Skip to content

Looking for Alaska at My High School

2010-08-06 · John · watch on YouTube · Books & writing · reflection essay

Visiting Indian Springs School, the near-exact setting of Looking for Alaska, John finds nostalgia punctured by a bee sting and concludes that nostalgia yearns for a past that never existed, and that fiction is how he turns his lying memories into something true.

What is said

00:00:00 — Up at 5:30 a.m. because of the baby and time zones; coffee; drive to Indian Springs School

  • ★ John was up at 5:30 a.m. because babies don't know about time zones; he grumbles that Birmingham is an hour behind Indianapolis though at nearly the same longitude. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Indianapolis
  • ★★ Being up anyway, John drove to his high school alma mater, Indian Springs School. — 00:00:16

00:00:20 — Looking for Alaska's premise mirrors John's life; Culver Creek is almost exactly Indian Springs in 1995; tour of real landmarks from the book, the swing and Bolívar's last words

  • ★★★ John says Looking for Alaska is about a Florida boy obsessed with famous last words who leaves for an Alabama boarding school, and that he himself was once that boy. — 00:00:20 · Looking for Alaska, Florida
  • ★★★ John says the novel is fiction but its setting is not: Culver Creek is almost inch for inch Indian Springs School as it was in 1995. — 00:00:39 · Looking for Alaska
  • ★★ John points out real places from the book, from the interstate exit and local shops to the swan, the cafeteria and the swing where Alaska tells Miles Bolívar's last words. — 00:00:49

00:01:12 — Empty summer campus, feeling like the ghost; the Smoking Hole under the bridge over Bishop's Creek, fear it was forgotten, then an Emily Dickinson graffito from 2008

  • ★★ With no students in summer and 103-degree heat, the campus felt like a ghost town, until John realized he was the ghost. — 00:01:12
  • ★★ John visits the concrete outcropping under the bridge over Bishop's Creek, known as the Smoking Hole both in Looking for Alaska and in real life. — 00:01:35 · Looking for Alaska
  • ★★ Finding briars over the path and no cigarette butts after fifteen years, John worried the Smoking Hole had been forgotten, which made him feel old. — 00:01:42
  • ★★ Then he saw an Emily Dickinson quote graffitied on the wall, apparently in 2008, and felt the legacy was well maintained by today's students. (playful) — 00:02:05

00:02:26 — Stung by a bee on the left butt cheek at the peak of sentimentality; whining to Sarah; trampolines

  • ★★ At the peak of his sentimentality John was stung by a bee on his left butt cheek, and he called Sarah to complain. (playful) — 00:02:23 · Sarah Urist Green

00:03:05 — The barn field of first love and an all-nighter; Dickinson, youth counted sweetest; nostalgia yearns for a past that never existed; fiction makes memories true; sign-off

  • ★★ In a field where a barn once stood, John first told a girl he loved her and pulled his first all-nighter studying world history while drinking bad wine. — 00:03:05
  • ★★★ Echoing Dickinson's line that success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed, John says youth is counted sweetest by those no longer young. — 00:03:17
  • ★★★ John says nostalgia is inevitably a yearning for a past that never existed. — 00:03:25 > «Nostalgia is inevitably a yearning for a past that never existed»
  • ★★★ John says that when writing there are no bees to break his sentimentality, and for him fiction is the only way to turn his lying memories into something true. — 00:03:28 > «fiction is the only way I can even begin to twist my lying memories into something true»

Humor (significant)

  • Among the landmarks from the novel John points out the local liquor store. — 00:00:54 > «where they cater to your spiritual needs»
  • John repeats the saying that it isn't the heat so much as the humidity. — 00:01:16 > «Actually it's also the heat.»
  • At the pinnacle of his sentimental walk John is stung by a bee. — 00:02:42 > «stings you on the very top of your left butt cheek, ruining everything.»
  • John explains why he had to phone Sarah about the bee sting. — 00:02:50 > «is whining to your wife.»

Threads in this video

BR2_3170417f29