The Anthropocene Reviewed
By John Green
Publication Year: 20221
Type: Non-fiction
Genre: essays, cultural criticism
Read on 2022-11-16
★★★☆☆
This is an incredibly John Green book. The John Greeniest. The most John. The very Green.
***Skip the next two paragraphs if you don’t care about my history with John Green and just want a straightforward review of the book itself.
I came into this book with a lot of background. I first picked up a John Green book for a book club I joined at my new high school at age 13 and started watching the Vlogbrothers around that time. At nerd camp the summer after Grade 9, my new friend Margo and I looked at each other after one of us made some Vlogbrothers reference, and we gleefully threw up the Nerdfighter gang sign at the exact same time. I not only pre-ordered the signed first edition copy of The Fault In Our Stars in 2014, but also lived to see a mass retcon against John online thereafter as his young fans, myself included, outgrew the more maudlin notes of his books in our teen age and maligned his works to demonstrate our newfound Tumblr-borne political consciousness. In recent years, I caught up again with John and Hank on Tiktok and read and adored Turtles All The Way Down some 6-7 years after TFIOS, the last John Green book I read. And indeed, since I’ve watched some of his Tiktoks and YouTube videos in recent months and years, I have had previews of many of the personal anecdotes and poignant quotes that serve as the brick and mortar of this book.
I am also just very similar in personality and sentiment to this anxious middle-aged man in Indianapolis, something I observe time and time again in reading and watching his stuff. I love my average city the same way he loves Indianapolis. I romanticize bad weather on an ordinary day the same way he gave “wintry mix” four stars because of the one lovely night he had with his wife in 2019. When I travel I also have to hype myself up to do just one activity that I need to spend the rest of the day recovering from. In spite of my anxious sensitivity, I also ultimately love people, individual souls and the collective humankind. I just confirmed through a quick Google that John is a fellow INFP—something that I’ve probably looked up before and that totally checks out. Essentially, we are both idealistic dreamers who tend to see the world through rose-tinted glasses. If I was more astrology-savvy I’d look up his chart too because there’s just something here, some core sentimentality I recognize in him and identify with. Given how I devoured his books and videos at an incredibly emotionally porous period of my life, it might not be a stretch to say that I am this way in part because of John’s direct influence.
***And now my actual review of the damn book:
Green opens this—his first nonfiction—book noting that he no longer wanted to obscure his message through the medium of fiction. He also describes how his wife encouraged him to insert himself into his reviews (a note I have also received in several criticism workshops myself). The resulting collection of essays is loosely organized as reviews of disparate anthropocenic phenomena, a highly flexible framing device that allowed Green to write about pretty much anything he wanted to, incorporating random bits of anecdotal history, personal stories, and lots and lots of literary quotes (he admits the book is arguably overstuffed with these).
That said, the book is ultimately very fluffy and uncontroversial with not much of a thesis as a general cast of positive wonderment at and hope for humanity. It is fairly light on substance, generally light in tone, and rather meandering in scope. Green is a good writer with interesting and whimsical things to tell us, but overall The Anthropocene Reviewed pales in comparison many other similar essay collections that feature memoir-ish elements. Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong and The Undying by Anne Boyer come to mind as examples of more focussed and searing as well as more beautifully and poetically written books.
Nonetheless, this book went down like chicken soup and I’m really not mad about it. I am very familiar with Green’s conversational style of writing that leans on well-placed if occasionally corny axioms. They’re sweet and familiar, like nuggets of wisdom from dad that are occasionally gut-wrenching gold and frequently worthy of a (loving) eye roll.
Some other criticisms I had: occasionally the pacing and content of each essay felt a bit too meandering and random, and a couple “conclusions” felt really out of the blue and unrelated to the original set up of the essays in question. I got a bit tired of it all toward the end, as even my—usually very robust—quantum of whimsy running low.
Green also mentions in broad strokes but essentially skates over topics of institutionalized racism, etc. and his own privileged existence in several chapters. It felt a bit milquetoast to pay lip service and not give a more sensitive and specific rendering of these topics. He could’ve done just as well to omit these less developed passages, but ideally would’ve given them a bit more attention and creative leg space.
I give The Anthropocene Reviewed three stars.
