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Going Home with Alaska and Miles

2019-03-12 · letter vlog · John · 3:47 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing · mode: Personal essay · tags: on location, self promotion

After showing Looking for Alaska's Hulu leads Charlie Plummer and Kristine Froseth and director Sarah around his old high school, John reflects that he wrote the novel to go home to 1993 and to attempt time travel, that novels don't heal wounds, and that watching the actors walk away he finally let the story go: it's theirs now.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Weekend with Charlie, Kristine and director Sarah; the Hulu adaptation; showing them his old haunts

  • ★★★ John spent the weekend (9–10 March 2019) with Charlie and Kristine, who play Miles and Alaska, and Sarah, their director, showing them around his old haunts. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ John says the eight-episode Hulu adaptation of his first novel, Looking for Alaska, is supposed to begin shooting soon. (hedged) — 00:00:00 · Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★★ The trip was meant to let the actors see the place John based Culver Creek on, but he realizes it was mostly for him. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ They walked his old high school's campus, vastly changed but keeping its spirit, visited the gym with its academic decathlon banners and the art studios, and talked to students. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Touring his old high school: gym, academic decathlon banners, art studios, students, old classmates

  • ★★★ John says a writer must let a book go once it is in print: it then belongs to the people who read it, a wonderful and painful surrender. — 00:00:29 · Looking for Alaska (novel)

00:00:58 — Letting a book go; Looking for Alaska as autobiography; writing it to go home and to attempt time travel

  • ★★★ Looking for Alaska was different: like Miles, John was a Florida kid at an Alabama boarding school; the story is fictional, but he began it at 23 and saw himself in Miles and others. — 00:00:58 · Looking for Alaska (novel), Florida
  • ★★ John says Alaska's self-destructive impulses and the Colonel's fits of rage were his, and he has often worried he left too much exposed. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ John says he wrote the book because he wanted to go home to the fall of 1993, smoking under the bridge with people he loved, loving peers ferociously and without fear. — 00:01:27 · Looking for Alaska (novel)
  • ★★ That couldn't last; as the graffitied Walt Whitman quote says, these are the days that must happen to you: you can revisit the Smoking Hole but can't be home again. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ John wrote the book to attempt time travel: to imagine things differently and make different choices, hoping fiction might let him back into the home time and loss had taken. — 00:01:56 · Looking for Alaska (novel)

00:02:28 — Novels don't heal wounds; watching the actors walk away, John lets Miles and Alaska go

  • ★★★ John learned that novels do not solve problems or heal wounds; when a story works it is because, as Emily Dickinson put it, it tells all the truth but tells it slant. — 00:02:28
  • ★★ Having failed at letting go of the book, John has felt he carried Miles and Alaska with him for 15 years, at times lovely, at times very difficult. — 00:02:28
  • ★★★ Watching Kristine and Charlie walk off to explore the campus, John felt Miles and Alaska walking away too, and felt himself letting go at last. — 00:02:28
  • ★★ John calls Charlie and Kristine passionate, generous and kind, knowing the characters better than he does; with Sarah and the crew they are building home, and he feels only grateful. — 00:03:09
  • ★★ John says it's their story now, with more adventures than he imagined, and he can't wait to see how they tell it. — 00:03:34

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Charlie Plummer and Kristine Froseth will play Miles and Alaska in the Hulu adaptation, and Sarah Adina Smith directs its first episode. — video description

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Alaska Young · Charlie Plummer · Indian Springs School · Kristine Froseth · Looking for Alaska (miniseries) · Looking for Alaska (novel) · Miles Halter

Also: People: Emily Dickinson · Sarah Adina Smith · Walt Whitman

Organizations: Hulu

Concepts: time travel

Places: Alabama · Florida · Smoking Hole

Events: United States Academic Decathlon

Characters: Chip Martin · Culver Creek Preparatory School

Also centred on Charlie Plummer: Question Tuesday with Miles and the Colonel: Manolo!

Also centred on Indian Springs School: Looking for Alaska at My High School

Also centred on Kristine Froseth: Looking for Alaska (...with Alaska)

Also centred on Looking for Alaska (miniseries): Looking for Alaska Movie (BUT BETTER) and YouTuber Things · The Looking for Alaska Thing · Question Tuesday with Miles and the Colonel: Manolo! · Looking for Alaska (...with Alaska) · I'm Having a Lot of Feelings

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