An Abundance of Katherines
My second novel, An Abundance of Katherines, is the story
of recent high-school graduate Colin Singleton. Colin is a former child
prodigy--he's fluent in eleven languages and has an outlandishly good
memory. Also, he has been dumped by 19 girls, all of whom were named
Katherine. After being dumped by K-19, Colin sets out on a road trip
with his best friend, and this book is the tale of that trip.
And now, some questions you may have.
Q. Is this book like Looking for Alaska?
A. Well, yes and no. Katherines is more of a comic novel (for
instance, no one dies), but I still like writing about smart kids and
friendship and figuring out what if anything matters.
Q. This book has a lot of anagrams and footnotes and also some math.
What's up with that?
A. The only way I can answer that question is to say that I don't think
you have to like footnotes or anagrams to like Katherines.
And I SWEAR you don't have to like math.
Q. It's not just cleverness for the sake of cleverness, is it?
A. I hope not. Certainly I've never taken a lot of stock in being clever.
Q. Colin believes that there are two kinds of people in this world:
Dumpers and dumpees. Which kind are you?
A. I am a dumpee. In fact, before I got married, I was dumped 53 times.
But never by a girl named Katherine.
Q. Is what why you picked the name Katherine?
A. Well, that had something to do with it. Also because Katherines is
a great word for anagramming (it contains, after all, both heart and
tear), and because it is a very common name.
Q. Yeah I have a question about that, actually. How could Colin have
been dumped by 19 Katherines? Are there even 19 Katherines in all of
Chicago?
A. When I was writing the book I actually decided to sit down and figure
out approximately how many Katherines there are currently living in
Chicago between the ages of 16 and 18 (which I figured to be the basic
pool from which Colin could draw girlfriends).
It's a very inexact science, but if you look at the frequency with which
kids in America were named Katherine between 1988 and 1990, and then
you look at the percentage of Cook County residents who are between
the ages of 16 and 18, the numbers indicate that there are something
like 275 16-18-year-old Katherines living in or very near the city of
Chicago, and that's not even counting the 3 million people who live
in the suburbs. So the real question is: How did Colin manage to date
ONLY 19 of them?
Q. You're a nerd.
A. Yeah.
Q. Seriously.
A. I know. Sorry. But you asked!
