Am kommenden Dienstag, den 10. Januar, werde ich nicht nur im Filmseminar “The Issue of Madness in American Film” von meinem Lieblingsdozenten Dr. Uli Jung ein Referat über einen meiner Leiblingsfilme, ‘What about Bob?’, halten, sondern auch weiterhin hoffentlich glücklich am Nachmittag meine Kopie von John Greens neuem Buch ‘The Fault in Our Stars, inklusive Autogramm, erhalten. Darin behandelt John ein Thema, das ihn bereits seit mehr als 10 Jahren begleitet, nämlich junge, schwer kranke Menschen. Fans wissen natürlich, dass John vor seiner Zeit als Autor nach dem College in einem Kinderkrankenhaus gearbeitet hat. Ich freue mich sehr auf das Buch, ebenso natürlich John selbst, der einiges mehr zum Buch in seinem Interview mit Entertainment Weekly zu berichten hat.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you choose to tackle cancer as your next topic?
JOHN GREEN: When I first graduated from college, I worked as a chaplain at a children’s hospital for about five months. While I was there, I saw a lot of young people with cancer and other serious diseases, and I was struck by how different they were from my expectations. The culture surrounding sick kids tends to tell us they are either going to be these fountains of wisdom or they are going to be these sad-eyed, terrible tragedies — the truth is a lot more complex than that. Sick kids are a lot like other people. I learned that during my time at the hospital and also the next 10 or 11 years trying to reflect it in fiction. Then in 2008 I met a young woman who had cancer who was a reader of my books, and through knowing her it became possible to write the story.

Was she the basis for Hazel?
Well, Hazel and Esther are very different people, and Esther has died and has no ability to defend herself. It would be very important to her that people not think she likes America’s Next Top Model, which Hazel loves. [Laughs] Even while Hazel and Esther are very different people, I never could have written the book without knowing Esther.

Did you have reservations about fictionalizing cancer and its treatment? As you note in the acknowledgements of the book, Phalanxifor, the “miracle” drug that keeps Hazel’s cancer from spreading, doesn’t actually exist.
Well, there are amazing treatments for some kinds of cancer. So the drug Phalanxifor is very similar to the drug Herceptin. It’s just that Herceptin is for one type of cancer and Phalanxifor is useful for this one type of thyroid cancer. I didn’t have reservations about fictionalizing the treatment because it was important to me that people didn’t think I was trying to write a memoir or some kind of nonfiction story. This is a novel. I don’t want to try and tell a true story about cancer treatment. That is not where my talent lies.

Weiterhin gibt es jetzt, wie man das heute eben so macht, einen Trailer für Johns neues Buch und ich muss sagen, dass der im Vergleich zu dem, was da so auf dem Markt ist, verdammt gut ist. Vage, romantisch, trifft genau Johns Ton.

Mehr davon, wer auch immer dafür verantwortlich war!

Das Lied im Trailer kann man sich übrigens kostenlos auf der Penguin Teen Facebookpage runterladen oder Künsterlerin und Nerdfighterin Laura Segura über iTunes unterstützen, wie ich das tat (ich bin so toll).

Vorher auf PEWPEWPEW:
Buchcover von John Greens “The Fault in Our Stars”