Investigating Illness Narratives

“This is not so much an author’s note as an author’s reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.”

-John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

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The author’s note quoted above is one of my favorite pages in John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars.

When I first heard about The Fault in Our Stars, a book about childhood cancer that was also soon-to-be a movie, my initial reactions were as follows. Surprise, that the often hidden world of childhood cancer was being so prominently featured in a bestseller. Wariness, that this book which was quickly becoming a sensation itself would similarly sensationalize the lives of those with childhood cancer.

Reading the Author’s Note both confirmed and calmed my fears. I applauded Green’s straightforward commitment to the fictionality of the novel, for it cautions the reader not to use this story to make assumptions about childhood cancer. At the same time, it made me curious about his choice to use cancer as an intriguing literary device and how he would portray this reality, however fictionalized.

I found myself scrutinizing this book, expecting it to portray cancer in some false light that would spur further misunderstandings and stereotypes. But I have to say, after reading TFIOS, I was impressed by the power of Green’s language. The adolescent perspective, at times cynical and abrasively honest, allows him to successfully make real this foreign world of cancer. From the “Cancer Perks” that accompany a diagnosis to illness-catalyzed Encouragements, I thought that the story was overall written with great precision.

Interestingly enough, this was one of the first times where I preferred the movie adaptation to the book. To me, the witty dialogue and the comic relief interspersed amongst heartfelt emotion really came to life through the camera in a way that I didn’t quite feel when reading the book. While the book sometimes felt a bit bogged down by philosophical contemplations and at other times almost too simple, the film adaptation struck a balance between both the unbearable lightness and heaviness of being (a phrase I’m borrowing from Milan Kundera’s book)

Some critics have looked down upon this work as yet another in a new genre of “sick-lit” full of terminal illness and the devastations caused by disease. This idea warrants an entire post of its own (coming soon). I am glad that the TFIOS sensation is raising awareness of childhood cancer, but I can only hope that people take Green’s Author’s Note to heart.

“Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attach the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.”