{"id":655,"date":"2011-11-23T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T14:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=655"},"modified":"2011-11-17T17:22:51","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T01:22:51","slug":"mark-reads-looking-for-alaska-one-hundred-twenty-eight-days-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/11\/mark-reads-looking-for-alaska-one-hundred-twenty-eight-days-before\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘Looking For Alaska’: one hundred twenty-eight days before"},"content":{"rendered":"

One hundred twenty-eight days before it happens, Miles arrives at Culver Creek Preparatory School, learns that Florida heat prepares him for nothing, and meets the cast of characters that’ll shape his experience there. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Looking For Alaska<\/em>.<\/p>\n

one hundred twenty-eight days before<\/strong><\/p>\n

Florida was plenty hot, certainly, and humid, too. Hot enough that your clothes stuck to you like Scotch tape, and sweat dripped like tears from your forehead into your eyes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Look, okay. I lived in Southern California for nineteen years. It gets hot there. Riverside in particular would always shoot above 100 degrees in the summer for weeks at a time, and it was also an oppressive, dry heat, one that made all physical movement unbearable and simply out of the question. During the Great Ginny Slutshame War of 2010, I went hiking at the end of summer in the Grand Canyon. Even though I left for the hike very, very early in the morning down into the canyon, the ascent back up was one of the most miserable things I’ve ever experienced. (STILL UNBELIEVABLY PRETTY AND AMAZING, but holy god why is my skin on fire.)<\/p>\n
I have been to Florida both times. Both times, I turned into that<\/em> guy who is rude and completely gross about his complaints regarding the heat. I insulted my friends who lived there. I whined constantly<\/em>. I begged for a swift end. I told random strangers that this was clearly God’s forgotten land. At no point did I ever attempt to be reasonable or thankful that things weren’t worse. I was, straight up, a complete asshole about it and I do not regret a second of it.<\/p>\n
HOW DO PEOPLE SURVIVE IN THAT<\/strong>. I genuinely do not understand that! When you start sweating profusely after being outside for thirty seconds, THERE IS SOMETHING DEEPLY WRONG WITH EVERYTHING<\/strong>. oh god i am the worst, i swear<\/em>.<\/p>\n
I’ve only managed to be in the South during the winter, though once I was at the Atlanta airport for two hours in July. It was pleasantly crisp in that air-conditioned place and I was told that outside your skin would blister if sunlight touched it, so I stayed indoors while waiting for my connecting flight. So this is where I depart from understanding Miles at all, and I just gleefully hope I don’t ever come to know what that sort of heat is like. The humidity<\/em> is what killed me about Florida because you swear you can feel it, like the air is full of invisible giants wearing wool sweaters and hugging you over and over again in their huge arms. What Miles describes in Alabama sounds more like your skin being burnt off. I mean:<\/p>\n
…the sun burned through my clothes and into my skin with a vicious ferocity that made me genuinely fear hellfire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
NOOOO NOT HELLFIRE THAT WORD HAS SUCH SPECIFIC<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0 CONNOTATIONS FOR ME. Because that word is used so much<\/em> in Catholicism and whatever non-denominational Christian belief my mom forced upon me. That<\/em> sort of burning is supposed to be the worst. Did John Green just inadvertently convince me to never go to Alabama? omg WHAT HAVE YOU DONE<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Despite that I went to public high school, it’s easy for me to think about how much Miles’s experience arriving at Culver Creek reminds me of arriving at Cal State Long Beach for college. My parents weren’t there (my friend Jason drove me with everything I owned packed into his parents’ van), but I remember having the same expectation for the dorms and then being fairly disappointed by what reality actually was. But, like it is for Miles, it was a new beginning for me; I think for a lot of us who went to a school so far away from where we grew up or spent a lot of time, there is<\/em> something appealing about getting to decide how to present yourself, or who to make friends with. I mean, you also understand that I came to college from a horrifically homophobic environment where I got outed, and suddenly I was at a school with over 30,000 people who knew nothing about me. And that wasn’t<\/em> overwhelming or terrifying to me; instead, it made me feel like I had a chance to be whatever it is I wanted to be. (I hadn’t figured that<\/em> out yet, but that took time as well.)<\/p>\n
Miles sends his parents off with an awkward goodbye and a lot of hugging. Oh, lord, his parents are so awkward that they just start being adorable, I swear<\/em>. And this is how Miles’s new life begins: not with a bang, but with a slow, impenetrable crawl. He doesn’t have the right thing to say. He has to imagine perfect introductions that don’t happen. He doesn’t make the friends he imagines, and nothing occurs in the way he expected.<\/p>\n
