Agloe, New York

2014-12-23 · letter vlog · John · 3:08 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing (also: History & curiosities) · mode: Personal essay

Home after the Paper Towns shoot, John tells how the paper town Agloe, New York, invented by mapmakers, became real, and argues that imagined things shape reality; readers and the film made Agloe real again, and he thanks them.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — John home, tired and a little sick, after the Paper Towns movie finished shooting; thanks to the film crew

★★ John says the Paper Towns movie finished shooting a couple of days ago, so he is home, tired and a little sick, and grateful to everyone who worked on it. — 00:00:02 · Paper Towns (film), Paper Towns

00:00:14 — The General Drafting/Esso map of New York and the story of Agloe: a copyright-trap town that became real after people went looking for it

★ John shows a map of New York made by the General Drafting Company for Esso, explaining for younger viewers it is like a static Google Maps on a big sheet of paper. (playful) — 00:00:14
★★★ John says the map, famous to cartography nerds and Paper Towns readers, shows Agloe, New York, north of Rockland: a town made up by its creators Ernest G Alpers and Otto Lindberg from their initials. — 00:00:32 · Paper Towns
★★★ John says the mapmakers put their fake town at a dirt-road intersection in the Catskills to protect their copyright; mapmakers have always made such paper towns or streets to catch copiers. — 00:00:46 · Paper Towns
★★★ John says about forty years later Rand McNally put Agloe on its map; threatened with a lawsuit, it said Agloe was real, because people looking for it had built a place called Agloe. (hedged) — 00:01:00

00:01:23 — Fictions and constructions become real: the professor's chair, imagination shaping reality, what Paper Towns is about

★★★ John says the story of Agloe is the story of a fiction that became real, and argues this happens to fictions and constructions all the time. — 00:01:23
★★ John recalls telling a college professor that constructed things aren't really real; the professor replied that a chair is constructed but would hurt if he hit John with it. — 00:01:30 · social construction
★★★ John says the truth is that the way we imagine the world ends up shaping reality. — 00:01:40
★★★ John says Paper Towns is about how we hurt ourselves and each other when we imagine other people as less than or more than human. — 00:01:44 · Paper Towns, perspective-taking
★★ John says what interests him most is how our incomplete imaginings of other people, and theirs of us, profoundly shape our lives. (hedged) — 00:01:51 · perspective-taking
★★ John says that back in 2008 he published a story about how the merely imagined can become really real. (hedged) — 00:01:59 · Paper Towns
★★ John says Agloe, fictional, then real, then fallen into disrepair and gone, became real again: readers made pilgrimages, found the former general store's site, and one made a fake historical marker. — 00:02:05

00:02:13 — Readers and the film made Agloe real again; the year from book to film; thanks to readers; sign-off

★★★ John says six years later, largely thanks to readers still caring about Q, Margo and Agloe, Hollywood made a movie; he met the people he'd imagined and visited Agloe with them. — 00:02:24 · Paper Towns (film)
★★ John says the journey from book to film has been the weirdest and most wonderful part of a very weird and wonderful year for him. — 00:02:40 · Paper Towns, Paper Towns (film)
★★★ John thanks everyone who made Paper Towns real by reading it and so made Agloe real again; Agloe will cease to exist again someday, but together they made it real for a while. — 00:02:49 · Paper Towns

Threads in this video

milestone · Paper Towns film: production and release (2014) — John reports the Paper Towns movie finished shooting a couple of days ago and he is home. (00:00:02)
restate · Can things that humans made up (sports, money, borders, rules) really matter? — John argues that fictions and constructions become real all the time; constructed things, like a chair, are real enough to hurt. (00:01:28)
told · John's college professor: a constructed chair still hurts if he hits you with it (college) — John recalls a college professor answering his claim that constructed things aren't real: the chair is constructed but would hurt if he hit John with it. (00:01:30)
restate · Can imagination and work make ideas real? — John says the truth is that the way we imagine the world ends up shaping reality, citing Agloe as a fiction that became real and readers making Paper Towns and Agloe real again. (00:01:40)
restate · Can we imagine other people complexly, and what stops us? — John says Paper Towns is about how imagining others as less or more than human hurts us, and that our incomplete imaginings of each other shape our lives. (00:01:44)

Where the stories that moved here went next

Paper Towns film: production and release (2014) — completed; last: looked back, 2024-02-06

Mentioned

Central: Agloe, New York · fictitious entry · Paper Towns

Also: People: Ernest G. Alpers · Otto Lindberg

Works: Paper Towns (film)

Organizations: Esso · General Drafting Company · Rand McNally

Concepts: copyright · perspective-taking · social construction

Places: Catskill Mountains · Hollywood · Rockland, New York

Characters: Margo Roth Spiegelman · Quentin Jacobsen

Products: Google Maps

Also centred on Agloe, New York: I Love You, Hank. Esther Day 2015

Also centred on fictitious entry: What Are Paper Towns?

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