by Green, John
But the main point is already visible in this case: because D can vary, this single formula is capable of specifying a whole family of functions, each of which can be used to describe a different Colin-Katherine affair. So all Colin needs to do now is add more and more variables (more ingredients along the lines of D) to this formula so that the family of functions it encompasses is bigger and more complicated, and therefore has a hope of encapsulating the complex and challenging world of Katherine-dumpings, which is what Colin eventually realizes thanks to Lindsey’s insight.
So that’s the story of Colin Singleton and his Eureka moment and the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability. I should briefly point out that although no reasonable adult mathematician (at least not one with a soul) would seriously suggest that you can predict romance with a single formula, there actually has been some recent work that points in this direction. To be specific, psychologist John Gottman (and longtime head of the University of Washington’s “Love Lab”) and a group of coauthors, including the mathematician James Murray, have published a book entitled The Mathematics of Marriage that purports to use math to predict whether marriages will break up. The basic philosophy is, in its outline, not unlike Colin’s Theorem, but the math that goes into it is far more sophisticated, and the claimed outcome is far more modest (these people aren’t pretending that they can predict every divorce, just that they can make some educated guesses86).87
There’s one last thing I’d like to mention: notwithstanding John’s notorious tendency to cannibalize his friends’ lives for literary material, and notwithstanding the fact that I was somewhat accelerated in school as a kid, Colin’s character was in no way inspired by me. For one thing, I’ve only ever kissed two girls named Katherine. Interestingly, though, throughout my whole career as a pathological Dumper, the Katherines were the only two women who ever dumped me. Strange. It almost makes me wonder if there’s a formula out there somewhere . . .
—Daniel Biss
Assistant Professor, University of Chicago, and Research Fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute
85Yeah, I know, that’s a lot to keep in your head all at once. Look, John told you that Colin was a prodigy.
86 Right, big deal—I can also make educated guesses about whether my friends’ relationships will last. I guess the point here is that they were able to mathematically justify the educated-guessing process.
87This work is too technical for me to summarize here (for example, I don’t understand a word of it), but if you want to read about it, you can either try the colossal and impenetrable book The Mathematics of Marriage by Gottman, Murray, Swanson, Tyson, and (yet another) Swanson, or else the much more manageable and fun online review and summary by Jordan Ellenberg, available at http://slate.msn.com/id/2081484/.
(acknowledgments)
1. My incomparable editor and friend, Julie Strauss-Gabel, who worked on this book when she was, literally, in labor. I rely so much on Julie’s editing that—this is a true story—I once made her edit an e-mail I wrote the woman with whom I was then “just friends” and with whom I am now “living in holy matrimony.” Which reminds me . . .
2. Sarah. (See dedication.)
3. My mentor and collaborator and alter ego and BFF Ilene Cooper, who is responsible for most of the good things that have ever happened to me. And also, come to think of it, helped me woo Acknowledgee #2.
4. My dear friend Daniel Biss, who fortunately for me is one of the best mathematicians in America—and also one of the best teachers on the subject. I could never have imagined this book without Daniel, let alone written it.
5. My family—Mike, Sydney, and Hank Green.
6. Sarah Shumway, my very talented in loco editoris at Dutton. Also everyone else at Dutton, particularly Margaret “Double Letters” Woollatt.
7. My man in the United Arab Emirates, Hassan al-Rawas, who has been providing me with Arabic translations and his wonderful friendship for many years now.
8. Adrian Loudermilk.
9. Bill Ott, 10. Lindsay Robertson, 11. Shannon James and Sam Hallgren, 12. David Levithan and Holly Black, 13. Jessica Tuchinsky, 14. Bryan Doerries, 15. Levin O’Connor and Randy Riggs, 16. Rosemary Sandberg, 17. Booklist, 18. All librarians everywhere, and of course . . .
19. The Katherines. I wish I could name them all, but (a) I lack the space, and (b) I fear the libel suits.
Turn the page
for a Q & A with
JOHN
GREEN
Q & A with JOHN GREEN
Were you really dumped 53 times before you got married?
