When John Green began promoting his 2017 novel “Turtles All the Way Down,” he made an irreversible decision.
He wasn’t sure whether to talk about his lived experience with OCD, which inspired his teenage protagonist, Aza. He decided he would. It helped him feel less alone in his mental illness. It helped others feel the same.
“But it also cost me something,” Green tells USA TODAY. “The truth is, once you share something, it’s not yours anymore in lovely ways and also really difficult ways. And losing that private relationship with myself, with my illness, was both liberating in some ways and constraining in some ways.”
Green has been in the public eye for two decades. He has millions of subscribers across the YouTube channels he hosts with his brother, Hank Green. Many of his bestselling novels, like “The Fault in Our Stars” and “Looking For Alaska,” have been adapted for the screen. He’s written nonfiction, notably last year’s bestseller “Everything is Tuberculosis.” And he’s one of the most influential authors of the 2010s young adult literary craze.
But achieving that level of fame and fandom comes at a price. In “Hollywood, Ending” (out now from Dutton Books), his first book for adults and first novel in nine years, Green reckons with the splintering of the private and public selves.
Battling the machine: Warhol, child actors and social media fame
“Hollywood, Ending” is the story of two young actors playing love interests in an Andy Warhol biopic. Everyone in Kai Laramie’s shiny new orbit is sure his first role will cement him as Hollywood royalty. And Juniper Castillo is a former child actor whose overbearing mother pushed her into the spotlight.
Both have very different relationships with the industry. Kai struggles with the expectations of his newfound fame while trauma from his past resurfaces. Juniper knows how to feed the machine and is eager to establish herself as a serious creative, but now gets told she’s “difficult” to work with. Filming “Andy Warhol Never Gets Old” will bond them forever.
It’s a love story, yes, but it’s ultimately a sobering novel for the social media age.
And it’s purposeful that Green chose Warhol, the famed figurehead of the Pop Art movement who may or may not have coined the phrase “15 minutes of fame.” In an era defined by reality TV, influencers and virality, Green thinks Warhol’s sentiments could not be more relevant.
“Warhol saw a lot of this coming. He’s most famous for rendering three-dimensional soup cans in two dimensions, and he saw the screen-ification of everything coming,” Green says. “He saw that life was going to be two-dimensional, that it was going to be mediated by these big corporations. He saw all that coming, and yet he was able to insulate himself from celebrity culture in a way that is no longer possible.”
If “Hollywood, Ending” celebrates anything, it’s the art that comes before celebrity rears its ugly head. Green relishes in niche references to the books, movies and songs that impact his characters. Crafting fake movies and TV shows brought him “great joy,” he says.
But he also reckons with entertainment culture and his part in it, however willing or reluctant. He dedicated the book to Elyse Marshall Pfeiffer, his publicist at Dutton, whom he says he “couldn’t have survived” 2014 and 2015 (when “The Fault in Our Stars” and “Paper Towns” became movies) without.
“I could not have written this book if I hadn’t been through the machine myself in various ways, both as a YouTuber, but especially as an author and an author whose books were being adapted for movies,” Green says. “But that said, I wanted the book to be a love letter to movies as horrifying as I find the making of the sausage, I love the sausage.”
Why John Green is still writing about young people
Green’s early 20s were far different from his protagonists. When he was 22, he worked a six-month stint as a hospital chaplain. He remembers applying for jobs as a paralegal and a religion teacher, unsure of where he wanted his career to go.
Until now, all of Green’s novels have featured teenagers. That’s different in “Hollywood, Ending,” his adult debut, if only by a hair. Kai and Juniper may be able to vote, but they’re still grappling with their place in the world like many of his younger characters.
He says writing them helped him look back on his 22-year-old self with a bit more compassion, too.
“I loved writing about people in their early 20s because they have so much to figure out. The doors of your future are still infinite,” Green says. “Those first years of navigating adulthood are brutally hard, at least they were for me, but they’re also really rich. They’re also a time that determines so much of the rest of your life.”
Green’s longtime readers have been celebrating his evolution from YA to adult since he announced the book in March. Many of them were teens when they read “The Fault in Our Stars” or “Looking for Alaska.” Just as they saw themselves in Gus or Hazel, they’ll see themselves here, too.
“For me, to have a seat at the table in a young person’s life when they’re forming their values, when they’re first conceptualizing ideas around love and grief and loss and suffering and hope and all that stuff, it’s so special and it’s such a gift,” Green says. “There’s a lot that one becomes accustomed to in publishing, but that never gets old.”
What does John Green make of fame now?
There’s a certain irony to my interview with Green, him on one side of a computer screen, me on the other. He’s spent months marketing a new project on social media and now is meeting with a journalist to discuss said book, which is critical of marketing a new project on social media and the press that follows that project.
It’s meta, we both know. He brings it back to Warhol. Doesn’t it remind you of his two-dimensionality? And what do we do with that?
“We have to find ways to humanize each other even though we’re not interacting necessarily in real life,” he says.
In the lead-up to “Hollywood, Ending,” social media is a necessary evil to get readers excited about books. He’s filmed himself signing copies and reading excerpts. It reminds me of Juniper taking selfies with Kai in the book, knowing the accumulating “likes” will lead to butts in seats. But he’s determined to keep it grounded.
“I am more troubled by aspects of the social internet and less willing to engage with them even in pursuit of ticket sales or book sales,” Green says. “I’m trying really hard to make content that’s more human-friendly, even if it gets less views. I’m trying really hard to write books that are human-friendly, but it’s hard. It’s really hard.”
And though Green’s entire career has been supported by video content online, the magic happens in real life. When he’s back home from tour, he’s going to make 30 pounds of homemade hot sauce with his mom. He’ll be able to write again. He might pick up a new project around the house. He’s not exactly sure what, but whatever he does, he’ll be touching grass.
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, covering buzzy releases, chatting with authors and diving into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.