Today was the day I went on one of my first solo adventures since coming to Chicago.  It started with taking the red line down to the Harold Washington Library.  

Quick interruption of the narrative for some nerd facts about the Harold Washington!  It’s the central branch of the Chicago public libraries, located in the middle of the Loop (the center of downtown).  It’s the largest public library in the world at 756,640 square feet, and the roof is adorned with massive owls, for whatever reason.  It’s 10 stories tall and impossible to miss, but somehow I still went the wrong direction for almost a block when I got off the L.  

So anyway!  My John Green/Benjamin Alire Saenz talk was at 6 and the doors opened at 5, so I got to the library early so that I could finally get a library card, which I’ve been talking about since before I got to Chicago.  The whole ordeal took about three minutes and I am now the proud owner of an official Chicago library card.  It’s probably the least-fancy library card I’ve ever seen, but it’s mine.  Not long after, I went to wait in the slowly growing line of people waiting to get into the auditorium.  

And here the power of purple Converse led me to bond with the girl I was next to in line, as we were wearing matching shoes.  From there we were able to converse (pun not intended, but appreciated) nonstop about the many things we seemed to have in common.

I’m just realizing now that I haven’t explained who John Green is, or why we care, or why any of this is awesome.  So another break for facts.  The author talk that I attended is part of a series called “One Book, One Chicago,” which in-depth explores a book throughout the fall that in some way relates to Chicago.  This year the book is The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow.  I have only read the first chapter of this book for a class, so I can’t say much about it.  But Green and Saenz can, both being young adult authors. So they were brought in to discuss the book and relate it to their experiences writing about and exploring young adult issues.  Donna Seaman led the conversation with prompts, which Green and Saenz mulled over.

I had never heard of Saenz before I heard about this event, but I am an avid John Green fan as of this summer.  He has written books such as Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns, which are both intelligent, insightful, funny and unlike most young adult novels, wholly original.  In addition he is also well-known for being half of a popular YouTube show, the vlogbrothers.  (Mama and Nick:  Remember the guy who made the Singamajig symphony video.  That’s John Green.) Basically John and his brother Hank have a channel in which they separately post videos tri-weekly.  They talk to each other, educate, humor and basically just do random and fantastic things.  Green fans are called “Nerdfighters” (if you’re asking yourself if this is real life, the answer is yes.  Embrace it.) and their goal is to “decrease the level of suck” in the world, as proclaimed by the Green brothers themselves.  I recognize this all sounds kind of ridiculous, but unlike most of YouTube, it isn’t all just nonsense…both brothers are very well-educated.  Ok, more background than you ever needed to know.  Continue.

So when I went to this event alone, I wasn’t even remotely worried because I knew that these would be my people.  And I was right.  I could easily relate to purple-Converse girl because she liked John Green, and if she was into the vlogbrothers, she was probably into an entire category of nerdy things in the same realm (i.e. Harry Potter).  While we were sitting in the auditorium waiting for the show to start, a couple of girls who were next to us for a while finally turn and ask “are you Nerdfighters?” which just goes to show how absurd the entire movement is.  Because never did I think I would hear that question.  But yes, we were.  And so I was able to bond with even more people.  Come to find out, by the way, that purple-Converse girl and these two girls recognized one another from…randomly following each other on Tumblr.  Small world, Chicago.  But wait, it gets smaller.  While we were talking I mentioned I go to Olaf and one of the girls responded that she was going to visit Olaf this weekend on a prospective student tour.  So that happened.  

And then Saenz and Green talked, and even though I know nothing about Augie March, they still had a lot of great insights into not only writing but general life itself.  Of course everything John Green said was fantastic, but I was really pleasantly surprised by Saenz.  He was an ordained Catholic priest who left the priesthood (but not the Church) to become a writer.  ”This [writing] is my theology.  This is my philosophy,” he said.  He also stated his belief that “Literature and art shape a culture of people,” and that literature and art were necessary, not excess, entities to a people.  His words really reminded me of my favorite quote by an amazing and underrated poetess named Muriel Rukeyser:  ”The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”  

I could write more about the type of material they discussed but this is already excessively long.  I will say one more quote by Saenz, however, which was this: “Chicago is The Great American City.”  

Yes.  Yes it is.