartthrob, the kind of guy that all women are supposed to swoon over and daydream about – Prince Charming meets James Dean meets Edward Cullen. On the one hand, he’s brooding, idealistic and chivalrous, eager to solicit flattering remarks and a “goofy” smile, but at the same time, he’s a former athlete who’s obsessed with violent video games and action movies, as though Green needed to reassure us of his testosterone credentials. He may be a gentleman, but he’s still a Real Man; tellingly, Elgort got his role in part because he “towers over [Woodley]”, making her “automatically seem small [and] vulnerable”, because the traditional gender dynamics of heteronormative relationships must be preserved at all costs. I spent the vast majority of the book fantasizing about punching Augustus in the face.

            Call me greedy, but I expect more from my coming-of-age stories. I don’t want someone who speaks for teenage girls everywhere, whose experiences fit comfortably into some nostalgic, exuberant ideal of adolescence. I don’t want a feel-good, inspirational tale informing me that everyone’s special and young people deserve to be taken seriously and you should never stop believing in dreams and true love and happiness (besides, if I wanted earnest, I’d read Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles, another recent YA novel that explores issues of death and growing up but with so much more nuance and poignancy). I don’t want Woodley and Elgort, the two blandest, most generically attractive actors ever.

I want young Winona Ryder’s withering glare and Christian Slater’s pretentious smirk (in a perfect world, this would’ve been a mini Heathers reunion, the leads tearing into Green’s dialogue with delicious tongue-in-cheek acidity). I want something dark, daring, incisive, messy and weird. I want fiction about young women who are true outcasts: women who aren’t white, suburban, conventionally good-looking and straight; who are bullied or deliberately ostracized; whose character development doesn’t hinge on – or even necessarily involve – sex or romance; who have actual, complex relationships with other women; whose flaws and deviances cause them real distress and can’t be cured by a Manic Pixie Dream Boy.

Enough with fantasy. Give me life.