Response to Looking for Alaska

This is a book I really, really enjoyed, but I wouldn’t call it faultless. There were a couple things I didn’t quite buy into, but all in all it was very enjoyable.
A big reason I liked it so much is because I can hear my friends talking the way the characters talk. The conversations they have sound like something my friends would say. I really grew to love the characters because of that, and also because they seemed to genuinely care about each other but also had a ton of fun. The scene that springs to mind for me is when Pudge and Takumi have the following exchange:
He [Takumi] pulled out a think headband. It was brown, with a plush fox head on the front. He put it on his head.
I laughed. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s my fox hat.”
“Your fox hat?”
“Yeah, Pudge. My fox hat.”
“Why are you wearing your fox hat?” I asked.
“Because no on can catch the motherfucking fox.” (104)

This dialogue absolutely slayed me. I laughed out loud, and that was one of many times I did that while reading. I can hear my friends saying things like that, and that allowed me to connect to the book. And it wasn’t just the main characters, all of the dialogue felt very real to me and not concocted to make a point. It was just very…sincere, I guess. It wasn’t presumptuous and it didn’t feel fake, with everyone, from the students to the Weekend Warriors to the teachers and parents, it just felt exactly how those people would talk.
I also really enjoyed the motif of the last words. It kind of held everything together, and I like that we never really find out Alaska’s last words. We know some of what happened on that night, but there is no way to really know her last words, and I was really relieved about that. Had there been some character who heard her, like a policeman or a truck driver or something, I’m afraid that would have been really contrived and unrealistic. I don’t know, maybe it would have been just fine, but I tend to think that the way it ended is better than anything that would have been connected to her last words.
The mystery of the book was really enjoyable as I read. I wanted to know what we were leading up to, and I found myself trying to guess. Will Alaska and Pudge make out? Then, after they do make out, will they have sex? Will Alaska drop out of school? Will Pudge take the blame for something and get kicked out? I just had no idea, and I did not see the death coming. I just thought that format for the book was really cool. Though I did find myself trying to figure out how long anything higher than 30 days actually was. 117 days doesn’t mean a lot to me, three and half months does.
The one aspect of the story that stuck in my craw a little bit was how quickly Pudge seemed to change when he got to Culver Creek. He seemed like such an outcast back home, and when he gets to prep school a few people who are really well known take a liking to him, and he fits right in. I’m just not sure I buy that quick personality change. Over the course of a few months, maybe, but not the day he arrives.
Finally, I have to talk about the things going on in this book that I just can’t get behind. It glorifies smoking, drinking, casual sex, and foul language, and I’m not on board with those things. And so it brings to the question of, how could I give this to a student and feel good about it? I know the point of this class is not to be thinking about how we would teach it but rather the book itself, but I couldn’t help coming back to that question as I read. I don’t want my students doing any of those things, but that’s what the book is about and it makes it seem totally normal and acceptable. And it’s a problem because of how much I like the book. If I hated it, I would have tossed it aside and never even mentioned it existed to any students. But it’s so good that I want people to read it. Argh.