第12章是本书中最喜欢的一章，直接提高了我对这本书的喜爱度。
这里不说Hazel最喜爱的作者Peter Van Houten长相和行为与预期不符(胖胖的大面团身上插了四根棍，胡子拉碴一周没有修整，穿个睡衣听嘻哈，大早上开始喝酒，开门就给两位一个闭门羹等等等等)，问的问题也让两个青春期小书迷招架不住。
...you must tell them to leave at once, that there has been a terrible mistake, that the blessed Van Houten was making a rhetorical offer to meet, not an actual one, that such offers must be read symbolically.
Peter Van Houten对助理说的话，我的邀请只是书面客套的修辞，而不是真正意义上的拜访。
见面确认了Gus,第一句话让向来有话可说的Gus无话可讲。
“Which of you is Augustus Waters?” he asked. Augustus raised his hand tentatively. Van Houten nodded and said, “Did you close the deal with that chick yet?”(你还没到手？)
Whereupon I encountered for the first and only time a truly speechless Augustus Waters. “I,” he started, “um, I, Hazel, um. Well.”
“This boy appears to have some kind of developmental delay,” Peter Van Houten said to Lidewij.
哈哈哈哈！
Then I noticed two large black garbage bags, full and twist-tied, behind the couch.
“Trash?” I mumbled to Augustus soft enough that I thought no one else would hear.
“Fan mail,” Van Houten answered as he sat down in the lounge chair. “Eighteen years’ worth of it. Can’t open it. Terrifying. Yours are the first missives to which I have replied, and look where that got me. I frankly find the reality of readers wholly unappetizing.”
Peter Van Houten家里的客厅空荡荡的像个艺术馆，除了没有艺术品。本来以为是垃圾的袋子里面装满了从不拆开的读着来信(现实中的读者只会让他索然无味)。但他却从没将这18年中的来信处理掉，一直留着。
...He was rather ruining the whole business of authorial genius for me. But he had the answers.
Peter Van Houten喝威士忌加“意念水”(也就是不加水)，除了喝酒时坐直身体，谈话吊儿郎当的样子让Hazel彻底颠覆了三观。
I was horrified, too, but there was something pleasant about a guy so despicable that he wouldn’t treat us deferentially. “We do have some questions, actually,” I said. “I talked about them in my email. I don’t know if you remember.”
“I do not.”
Peter Van Houten并没有将两人当成癌症患者，而是该怎么样怎么样。一些不大礼貌的话虽然有些冒犯却让Hazel有些高兴。Van Houten是一朵不做作的花朵，哈哈哈。
大作家的问题来了。
1.“Are you familiar with Zeno’s tortoise paradox?” he asked me.
阿基里斯和乌龟赛跑的悖论
(说是一道数学题不如说是一道哲学题。记得以前老师还讲过。)
2.“You wrongly assume that I need to hear your question in order to answer it. You are familiar with the philosopher Zeno?” I shook my head vaguely.
Hazel表示我大老远来是为解答书的结尾不是回答什么阿基里斯，但大作家表示“你以为你问了我一定要回答吗？”然后抛出第二个问题“知道哲学家芝诺吗？”
3.“Alas. Zeno was a pre-Socratic philosopher who is said to have discovered forty paradoxes within the worldview put forth by Parmenides—surely you know Parmenides,” he said, and I nodded that I knew Parmenides, although I did not.
面对第三个问题，Hazel撒谎了，哈哈哈。还是不晓得。(知道芝诺的四十个悖论奠基者巴门尼德吗？)
4.“Thank God,” he said. “Zeno professionally specialized in revealing the inaccuracies(不精准) and oversimplifications(过度简化) of Parmenides, which wasn’t difficult, since Parmenides was spectacularly wrong everywhere and always. Parmenides is valuable in precisely the way that it is valuable to have an acquaintance who reliably picks the wrong horse each and every time you take him to the racetrack. But Zeno’s most important—wait, give me a sense of your familiarity with Swedish hip-hop.”
看到Hazel“知道”巴门尼德，Peter Van Houten松了口气，可惜接下来的谈话依旧让Hazel蒙圈。虽然巴门尼德事事错误离谱，赛马却一挑一个准(算是逸事)。接下来却直接转到了“了解瑞典嘻哈吗？”
Rudolf Otto said that if you had not encountered the numinous, if you have not experienced a nonrational encounter with the mysterium tremendum(与今人战栗的神秘相遭遇), then his work was not for you. And I say to you, young friends, that if you cannot hear Afasi och Filthy’s bravadic response (虚张声势的顶撞，bravadic 法语词汇虚张声势的，充好汉的)to fear, then my work is not for you.
