The title of Me and
Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews introduces the three main
characters of this 2012 YA novel: 17-year-old protagonist Greg Gaines, who
makes a point of being an acquaintance to everyone but a friend to almost no
one; Earl Jackson, Greg’s best friend and movie-making partner; and Rachel, who
is diagnosed with leukemia at the beginning of the story.
Greg is insistent that his account of his re-acquaintance
with Rachel (although they were briefly childhood friends, his mom pushes him
to keep Rachel company after she is diagnosed with cancer) is not going to
provide any life lessons, or touching moments, or one-liners written in italics
(“The cancer had taken her eyeballs, yet
she saw the world with more clarity than ever before”). Greg looks out for
himself and he has learned the correct way to navigate the many social groups
in his inner city Pittsburgh high school. He says,
“I didn’t join any group outright, you understand. But I had access to all of
them. The smart kids, the rich kids, the jocks, the stoners. The band kids, the
theater kids, the church kids, the gothy dorks. I could walk into any group of
kids, and not one of them would bat an eye. Everyone used to look at me and
think ‘Greg! He’s one of us.’ Or maybe something more like: ‘That guy’s on our
side.’ Or at the very least: ‘Greg is a guy who I am not going to flick ketchup at.’ This was a brutally difficult thing
to accomplish.”
Becoming friends with Rachel again compromises all of his work,
as it aligns himself with just one person (from one group).
Greg talks about the year in a straightforward first-person
style that is broken up by his personalized lists and movie scripts. Many of
the conversations in the book are presented as dialogue in a movie, which makes
the story move purposefully towards the end.
One of the highlights of the story is Greg and Earl’s own
interest in movies, and especially classic and canonical movies. Greg’s father,
a professor, has a collection that they start borrowing from when they are still
pretty young, and one of their first finds is Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Greg provides
a good synopsis of the movie, and an excellent description of his first viewing
of it with Earl, and the movie follows them throughout the book. Greg and Earl
have even attempted to remake the film under the title Earl: The Wrath of God II. It was so much fun following the
references to this movie throughout the book, and especially to note Greg’s
coverage of the filming process, Klaus Kinski’s onset behavior, critical reception,
and his own reaction to the film. It is a different kind of canonical text to
appear in a YA novel, and it was a very effective one.
Although Greg resists any attempts to make his story into
something meaningful and moving, it happens anyway. His friendship with Earl is
at the heart of story, and the way that it unravels is much more affecting than
Greg’s sort-of-friendship with Rachel. But the three of them – Greg, Earl, and
Rachel – are integral to the story itself, as is the way they find each other
under unconventional circumstances.
