good morning Hank it's Tuesday I spent
the weekend with Charlie and Christine
or miles and Alaska and Sarah their
director the eighth episode whoo-hoo
adaptation of my first novel Looking for
Alaska is supposed to begin shooting
soon and I wanted to show them around my
old haunts the trip was supposed to be
for them so they could see the place I
based Kovach recon but I realize now
that it was mostly for me we walked
around the campus of my old high school
which looks vastly different from when I
was a student there but still somehow
retains its spirit we visited the gym
including our academic decathlon banners
toured the schools incredible art
studios and talked to some students and
then after a while Charlie and Christine
wandered off to look at the campus while
I chatted with a couple of my old
classmates when you write a book you
have to let it go at some point you stop
fiddling with the text and the story is
set in print and then it isn't yours
anymore not really it belongs to the
people who read it which is a wonderful
and painful surrender but Looking for
Alaska was always different for me
partly because the book is about a kid
from Florida who goes to a boarding
school in Alabama and I was a kid from
Florida who went to a boarding school in
Alabama the story is fictional but I was
only 23 when I started writing it and of
course I saw myself in miles and in the
other characters to Alaska's
self-destructive impulses were mine the
colonel's fits of rage were mine and
since the story was published
I've often worried that I left too much
exposed the truth is I wrote the book
because I wanted to go home by which I
mean the fall of 1993 smoking cigarettes
under this bridge with people I loved
who loved me I'd never loved peers like
that before
ferociously without any
self-consciousness or fear that couldn't
last of course and it didn't as the
graffiti'd walt whitman quote puts it so
succinctly these are the days that must
happen to you and after you can go back
to the smoking hole and it's beautiful
graffiti but you can't be home again and
so I wrote the book to a
time travel what if I could go into the
past imagine things differently make
different choices maybe through fiction
I would be allowed back into the home
from which time and loss had expelled me
but even after years of working on the
book I still had no answer for why the
center cannot hold what I learned along
the way is that novels do not solve
problems or heal wounds or whatever when
a story works it's because the story as
Emily Dickinson put it tells all the
truth but tells it slant because I've
failed so spectacularly at letting go of
this book I've often felt like I was
carrying miles and Alaska around with me
these last 15 years which has been
lovely at times and at other times very
difficult but as I watched Christine and
Charlie walking away from me that
afternoon I felt that miles in Alaska
were also walking away off to explore
Culver Creek together and I felt myself
letting go at last Charlie and Christine
are both so passionate and generous and
kind and in many ways they know Alaska
and miles better than I do with Sara and
the rest of the people working on the
show they're building home together and
I don't feel envious or possessive I
just feel grateful there go miles in
Alaska off to experience the adventures
I imagined for them yes but also many
more adventures it's their story now and
I can't wait to see how they tell it
Hank I'll see you on Friday