John Irving

For other people named John Irving, see John Irving (disambiguation).

John Irving
Irving in Cologne, Germany, September 14, 2010
Born	John Wallace Blunt Jr. (1942-03-02) March 2, 1942 (age 82) Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist screenwriter
Alma mater	University of New Hampshire University of Iowa
Notable works	The World According to Garp The Cider House Rules A Prayer for Owen Meany A Widow for One Year
Notable awards	Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay National Book Award for Paperback General Fiction for The World According to Garp
Website
john-irving.com

John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt Jr.; March 2, 1942)^[1] is an American-Canadian novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.

Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978. Many of Irving's novels, including The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), The Cider House Rules (1985), A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), and A Widow for One Year (1998), have been bestsellers. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 72nd Academy Awards for his script of the film adaptation of The Cider House Rules.^[2]

Five of his novels have been adapted into films (Garp, Hotel New Hampshire, Owen Meany, Cider House, and Widow for One Year). Several of Irving's books and short stories have been set in and around New England, in fictional towns resembling Exeter, New Hampshire.

Early life

Irving was born John Wallace Blunt Jr. in Exeter, New Hampshire, the son of Helen Frances (née Winslow) and John Wallace Blunt Sr., a writer and executive recruiter;^[3][4] the couple separated during pregnancy.^[5] Irving was raised by his mother and stepfather, Colin Franklin Newell Irving, who was a Phillips Exeter Academy faculty member. His uncle Hammy Bissell was also part of the faculty. John Irving was in the Phillips Exeter wrestling program as a student athlete and as an assistant coach, and wrestling features prominently in his books, stories, and life. While a student at Exeter, Irving was taught by author and Christian theologian Frederick Buechner, whom he quoted in an epigraph in A Prayer for Owen Meany. Irving has dyslexia.^[6][7]

Irving never met his biological father, who was a pilot in the Army Air Forces during World War II. In July 1943,^[8] John Blunt Sr. was shot down over Burma but survived. The incident was incorporated into The Cider House Rules. Irving did not find out about his father's heroism until 1981, when he was almost 40 years old.^[9]

Career

Irving's career began at the age of 26 with the publication of his first novel, Setting Free the Bears (1968). The novel was reasonably well reviewed but failed to gain a large readership. In the late 1960s, he studied under Kurt Vonnegut at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.^[10] His second and third novels, The Water-Method Man (1972) and The 158-Pound Marriage (1974), were similarly received. In 1975, Irving accepted a position as assistant professor of English at Mount Holyoke College.^[11]

Frustrated at the lack of promotion his novels were receiving from his first publisher, Random House, Irving offered his fourth novel, The World According to Garp (1978), to Dutton, which promised him stronger commitment to marketing. The novel became an international bestseller and cultural phenomenon. It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979 (which ultimately went to Tim O'Brien for Going After Cacciato)^[12] and its first paperback edition won the Award the next year.^[13][a] Garp was later made into a film directed by George Roy Hill, starring Robin Williams in the title role and Glenn Close as his mother; it garnered several Academy Award nominations, including nominations for Close and John Lithgow. Irving makes a brief cameo appearance in the film as the referee in one of Garp's high school wrestling matches.^[14]

John Irving

The World According to Garp was among three books recommended to the Pulitzer Advisory Board for consideration for the 1979 Award in Fiction in the Pulitzer Jury Committee report, although the award was given to The Stories of John Cheever (1978).^[15]

Garp transformed Irving from an obscure literary writer to a household name, and his subsequent books were bestsellers. The next was The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), which sold well despite mixed reviews from critics. Like Garp, the novel was quickly made into a film, this time directed by Tony Richardson and starring Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, and Beau Bridges. "Interior Space", a short story originally published in Fiction magazine in 1980, was selected for the 1981 O. Henry Prize Stories collection.^[16]

In 1985, Irving published The Cider House Rules. An epic set in a Maine orphanage, the novel's central topic is abortion. Many drew parallels between the novel and Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1838). Irving's next novel was A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), another New England family epic about religion set in a New England boarding school and in Toronto, Ontario. The novel was influenced by The Tin Drum (1959) by Günter Grass,^[17] and the plot contains further allusions to The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne and the works of Dickens. In Owen Meany, Irving for the first time examined the consequences of the Vietnam War—particularly mandatory conscription, which Irving avoided because he was a married father when of age for the draft.^[18] Owen Meany became Irving's best selling book since Garp.

