Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2010: What's in a name? A
pretty fantastic book idea, for starters. At heart, Will Grayson,
Will Grayson is about a couple of kids figuring out how to be
themselves. Two of those kids happen to have the same name, and
not much in common outside of that, but their serendipitous
friendship sets the stage for a much larger, braver, and more
candid story than the simplicity of the plot might suggest. The
relevance for teens here is clear--high school is the only time
in your life when you have the undivided rtunity to obsess
over your every move, sentence, and outfit change--but the part
about understanding who you are doesn't stop when you graduate.
That's what makes Will Grayson, Will Grayson as interesting a
pick for adults as it is for teens: the questions don't get
simpler, but looking at them through the eyes of a 16-year-old
brings a welcome sense of honesty and humor to this thing called
life. No one's ever too old to enjoy that. --Anne Bartholomew
Amazon Exclusive: David Levithan and John Green Talk About Names
Will Grayson, Will Grayson is about two teenage boys with the
same name, whose lives intersect in unexpected ways. The book
originated with the thought of giving two different boys the same
name, and to give that name some meaning. It also comes from
David's own experience. So to give you an inside peek at the
making of the book, we figured it would be fun to give you
in into our own names, as well as Will Grayson’s.
David Levithan David Levithan
To my knowledge, there are only two other David Levithans in the
world – my dad’s cousin, and a lawyer in South Africa who, as far
as we can tell, isn’t family. The last name Levithan is actually
the invention of an immigration official – when my
great-grandher came to America from Russia, it should have
translated to Levitan. But somehow the h got in there. Now,
whenever I meet another Levithan (which is rare), odds are good
that he or she is related to me.
That said, the story of Will Grayson, Will Grayson came from
someone whose name is close to mine, but not identical. David
Leventhal went to Brown at the same time I did, and people would
confuse us often.
This ended up being something of a joke, because David was an
extraordinary dancer, while I was…not an extraordinary dancer. So
people would excl, “We had no idea someone as clumsy as you
could be so graceful on stage!” and I’d have to say, “Well, un,
that wasn’t me.” Finally, right before graduation, I contacted
David and we met up. We became instant friends, and when we both
moved to New York after college, we were always in each other’s
company. The similarity of our names often threw people for a
loop… and I thought, well, that might make an interesting story.
Amusingly, David Leventhal’s college roommate’s name was . . .
Jon Green.
John Green
John Green
I was named after my great-grandher, John Michael Crosby, an
itinerant minor-league baseball manager and occasional catcher. I
like my name, but being a John Green can certainly be
inconvenient, because there are a lot of us. Among many others,
there is John Green the realtor in Mississippi (who owns
johngreen.com, much to my chagrin), John Green the Australian
botanist, and of course John Green the world-renowned Bigfoot
scholar. This last John Green, who is so revered in the field of
Bigfoot research that he is often called “one of the four
horseman of Sasquatchery,” is kind of my mortal enemy. I once
wrote a magazine article in which I passingly noted that Bigfoot
is, you know, fictional, and John Green replied with a letter
arguing that my anti-Bigfoot stance was besmirching the good name
of John Greens everywhere.
Such is the curse of being a John Green. Or a Will Grayson, for
that matter.
Will
We decided that I (David) would choose our character’s first
name, and John would choose his last name. I liked the name Will
because of its different, sometimes contradictory, meanings. As a
noun, it can be so strong – where there’s a will, there’s a way,
and whatnot. But as a verb, it’s split. Sometimes it’s just as
definite (It will be done!), but that definiteness is underscored
by an uncertainty – you say it will be done, but it hadn’t been
done yet, has it? And put it at the start of a question (“Will
you still love me tomorrow?”) and it becomes the entrance for all
kinds of vulnerability. That seemed right for the characters.
Grayson
I liked Grayson because whenever I would hear that name, it
always sounded to me like “grace in,” which always struck me as a
richly ambiguous phrase – is “grace in” the beginning of a clause
or the end of it? Are we being asked to find grace in something,
or to let grace in? Those questions seemed like interesting ones
for the guy I wanted to write about.