The John Green Collection (64 page)

But the main point is already visible in this case: because
D
can vary, this
single
formula is capable of specifying a whole
family
of functions, each of which can be used to describe a different Colin-Katherine affair. So all Colin needs to do now is add more and more variables (more ingredients along the lines of
D
) to this formula so that the family of functions it encompasses is bigger and more complicated, and therefore has a hope of encapsulating the complex and challenging world of Katherine-dumpings, which is what Colin eventually realizes thanks to Lindsey’s insight.

So that’s the story of Colin Singleton and his Eureka moment and the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability. I should briefly point out that although no reasonable adult mathematician (at least not one with a soul) would seriously suggest that you can predict romance with a single formula, there actually has been some recent work that points in this direction. To be specific, psychologist John Gottman (and longtime head of the University of Washington’s “Love Lab”) and a group of coauthors, including the mathematician James Murray, have published a book entitled
The Mathematics of Marriage
that purports to use math to predict whether marriages will break up. The basic philosophy is, in its outline, not unlike Colin’s Theorem, but the math that goes into it is far more sophisticated, and the claimed outcome is far more modest (these people aren’t pretending that they can predict
every
divorce, just that they can make some educated guesses
⁸⁶
).
⁸⁷

There’s one last thing I’d like to mention: notwithstanding John’s notorious tendency to cannibalize his friends’ lives for literary material, and notwithstanding the fact that I was somewhat accelerated in school as a kid, Colin’s character was in no way inspired by me. For one thing, I’ve only ever kissed two girls named Katherine. Interestingly, though, throughout my whole career as a pathological Dumper, the Katherines were the only two women who ever dumped me. Strange. It almost makes me wonder if there’s a formula out there somewhere . . .

—Daniel Biss

Assistant Professor, University of Chicago, and Research Fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute

⁸⁵
Yeah, I know, that’s a lot to keep in your head all at once. Look, John
told
you that Colin was a prodigy.

⁸⁶
Right, big deal—I can also make educated guesses about whether my friends’ relationships will last. I guess the point here is that they were able to mathematically justify the educated-guessing process.

⁸⁷
This work is too technical for me to summarize here (for example, I don’t understand a word of it), but if you want to read about it, you can either try the colossal and impenetrable book
The Mathematics of Marriage
by Gottman, Murray, Swanson, Tyson, and (yet another) Swanson, or else the much more manageable and fun online review and summary by Jordan Ellenberg, available at
http://slate.msn.com/id/2081484/.

Turn the page
for a Q & A with

JOHN
GREEN

Q & A with JOHN GREEN

Were you really dumped 53 times before you got married?

The short answer is yes. But in the interest of full disclosure, there are a couple of caveats to that statistic:

This book has a fancy new cover designed by one of your readers. How do you feel about that?

I love the cover so much, and I am so grateful and astonished to have such passionate and creative readers. My publisher was kind enough to hand the cover-making reins over to readers of
Katherines
, who came up with hundreds of really excellent designs, but the winner was a young woman named Sarah Turbin. Her design captures so much about the book—its nerdiness, its heart, and its love of footnotes.

Katherines
was first published in 2006. Looking back on it now, how do you remember the writing and publication of it?

It was immensely fun to write. Colin can be a very annoying person, but I had such fondness for him, and I particularly loved Hassan—every minute that I spent with Hassan was such a pleasure, and I’ve often wished that I could write a whole book about him (and who knows, maybe I will someday). When I wrote this book, I was working for
mental_floss
magazine, researching gobs of trivia every day, and so it was a wonderful release to have a place to write about: for instance, how shower curtains are affected by vortexes.

Anagrams play a huge role in
An Abundance of Katherines
–why?

Well, anagrams say something about the malleability of language. We always think of language as an immovable object, as this set of codified and unbreakable rules. But when you consider that one can rearrange the letters in PRESBYTERIANS and spell BRITNEY SPEARS
¹
, it reminds us that language (and the stories we tell with language) can be twisted and molded. Words are not static. Language shapes our memories, and it is also shaped by our memories.

How’s your anagramming?

Terrible. Whenever I play Words with Friends now, my friends who have read
Katherines
expect me to be some kind of Words with Friends genius, and I invariably fail to spell anything more impressive than “Zap,” while they are—presumably—constantly cheating. I also don’t speak any of the foreign languages that Colin speaks. Nor have I ever been good at math. I was no child prodigy, but like most people, in high school I did have to start grappling with the plain fact that I was not quite so special as I had originally imagined myself to be.

How do your high school experiences shape your writing?

I attended a small and wonderful boarding school in Alabama called Indian Springs School, and I’m certainly not above borrowing from my own high school experiences. I also think that my particular high school experience pushed me toward writing about 1. the South, and 2. smart kids, and 3. teenagers removed from direct parental control, and I also probably—4.—owe this whole numbered-list-inside-a sentence construction to high school, since I stole it from my friend Todd Cartee.

In high school, how did you spend your free time?

Mostly, I sat around with my friends and talked. I mean, we would play video games or watch TV or sneak out into the woods or play ultimate Frisbee, but all of these activities were just vehicles for talking.
²
Whenever I’m asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you’re being told. Other than talking, I spent a lot of time getting dumped. As any dumpee can tell you, getting dumped is extraordinarily time-consuming.

What’s new with Daniel Biss?

Daniel Biss, the mathematician who wrote the formulae in
An Abundance of Katherines
and taught me to understand enough abstract mathematics to be able to write the book, was working happily as a professor of mathematics when this book came out. But then he discovered, of all things, politics, and in 2010, he became the only professional mathematician in the Illinois State House of Representatives. As of this writing, he is running for the state senate in Illinois, and I have no doubt that he’ll win. We need people who can actually do the math in positions of power in this country, and I’m very proud of Daniel’s success. And even though he is now an elected representative of the people of Illinois, he is generous enough to remain my personal Resident Mathematician.

What have you done since
Katherines
?

My newest book is called
The Fault in Our Stars.
It’s about love and loss and romantic epics and stuff. If I’m not mistaken, you can actually just turn the page and start reading it right now.

¹
The whole Britney/Presbyterians thing fascinates me because “Britney” is such an odd spelling. (It is less common than either Brittany or Brittney.) This begs a question: Did Britney Spears’s parents choose to spell her name eccentrically
because
of its anagrammatic potential?

²
Example: I was on the ultimate Frisbee team at my high school, and I was of course the worst member of the team by a very wide margin, which is really saying something, because we were all pretty bad. And all I remember of playing ultimate Frisbee is running up and down a field, listening to my friends’ stories, and telling my own. I suppose that now and again I must have caught or thrown a Frisbee, but I only remember us telling each other these stories between heaving breaths as we ran back and forth across the field.