The year is 2010…
Christmas, to be exact. For the holiday, sixteen-year-old me is about to receive, from her grandparents, the single most life-changing gift of her short life; A Macbook Pro.
Armed with my first ever portal into the virtual universe, I discovered YouTube for the first time. Or, specifically, discovered that Youtube was more than cat videos and Vevo. Yes, I discovered Youtubing, and one of my favorite channels was run by two brothers named Hank and John Green, better known was the Vlogbrothers.
From ages seventeen to nineteen, I’m pretty sure my key identifier was “Nerdfighter”. I wore my DFTBA bracelet everywhere. I went to the Fault of Our Stars movie opening weekend, and I collected every single one of John Green’s books – highlighting passages like they were the new testament.
Except for one…
Honestly, I’m not really sure why I never got around to reading Will Grayson, Will Grayson at the height of my nerdfighterdom in the 2010s. It was just one of those books that sat on my TBR – sitting unacknowledged for over a decade.
Until now.
When I searched up queer lit recommendations and this book came up, I knew it was time to finally pick it up.
If you’re going to do the same and pick up Will Grayson, Will Grayson, I suggest you do two things; accept this book as a product of its time and remember that the characters are seventeen.
Before you open this book, take off your 2020s goggles and accept this book as a product of the time in which it was written. Do the authors use all the right terms and verbage? No, of course not, it was 2010. Do the characters make the best decisions, particularly when it comes to their romantic relationships? No. Give them a break, they’re seventeen. Honestly, when you get past the millennial optimism, you begin to see that, actually, this book is quite ahead of its time. In an era of Kurt Hummels and “Just Jacks”, Will Grayson is a strikingly multi-dimensional queer character, which is really what we’re looking for here at the Carabiner Café.
If you’ve read Will Grayson, Will Grayson, tell me your thoughts. Would you cite will Grayson (lowercase will Grayson, to clarify) as a multi-dimensional queer character? Do you still enjoy John Green’s writing, or are the tropes too outdated to get past? Sound off in the comments below!
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