Irving returned to Random House for his next book, A Son of the Circus (1995). Arguably his most complicated and difficult book, and a departure from the themes and settings of his previous novels, it received ambivalent reviews by American critics^[19] but became a national and international bestseller on the strength of Irving's reputation for fashioning literate, engrossing page-turners. Irving returned in 1998 with A Widow for One Year, which was named a New York Times Notable Book.^[19]

In 1999, after nearly 10 years in development, Irving's screenplay for The Cider House Rules was made into a film directed by Lasse Hallström, starring Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, and Delroy Lindo. Irving also made a cameo appearance as a disapproving stationmaster. The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and earned Irving an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.^[20]

Irving wrote My Movie Business, a memoir about his involvement in creating the film version of The Cider House Rules. After its publication in 1999, he appeared on the CBC Television program Hot Type to promote the book. During the interview, he was asked about author Tom Wolfe "once again" proclaiming the death of the modern novel. Irving responded, "I don't read Tom Wolfe, so I didn't hear what he said." The episode then cut to a photo of Wolfe, and Irving elaborating that Wolfe "can't write" and his writing made Irving gag.^[21] When asked about his statements subsequently, Irving has said he believed the Hot Type interview was over and he was speaking off the record, and that footage from the interview had been manipulated. Wolfe appeared on Hot Type later in 1999, calling Irving, Norman Mailer, and John Updike his "three stooges" who were panicked by his newest novel, A Man in Full (1998).

Irving's 10th book, The Fourth Hand (2001), also became a bestseller. In 2004, A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound, a children's picture book originally included in A Widow for One Year, was published with illustrations by Tatjana Hauptmann. Irving's 11th novel, Until I Find You, was released on July 12, 2005.

On June 28, 2005, The New York Times published an article revealing that Until I Find You (2005) contains two specifically personal elements about his life that he had never before discussed publicly: his sexual abuse at age 11 by an older woman, and the recent entrance in his life of his biological father's family.^[1]

In his 12th novel, Last Night in Twisted River, published in 2009, Irving's central character is a novelist with, as critic Boyd Tonkin puts it, "a career that teasingly follows Irving's own."^[18]

Irving has had four novels reach number one on the bestseller list of The New York Times: The Hotel New Hampshire (September 27, 1981), which stayed number one for seven weeks, and was in the top 15 for over 27 weeks; The Cider House Rules (June 16, 1985); A Widow for One Year (June 14, 1998); and The Fourth Hand (July 29, 2001).

Other projects

Irving in the Netherlands (1989)

Before the publication of Garp made him independently wealthy, Irving sporadically accepted short-term teaching positions (including one at his alma mater, the Iowa Writers' Workshop). He also served as an assistant coach on his sons' high school wrestling teams until he was 47 years old. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as an Outstanding American in 1992.^[22][23]

In addition to his novels, he has also published Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (1996), a collection of his writings including a brief memoir and unpublished short fiction, My Movie Business, an account of the protracted process of bringing The Cider House Rules to the big screen, and The Imaginary Girlfriend, a short memoir focusing on writing and wrestling. In 2000, Irving revealed that he and Tod "Kip" Williams were co-writing a screenplay for an adaptation of the novel A Widow for One Year (1998). This adaptation became The Door in the Floor, starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger, released in 2004, directed by Williams.

In 2002, his four most highly regarded novels, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year, were published in Modern Library editions.^[24] Owen Meany was adapted into the 1998 film Simon Birch (Irving required that the title and character names be changed because the screenplay's story was "markedly different" from that of the novel; Irving is on record as having enjoyed the film, however^[25]).

In 2005, Irving received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.^[26][27][28]

In a New York Magazine interview in 2009, Irving stated that he had begun work on a new novel, his 13th, based in part on a speech from Shakespeare's Richard II. Simon & Schuster published the novel, titled In One Person (2012), taking over from Random House. In One Person has a first-person viewpoint, Irving's first such narrative since A Prayer for Owen Meany (Irving decided to change the first-person perspective of Until I Find You to third person less than a year before publication).^[1] In One Person features a 60-year-old, bisexual protagonist named William, looking back on his life in the 1950s and '60s. The novel shares a similar theme and concern with The World According to Garp, the latter being in part about "people who hate you for your sexual differences," said Irving.^[29]

He won a Lambda Literary Award in 2013 in the Bisexual Fiction category for In One Person, and was also awarded the organization's Bridge Builder Award to honor him as an ally of the LGBT community.^[30]

