Five Minutes That Will Explain All That Is Right With The World...

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...Even When Things Go Wrong.

Remember this passage from Catcher In The Rye?

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”

Well, for thousands of kids right now it does happen.

With a guy who writes fiction for younger-than-thou adults named John Green.

Mr. Green explains why that is important to both he and his readers in the following short excerpt from a short five minute interview with NPR's Scott Simon:

On keeping in touch with his readers...

"I'm very fortunate. I know them. I like hearing from them. I feel fortunate to interact with them. I like reading their YouTube comments. I like reading their reviews on book review websites. I like the engagement that we have with each other, because the truth is, the world extends outside the world of books. And I feel fortunate to be able to have a relationship with the them."

And it's really, literally true that such a relationship does exist between Mr. Green and his readers.

For all kinds of reasons, some of which are based on the age-old need of the artist to, as I heard that bastard Hansard once explain it, 'expand their draw'.

But when it is sincere that is neither here nor there, as you can see in the clip below, which is just one of dozens like it on the Interwebz...

And below is something else that I, as an older-than-most-of thou adult, really dig from Mr. Green's cannon....

A YouTube series in which he explains to his young charges that if they were to meet Holden Caulfield on the street, or in Central Park by the duckpond, or Facebook if it had existed in New York City in the late 1940's, they would not like, or even notice, him.

Why?

Because, as Mr. Green explains it is Mr. Caulfield's ability to explain his inner life that engenders the true empathy that readers, young and old, really connect with.

And then, as you might expect given that Mr. Green is also a master wordsmith, there is a whole bunch of crazy-assed author stuff about the 'miracle of text'.

Or some such thing.

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And, ya, I put all those digressive commas, above, in this post, on purpose, because, well, you know....

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