The Anthropocene Reviewed
John Green. 2021
Summary
A series of essays framed as reviews on a wide-ranging set of topics, from Diet Dr. Pepper to sunsets to Green’s obsessive love of the band The Mountain Goats. Each essay concludes with Green giving the topic a rating of 1 to 5 stars.
Some memorable reviews:
- Harvey – meditation on Green’s depression
- Auld Lang Syne – friend’s death
- Sycamore Trees - on fatherhood
- Staphylococcus aureus – diseases and life and the miracle of science
Thoughts
Ostensibly a book of essays each reviewing a separate topic (I’ll resist the urge here to make a “joke” about reviewing a book of reviews in the same way I need to remind myself not to say to a grocery store clerk upon difficulty in ringing up an item that that must mean it’s free), this is, by the author’s own admission, more suitably read as a memoir. And what a vulnerable, wonderful, sad, and exuberant memoir it is. Green intertwines a phenomenology of the mundane with the wonder of the profound, jumping from reviews of Diet Dr Pepper (“a soda that tastes like everything and also like nothing”) to a bout of depression bookended with a breakup and the Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey, to a meditation on the death of a friend, dying, and Auld Lang Syne, with a cornucopia of topics in between. Most serve as portals both to introspect his own condition as well as to extrospect human’s place in the world, to understand “why life wants to be”.
Green reminds of Vonnegut – they both can affect a terse, witty style. Simple, sturdy, meat and potatoes prose that is equally to the task of wistful reminiscences as it is light-hearted banter. Both Green and Vonnegut are “of Indianapolis”, although Green notes that “it’s telling that from the time [Vonnegut] could choose where to live, he did not choose to live here”. The book is filled with literary references and quotes, “maybe overfilled with them”, as Green notes, but I’ve always thought a great author is first and foremost a great reader, and Green’s wide reading list is on display.
I’ve never listened to Green’s podcast which served as the petri dish for these essays, nor have I read his novels. But I quite enjoy the way he thinks and sees the world, and I might pick some of his work up in the future.