On June 10, 2013, Irving announced his next novel, his 14th, titled Avenue of Mysteries, named after a street in Mexico City.^[31] In an interview the previous year, he had revealed the last line of the book: "Not every collision course comes as a surprise."^[32]

On December 19, 2014, Irving posted a message on the Facebook page devoted to him and his work that he had "finished 'Avenue of Mysteries.' It is a shorter novel for me, comparable in length to 'In One Person.'"^[33] Simon & Schuster published the book in November, 2015.^[34]

On November 3, 2015, Irving revealed that he'd been approached by HBO and Warner Brothers to reconstruct The World According to Garp as a miniseries. He described the project as being in the early stages.^[35] According to the byline of a self-penned, February 20, 2017, essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Irving had completed his teleplay for the five-part series based on The World According to Garp and was working on his fifteenth novel.

On June 28, 2017, Irving revealed in a long letter to fans on Facebook that his new novel was primarily a ghost story.^[36] "...I have a history of being interested in ghosts. And here come the ghosts again. In my new novel, my fifteenth, the ghosts are more prominent than before; the novel begins and ends with them. Like A Widow for One Year, this novel is constructed as a play in three acts. I'm calling Act I 'Early Signs.' I began writing it on New Year's Eve—not a bad night to start a ghost story."

In an interview with Mike Kilen for The Des Moines Register, published on October 26, 2017, Irving revealed that the title of his novel-in-progress was "Darkness As a Bride."^[37] The title was taken from Shakespeare's play, Measure for Measure: "If I must die, / I will encounter darkness as a bride, / and hug it in mine arms." He later changed the title to The Last Chairlift Archived February 29, 2024, at the Wayback Machine. The novel was published by Simon & Schuster in October 2022.

Irving received the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award at the annual Dayton Literary Peace Prize gala on October 28, 2018.^[38]

Works

Novels

• Setting Free the Bears (Random House, 1968) ISBN 0-345-21812-4
• The Water-Method Man (Random House, 1972) ISBN 0-394-47332-9
• The 158-Pound Marriage (Random House, 1974) ISBN 0-394-48414-2
• The World According to Garp (Dutton, 1978) ISBN 0-525-23770-4
• The Hotel New Hampshire (Dutton, 1981) ISBN 0-525-12800-X
• The Cider House Rules (William Morrow, 1985) ISBN 0-688-03036-X
• A Prayer for Owen Meany (William Morrow, 1989) ISBN 0-688-07708-0
• A Son of the Circus (Random House, 1994) ISBN 0-679-43496-8
• A Widow for One Year (Random House, 1998) ISBN 0-375-50137-1
• The Fourth Hand (Random House, 2001) ISBN 0-375-50627-6
• Until I Find You (Random House, 2005) ISBN 1-4000-6383-3
• Last Night in Twisted River (Random House, 2009) ISBN 1-4000-6384-1
• In One Person (Simon & Schuster, 2012) ISBN 9781451664126)
• Avenue of Mysteries (Simon & Schuster, 2015) ISBN 9781451664164)^[39]
• The Last Chairlift (Simon & Schuster, 2022) ISBN 9781501189272

Short fiction

• Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (Arcade Publishing, 1996) ISBN 1-55970-323-7

Other fiction

• The Cider House Rules: A Screenplay (1999)
• A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound (children's) (2004)

Nonfiction

• The Imaginary Girlfriend (1995)
• My Movie Business (1999)

Filmography based on writings

• The World According to Garp (1982)
• The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)
• Simon Birch (1998) (partly based on A Prayer for Owen Meany)
• The Cider House Rules (1999)
• The Door in the Floor (2004) (based on A Widow for One Year)

Personal life

In 1964, Irving married Shyla Leary,^[40] whom he had met at Harvard in 1963 while taking a summer course in German, before traveling to Vienna with IES Abroad.^[41] They have two sons, Colin and Brendan.^[42] The couple divorced in the early 1980s.^[43] In 1987, he married Janet Turnbull, who had been his publisher at Bantam-Seal Books^[43][44] and is now one of his literary agents.^[45] They have a daughter, Eva Everett, born in 1991.^[43][46] In 2015, Eva came out as a trans woman.^[47]

Irving has homes in Toronto and Pointe au Baril, Ontario.^[44] On December 13, 2019, Irving became a Canadian citizen. He has said he plans to keep his U.S. citizenship, reserving the right to be outspoken about the United States and his dislike of Donald Trump, whom he referred to as vulgar, narcissistic, and xenophobic.^[48]

Irving was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2007 and subsequently had a radical prostatectomy.^[43]

Irving is a second cousin of academic Amy Bishop, who was convicted of perpetrating the 2010 University of Alabama in Huntsville shooting.^[49]

In 2018, Irving was an honorary degree recipient at Williams College.