The short answer is yes. But in the interest of full disclosure, there are a couple of caveats to that statistic:
1. I have a rather narrow definition of getting dumped, which is this: Say you kiss someone once. Now, say you want to kiss them again, but they won’t let you, on account of how you’re just a great friend and she wouldn’t want to mess that up, or she’s not interested in a relationship right now, or she’s decided to pursue a relationship with a semi-professional bodybuilder, or she’s worried that if she starts making out with you a lot she won’t have time for the school newspaper, or she thinks you’re cute and everything but let’s be honest you would be disastrous for her social status, or whatever. If any of those things happen (and believe me, they have), you’ve been dumped.
2. There is widespread controversy over whether or not my wife (#53) technically dumped me. Sarah and I went out on two dates several years ago, after which she announced that she “wasn’t looking for a relationship right now.” And then we didn’t go on a date for about eight months, which, as far as I’m concerned, constitutes dumping regardless of the fact that we later ended up getting married.
This book has a fancy new cover designed by one of your readers. How do you feel about that?
I love the cover so much, and I am so grateful and astonished to have such passionate and creative readers. My publisher was kind enough to hand the cover-making reins over to readers of Katherines, who came up with hundreds of really excellent designs, but the winner was a young woman named Sarah Turbin. Her design captures so much about the book—its nerdiness, its heart, and its love of footnotes.
Katherines was first published in 2006. Looking back on it now, how do you remember the writing and publication of it?
It was immensely fun to write. Colin can be a very annoying person, but I had such fondness for him, and I particularly loved Hassan—every minute that I spent with Hassan was such a pleasure, and I’ve often wished that I could write a whole book about him (and who knows, maybe I will someday). When I wrote this book, I was working for mental_floss magazine, researching gobs of trivia every day, and so it was a wonderful release to have a place to write about: for instance, how shower curtains are affected by vortexes.
Anagrams play a huge role in An Abundance of Katherines–why?
Well, anagrams say something about the malleability of language. We always think of language as an immovable object, as this set of codified and unbreakable rules. But when you consider that one can rearrange the letters in PRESBYTERIANS and spell BRITNEY SPEARS1, it reminds us that language (and the stories we tell with language) can be twisted and molded. Words are not static. Language shapes our memories, and it is also shaped by our memories.
How’s your anagramming?
Terrible. Whenever I play Words with Friends now, my friends who have read Katherines expect me to be some kind of Words with Friends genius, and I invariably fail to spell anything more impressive than “Zap,” while they are—presumably—constantly cheating. I also don’t speak any of the foreign languages that Colin speaks. Nor have I ever been good at math. I was no child prodigy, but like most people, in high school I did have to start grappling with the plain fact that I was not quite so special as I had originally imagined myself to be.
How do your high school experiences shape your writing?
I attended a small and wonderful boarding school in Alabama called I
ndian Springs School, and I’m certainly not above borrowing from my own high school experiences. I also think that my particular high school experience pushed me toward writing about 1. the South, and 2. smart kids, and 3. teenagers removed from direct parental control, and I also probably—4.—owe this whole numbered-list-inside-a sentence construction to high school, since I stole it from my friend Todd Cartee.
In high school, how did you spend your free time?
Mostly, I sat around with my friends and talked. I mean, we would play video games or watch TV or sneak out into the woods or play ultimate Frisbee, but all of these activities were just vehicles for talking.2 Whenever I’m asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you’re being told. Other than talking, I spent a lot of time getting dumped. As any dumpee can tell you, getting dumped is extraordinarily time-consuming.
What’s new with Daniel Biss?
Daniel Biss, the mathematician who wrote the formulae in An Abundance of Katherines and taught me to understand enough abstract mathematics to be able to write the book, was working happily as a professor of mathematics when this book came out. But then he discovered, of all things, politics, and in 2010, he became the only professional mathematician in the Illinois State House of Representatives. As of this writing, he is running for the state senate in Illinois, and I have no doubt that he’ll win. We need people who can actually do the math in positions of power in this country, and I’m very proud of Daniel’s success. And even though he is now an elected representative of the people of Illinois, he is generous enough to remain my personal Resident Mathematician.