大作家说放的音乐不是让你们听内容(有几个听懂瑞典语的)，而是歌曲的感觉，感觉！如果你们体会不到那种奇特的神圣，战栗，失语与污秽的微妙平衡，对不起，我的书不是给你们的。
其实多少能理解一点Peter Van Houten的阐述，有时候会觉得作品的表达是一种很抽象虚无缥缈的没有任何意义的存在，但心境会有种无法描摹的共通，一瞬间失却的填补，如同精神上的一种朝圣。当然这里有点跑题，个人感受。
...no one really solved it until Cantor (康托，德国数学家，集合论创始人)showed us that some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
Van Houten发现Hazel只是追问故事结局，就更进一步解释了和乌龟赛跑的理论(刨除事实你的确跑得过它，理论上你一直比它快，但一直追不上，只是无尽缩短两者之间的距离)。结论:有些无穷比别的无穷更大，这就是答案。这里面涉及数学函数问题了，豹豹也不是很懂，无穷大和无穷小是独一无二的，但世界有很多的无穷，它们不是具体的数，而是一种数列/函数变化规律。是一种动态变化趋势(想起了一位智者向国王借麦子，在棋盘上以指数为请求借麦粒，最后结果是整个国ku都不够)。
(这里也有点隐喻的味道，Hazel的疾病和死亡就像是和乌龟赛跑的不断缩小的无穷。)
以上是查的百科给的大概解释，其实就是活在当下，0-16有无限个无穷，0-20也有无限个无穷，每一秒的跳动才是生命赐予的礼物。如同上一章Gus提到书中(作者Van Houten)主人公Anna发病摔倒看到生命力旺盛的小草时充满召唤向上的感受。不是为了坚强而坚强，而是为了一种希望好好过好每一天。she can’t get up and her face is like an inch from the football-field grass and she’s just stuck there looking at this grass up close, noticing the way the light hits it and . . . I don’t remember the line but it’s something like Anna having the Whitmanesque revelation that the definition of humanness is the opportunity to marvel at the majesty of creation or whatever. You know that part?
“Great. Okay, so the Dutch Tulip Man. Is he a con man? Do he and Anna’s mom get married?”
Van Houten was still staring at the ceiling beams. He took a drink. The glass was almost empty again. “Lidewij(作家的助理), I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t.” He leveled his gaze to me. “Nothing happens to the Dutch Tulip Man. He isn’t a con man or not a con man; he’s God. He’s an obvious and unambiguous metaphorical representation of God, and asking what becomes of him is the intellectual equivalent of asking what becomes of the disembodied eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg in Gatsby. Do he and Anna’s mom get married? We are speaking of a novel, dear child, not some historical enterprise.”
我太喜欢这一段了，这本书仅仅这一章就值得去读了。文中Anna的准备做手术之后结尾戛然而止，妈妈是否和卖郁金香老爹结婚也只字未提。Hazel是将自己带入了小说，想知道如果自己像手雷爆炸了父母会怎样，Van Houten则被追问小说各个人物结尾到抓狂和无奈。因为卖郁金香的老爹只是一个救赎象征，无论如何生活总要继续下去，人要给自己一种希望和宽慰。后面提到盖茨比中的大广告牌实在是太感动了，突然想重新捡起重读。
这一章内容很多，不知不觉快写成读后感了。因为勾起了兴致，准备今天抽时间默默读下去。以上很多是个人的观点，不能作为参考，仅仅只能作为一种个人解读。很久没有遇到让自己心仪的段落了，这一章很喜欢。其实一般越是给予虚拟故事人物希望的作者越是逃避现实，给予曾经自我的一种补偿。但愿大作家不是如此悲惨的命运(因为电影是看一章书看一节相应片段进行补充，还是挺有意思的尝试)。
因为这一章大早上就开始补读，很久没有遇到让人一口气往下看的情节内容，这本书估计今天或明天结束。如果出笔记可能会再有一篇。准备读完停下来消化一下零碎，空一空脑子。
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