Notes

1. Garp won the 1980 award for paperback general Fiction.
   From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Awards history there were dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories, and multiple fiction categories, especially in 1980. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including this one.

References

1. Smith, Dinitia (June 28, 2005). "While Excavating Past, John Irving Finds His Family". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 27, 2012. Retrieved September 10, 2014.
2. "John Irving 1999 Acceptance Speech on Winning the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay" Archived October 1, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, oscars.org
3. "Pabook.libraries.psu.edu". Archived from the original on May 17, 2013. Retrieved May 16, 2012.
4. "Maryellenmark.com". Archived from the original on November 5, 2013. Retrieved May 16, 2012.
5. Schäfer, André (2012). "Le Monde selon John Irving". Arte. Archived from the original on April 9, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2015.
6. "John Irving, Award-Winning Author & Screenwriter". Yale Dyslexia. Archived from the original on September 20, 2021. Retrieved September 21, 2021.
7. Saltz, Gail (2024). The Power of Different: The Link Between Disorder and Genius. London: Little, Brown Book Group. pp. 21, 39. ISBN 9781472139948. OCLC 1419992815.
8. Klaus Brinkbäumer (May 21, 2010). "Zehn Wahrheiten von ... John Irving; "Ich bin gerannt und hab mir den Block gegriffen"". Spiegel Online. Archived from the original on May 24, 2010. Retrieved September 24, 2010.
9. Mel Gussow (April 28, 1998). "A Novelist Builds Out From Fact to Reach the Truth; John Irving Begins With His Memories". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 10, 2010. Retrieved November 7, 2009.
10. "John Irving remembers the late Kurt Vonnegut". EW.com. April 22, 2007. Archived from the original on November 11, 2017. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
11. Nicholas Wroe (August 13, 2005). "Grappling with life". The Observer. London. Retrieved November 5, 2009. his parents had married six months before his birth
12. "National Book Awards – 1979" Archived June 20, 2019, at the Wayback Machine. National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 14, 2012.
13. "National Book Awards – 1980" Archived April 26, 2020, at the Wayback Machine. National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-14. (With essays by Deb Caletti and Craig Nova from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
14. "The World According to Garp". afi.com. Archived from the original on January 23, 2024. Retrieved January 23, 2024.
15. Heinz-D. and Erika J. Fischer, The Pulitzer Prize Archive: Vol 21: Chronicles of the Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction, K G Saur Munchen 2007, page 346
16. "The O. Henry Prize Stories". www.randomhouse.com. Archived from the original on September 5, 2017. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
17. See for example Irving's New York Times article "A Soldier Once" Archived February 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, about Grass's autobiography Peeling the Onion, July 8, 2007.
18. Boyd Tonkin (October 23, 2009). "Cooking up a storm: John Irving's latest saga reveals the secrets of authors and chefs alike". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on October 29, 2009. Retrieved November 5, 2009.
19. "NYTimes". www.nytimes.com. Archived from the original on March 25, 2016. Retrieved March 6, 2024.
20. "Browser Unsupported - Academy Awards Search | Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences". awardsdatabase.oscars.org. Retrieved January 26, 2017.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
21. Solomon, Even (December 17, 1999). "John Irving's movie business". Hot Type. Toronto: CBC Archives. Archived from the original on April 17, 2023. Retrieved March 6, 2024.
22. Ariel Leve (October 18, 2009). "The world according to John Irving". TimesOnline. London. Retrieved November 4, 2009.^{[dead link‍]}
23. "National Wrestling Hall of Fame". Retrieved November 4, 2009.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
24. "Editions of A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving". goodreads.com. Archived from the original on September 22, 2016. Retrieved April 9, 2019.
25. "John Irving's personal thoughts on Simon Birch". September 7, 1998. Archived from the original on September 29, 2012. Retrieved November 6, 2009.
26. "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement. Archived from the original on December 15, 2016. Retrieved December 27, 2020.
27. "2005 Summit Highlights Photo". 2005. Archived from the original on January 19, 2021. Retrieved December 27, 2020. Author John Irving with Dr. Bernard Kouchner, founder of Doctors Without Borders and a Nobel Prize laureate.
