Two Instances of Prufrock

T S Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", commonly known as "Prufrock" has popped up twice in my reading recently. I hadn't come across it before, having studied no poetry except for Chaucer at school - that I can remember at least.

The first time I noticed it, I didn't realise it was "famous" - and it was on the cover of Ally Condie's Atlantia:

Human Voices Wake Us,

And We Drown

however I'm currently about halfway through The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and lead female character Hazel has been  quoting the whole poem and when she used the lines mentioned above I got googling.

So I've learnt something. Plus I knew Val McDermid had borrowed the title The Mermaids Singing from Eliot but I hadn't realised it was this poem.

Paper Towns UK publication date

It was recently announced on Twitter that John Green's Paper Towns would be published in the UK next year. The Bookseller today gives the exact date - 3 May 2010.

[Bloomsbury Publishing director] Odedina said: "Paper Towns is an enchanting novel about a boy’s fascination with a girl, which has much less to do with her than his ‘fantasy’ of her. It is a book that feels so true, about that slightly obsessional love which is not as much for the real person as the person we imagine and it is all done with such tenderness and humour. And it is a really great mystery adventure."

Paper Towns to be published in the UK

On Twitter, Bloomsbury (UK) have announced that they will be publishing John Green's Paper Towns in 2010.

Synopsis:

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life--dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge--he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues--and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

Printz medalist John Green returns with the brilliant wit and searing emotional honesty that have inspired a new generation of readers.