How long will it last? Well, though it may seem absurd to compare Green with William Blake, some 190 years after the latter’s death, people still place ribbons on his gravestone in Bunhill Fields cemetery in London.
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Was it removed, or stolen? Whatever the truth, Amsterdam film commissioner Simon Brester says the one that is there now is the one from the film.Īt the moment, the TFIOS bench ranks alongside Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris and Jack Kerouac’s grave in Lowell, Massachusetts, as a shrine - almost a YA holy site. It doesn’t much matter that there has been some doubt as to whether this is the actual bench from the film. It becomes an interior visit, a visit of the mind one can see a quietness coming over people, and almost a slight hesitancy among parents as they see how strongly this story has affected their children.
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It is covered in signatures and messages and has become a kind of living fan book of remembrance - both for the novel itself and for friends and relatives who have been taken by ‘the emperor of all maladies’.ĭo such physical places become even more important in an increasingly digital world? There is something special about visiting an ordinary location imbued with such feeling. One Danish girl, visiting with her family, was visibly upset, and peeled away from her parents to write her own, private message on the bench. I’m backpacking around Europe by myself and this is the reason I’m in Amsterdam.” There is a book here, surely - TFIOS The Bench, which would have pictures of people at the bench and quotes (in fact, this has almost happened online: the site, which has a plaque on the back of the bench, allows people to upload selfies from the location, and other benches, and asks for donations).
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I don’t know, it’s so…realistic.”Įmma DeBoef, a 21-year-old psychology student from Michigan, was one of many who asked me to take pictures from the other side of the canal. We got lost like five times, but I’m so happy to be here.
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Fifteen-year-old Sophie from Hungary said: “I looked at it on Google views for like two weeks, working out how to walk here from where we are staying. In the short time we spent here on a recent long weekend with my wife and 17-year-old daughter (who wanted to come to Amsterdam for this reason), we met people from Chile, Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, the UK and the US - all of whom had come to the city specifically to see this bench. There is something wondrous about the power of words to touch so many people. Kris & Hannah’ ‘Thank you for all our little infinities Gus!’ - this last a message to a fictional character. ‘Maybe okay will be our always’ reads another. ‘Way to kick cancer’s ass!’ reads one message. There are also the familiar padlocks (“love locks”), that cluster like multi-colored barnacles, which are removed every few days by the city authorities. The bench is covered with graffiti and references to the novel. Tourist boats slide past, but on the one I took during a recent visit to the city, its history did not feature in the commentary. Many people pass it without realizing its special place in so many people’s hearts - although they may wonder why so many are taking photographs. The bench lies at the junction of two canals bordering the Leidsegracht and Herengracht, just down from one of the city’s elegant, curved bridges. It is life imitating art and extremely moving to witness.Ī Danish father photographing his daughters at FIOS bench. Just as in the novel, Gus and Hazel are in Amsterdam to visit Green’s invented writer Peter Van Houten, whose novel An Imperial Affliction they both adore, so in the real world these young people have come to the city on a similar pilgrimage, to walk in the footsteps of their young heroes, driven by a love of Green’s book. It is here that Gus tells Hazel that his cancer has spread - a scene that takes place in Hazel’s hotel room in the novel but whose dialogue is faithful to the book. All day they come - in ones and twos, threes and fours, groups of older teenage girls on gap year trips to Europe younger teenage girls on holiday with their parents young women in their early twenties, recently graduated and just beginning work - all of them making their slow, Internet-researched way to this quiet canal corner and to the bench where one of the key scenes from the film version of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars takes place. The film of John Green’s bestseller, The Fault in Our Stars, has turned a bench in Amsterdam into pilgrimage site for young adult fans of the book.Īmsterdam has a new literary pilgrimage site to sit beside Anne Frank’s house.