Did Miles expect a pool of his own sweat to collect on his body? Did he expect the shower to be a disaster? Did he expect to meet his roommate while only wearing a towel? No, of course not, but I like to think that Miles was prepared for all of this. From what little indication I’ve gotten of him from this book, he’s not the smoothest character in the world. Like his parents, it’s as if he brings awkwardness with him like a companion stuck to his side.<\/p>\n
To be fair, it doesn’t help that Chip Martin, Miles’s roommate, doesn’t exactly make that easy. He combines being eccentric and confident at the same time, so both things confuse Miles over and over again. It’s sort of that thing when you feel like a person is operating on an entirely different astral plane than you, that you can’t seem to quite grasp where they’re headed or what they mean. Still, Miles, quite the industrious man, manages to find something to offer his new roommate: his ability to remember people’s last lines before death. (Well, not so sure that’s an ability<\/em> as much as it is just a neat thing he does.)<\/p>\n
I don’t know if that’s what seals the deal for Chip or if it was just convenience, but I liked how open Chip was with Miles from this point on. It’s still like Chip is on a different wavelength than Miles–and some of that is definitely due to the fact that Chip has experience at Culver Creek–but he largely seems wonderfully welcoming to his new roommate. Perhaps it’s just practical at this point; he’s going to have to live with Miles for the next year, so why not start things off on a good note?<\/p>\n
Chip did not believe in having a sock drawer or a T-shirt drawer. He believed that all drawers were created equal and filled each with whatever fit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I have a sock drawer, y’all. ALL DRAWERS ARE NOT EQUAL. I WILL FIGHT YOU<\/em> ON THIS ONE.<\/p>\n
But that niceness I spoke of isn’t extended to everything, and Chip sets clear boundaries about what sort of role he is and is not going to take as a roommate. This will not include being his entr\u00c3\u00a9e into the social life at the school, though he does quickly disseminate the crucial dichotomy the school splits into: the students who attend regularly, and those who attend only on the weekdays before going home to their parents’ air-conditioned houses on Weekday. They are the WEEKDAY WARRIORS, a brilliantly appropriate term, I might add. Oh, and they are<\/em> the cool kids, and Miles should be seen with Chip if he wants to be cool. Oh, and Chip is really The Colonel. And Miles is Pudge. And what<\/em>.<\/p>\n
It’s here that we rather quickly meet Alaska properly for the first time. We get another list from Miles (MORE LISTS ALL OF THE TIME) before he meets–his words, by the way–“the hottest girl in all of human history.” That’s what Alaska is to him. And I wasn’t with him until this:<\/p>\n
“…then I’m in the middle of a sentence about analogies or something and like a hawk he reaches down and he honks my boob. HONK<\/em>. A much-too-firm, two- to three-second HONK<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 And the first thing I thought was Okay, how do I extricate this claw from my boob before it leaves permanent marks? <\/em>and the second thing I thought was God<\/em>, I can’t wait to tell Takumi and the Colonel.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, hot or not, I want to be friends with this girl. On top of that ALL OF THE BOOKS. I LOVE PEOPLE WHO OWN LOTS OF BOOKS. I noticed that Miles spotted this, too (though not after spending far too much time looking at her body ew<\/em>); I’M CALLING IT. IT WILL BE IMPORTANT. Well, this chapter already seems to be setting up Miles’s unending crush on Alaska and her fascinating relationship with him. I like using that word: she fascinates<\/em> me. I obviously can’t figure her out because I’ve just met her, but, like the Colonel, she has no real reason to be friendly to Miles.<\/p>\n
These two new characters both talk with Miles out by the school’s lake, and I am picking up the ways in which they sort of slowly begin to pull him into their group. I think the cigarettes are one of those starts, a way for Chip to keep coming back, a sign that socializing with him is just fine…to an extent.<\/p>\n
Alaska, on the other hand, is far more open and receptive of him, though Miles doesn’t really see any of her more subtle attributes or actions, distracted by her beauty. The two talk of last words, in this case about Sim\u00c3\u00b3n Bol\u00c3\u00advar, and her interest in him isn’t ironic or patronizing. Which is not to say he likes<\/em> her or is in like<\/em> with her, obviously. But she does<\/em> say he is cute; and she does offer to get him laid; and they do run home in an acknowledgment of the absurd fear of walking alone at night. And what I get from this is that perhaps these two might never end up together in any romantic sense, but that Miles just met the two perfect people at this school to help him find that Great Perhaps. They’re interesting, weird, and mischief always sounds good to them. Far away from home, that idea is a whole lot more enticing to Miles than anything else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One hundred twenty-eight days before it happens, Miles arrives at Culver Creek Preparatory School, learns that Florida heat prepares him for nothing, and meets the cast of characters that’ll shape his experience there. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[125,23,123,126],"class_list":["post-655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-looking-for-alaska","tag-john-green","tag-mark-reads","tag-mark-reads-looking-for-alaska","tag-nerdfighters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}