What have you done since Katherines?
My newest book is called The Fault in Our Stars. It’s about love and loss and romantic epics and stuff. If I’m not mistaken, you can actually just turn the page and start reading it right now.
1 The whole Britney/Presbyterians thing fascinates me because “Britney” is such an odd spelling. (It is less common than either Brittany or Brittney.) This begs a question: Did Britney Spears’s parents choose to spell her name eccentrically because of its anagrammatic potential?
2 Example: I was on the ultimate Frisbee team at my high school, and I was of course the worst member of the team by a very wide margin, which is really saying something, because we were all pretty bad. And all I remember of playing ultimate Frisbee is running up and down a field, listening to my friends’ stories, and telling my own. I suppose that now and again I must have caught or thrown a Frisbee, but I only remember us telling each other these stories between heaving breaths as we ran back and forth across the field.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by John Green
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An excerpt from “Jack O’ Lantern” by Katrina Vandenberg in Atlas (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2004). Copyright © 2004 by Katrina Vandenberg. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. (www.milkweed.org)
eISBN : 978-0-525-47818-8
[1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Florida—Fiction. 3. Coming of age—Fiction. 4. Mystery and detective stories.]
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To Julie Strauss-Gabel, without whom none of this
could have become real
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
PART ONE - The Strings
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
PART TWO - The Grass
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14.
Chapter 15.
Chapter 16.
Chapter 17.
Chapter 18.
Chapter 19.
Chapter 20.
PART THREE - The Vessel
The First Hour
Hour Two
Hour Three
Hour Four
Hour Five
Hour Six
Hour Seven
Hour Eight
Hour Nine
Hour Ten
Hour Eleven
Hour Twelve
Hour Thirteen
Hour Fourteen
Hour Fifteen
Hour Sixteen
Hour Seventeen
Hour Eighteen
Hour Nineteen
Hour Twenty
Hour Twenty-one
Agloe
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Acknowledgements
And after, when we went outside to look at her finished lantern from the road, I said I liked the way her light shone through the face that flickered in the dark.
—“Jack O’Lantern,” Katrina Vandenberg from Atlas
People say friends don’t destroy one another
What do they know about friends?
—“Game Shows Touch our Lives,” The Mountain Goats
PROLOGUE
The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightning, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably ha
ppen to each of us. I could have seen it rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the queen of England or survived months at sea. But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.
Our subdivision, Jefferson Park, used to be a navy base. But then the navy didn’t need it anymore, so it returned the land to the citizens of Orlando, Florida, who decided to build a massive subdivision, because that’s what Florida does with land. My parents and Margo’s parents ended up moving next door to one another just after the first houses were built. Margo and I were two.
Before Jefferson Park was a Pleasantville, and before it was a navy base, it belonged to an actual Jefferson, this guy Dr. Jefferson Jefferson. Dr. Jefferson Jefferson has a school named after him in Orlando and also a large charitable foundation, but the fascinating and unbelievable-but-true thing about Dr. Jefferson Jefferson is that he was not a doctor of any kind. He was just an orange juice salesman named Jefferson Jefferson. When he became rich and powerful, he went to court, made “Jefferson” his middle name, and then changed his first name to “Dr.” Capital D. Lowercase r. Period.
So Margo and I were nine. Our parents were friends, so we would sometimes play together, biking past the cul-de-sacced streets to Jefferson Park itself, the hub of our subdivision’s wheel.
I always got very nervous whenever I heard that Margo was about to show up, on account of how she was the most fantastically gorgeous creature that God had ever created. On the morning in question, she wore white shorts and a pink T-shirt that featured a green dragon breathing a fire of orange glitter. It is difficult to explain how awesome I found this T-shirt at the time.