28. "John Irving Biography and Interview". 2005. Archived from the original on January 19, 2021. Retrieved December 27, 2020.
29. "Novelist Irving Brings Humor to Morris Gray Lecture | Arts | The Harvard Crimson". www.thecrimson.com. Archived from the original on August 31, 2017. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
30. "25th annual Lambda Literary Award winners announced" Archived June 10, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. LGBT Weekly, June 4, 2013.
31. "John Irving's Facebook Page". Facebook. June 10, 2013. Retrieved June 10, 2013.
32. "John Irving visits Cap U as part of tour for new novel In One Person". Archived from the original on September 8, 2012. Retrieved May 27, 2012.
33. "John Irving". www.facebook.com. Archived from the original on February 26, 2022. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
34. Irving, John (2015). Avenue of Mysteries (First ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9781451664164. OCLC 903473905.
35. Kevin Haynes (November 4, 2015). "John Irving novel to become an HBO miniseries". Purple Clover. Archived from the original on November 7, 2015. Retrieved November 5, 2015.
36. "John Irving". www.facebook.com. Archived from the original on February 26, 2022. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
37. "What author John Irving has learned from Dan Gable and why it could become a movie". Des Moines Register. Retrieved November 11, 2017.^{[permanent dead link‍]}
38. "APNewsBreak: Author John Irving wins literary peace award". AP News. Archived from the original on July 19, 2018. Retrieved July 19, 2018.
39. Peschel, Joseph (November 8, 2015). "John Irving revisits odd characters, circuses, orphanage in new novel". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Archived from the original on August 14, 2017. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
40. Kim Hubbard (July 30, 2001). "Hands Full". People. Archived from the original on May 18, 2009. Retrieved November 4, 2009.
41. R.Z. Sheppard (August 31, 1981). "Life into Art: Novelist John Irving". Time. Archived from the original on December 3, 2010. Retrieved November 4, 2009.
42. Benjamin Svetkey (May 22, 1998). "Widow Maker". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on October 10, 2008. Retrieved November 4, 2009.
43. Ariel Leve (October 18, 2009). "The world according to John Irving". The Sunday Times. London. Retrieved November 4, 2009.^{[dead link‍]}
44. Boyd Tonkin (October 23, 2009). "Cooking up a storm: John Irving's latest saga reveals the secrets of authors and chefs alike". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on October 29, 2009. Retrieved November 3, 2009.
45. Boris Kachka (October 11, 2009). "Call of the Wild". New York. Archived from the original on October 17, 2009. Retrieved November 4, 2009.
46. John Irving. "Reading Guide, From A Widow for One Year". Archived from the original on December 18, 2023. Retrieved December 18, 2023.
47. Rita Braver (October 23, 2022). "John Irving: A writer's life". CBS Sunday Morning. Archived from the original on February 18, 2024. Retrieved February 18, 2024.
48. Dundas, Deborah (December 13, 2019). "'Ending up here is a love story.' American writer John Irving becomes a Canadian citizen". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on December 14, 2019. Retrieved December 13, 2019. He reserves the right to continue to be outspoken about the United States. He reserves the right to criticize. "I very much intend to keep my American citizenship. ... He is vocal, very vocal, about his dislike of Trump ("his vulgarity, his narcissism ... his xenophobia").
49. Meghan E. Irons (February 17, 2010). "Ala. slay defendant is related to novelist John Irving". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on February 20, 2010. Retrieved February 21, 2010.

Further reading

• Derbyshire, Jonathan . John Irving interviewed Archived September 23, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. New Statesman.
• Hansen, Ron (Summer–Fall 1986). "Interviews: John Irving, The Art of Fiction No. 93". The Paris Review. Archived from the original on October 28, 2010. Retrieved November 2, 2010.
• Sargent, Colin W. "Singular First Person". Portland Magazine, May 2012.
• Shindler, Dorman T.. "John Irving Wrestles Fate". Book, July/August 2001.
• Shindler, Dorman T.. "The Creative Crucible". Pages, July/August 2005.

External links

• Official website
• Literary Encyclopedia Archived December 15, 2018, at the Wayback Machine
• John Irving at IMDb
• Works by John Irving at Open Library
• The New York Times — Featured Author: John Irving Archived August 28, 2017, at the Wayback Machine