Intro to John Irving

1. “The World According to Garp”, by John Irving, 1978

This humorous yet tragic novel is a narration of the life of T.S. Garp. This begins with Garp's strange conception (his mother, a nurse during World War II sleeps with a wounded and unconscious Sergeant in order to become pregnant); moves on to Garp’s teenage years where he attends a New England boarding school and becomes interested in wrestling, writing and eventually sex – and where he meets the woman he will eventually marry. The rest of the novel concerns his adult years – in which he pursues becoming a writer and has three children. “The World According to Garp” is a good “starter-Irving” because it introduces themes that recur throughout his work, including wrestling, family, New England boarding schools, Americans in Europe, and anxiety concerning the loss of body parts (the weirdness of it all is hard to explain, except to say that it involves feminists who amputate their tongues; uni-cycling bears; and transsexual football players) and is joyously imbued with compassion for the human condition.

2. “A Prayer for Owen Meany”, by John Irving, 1989

A very small boy with a strange voice (it always sounds like he is screaming), Owen accidentally kills his best friend’s mother with a baseball and ever-after understands that he is an instrument of God. Narrated by John Wheelwright, a close friend of Owen’s during the 1950s and 1960s, this recounts various moments in Owen’s life during which John came to believe in Owen’s destiny. Strange (and often very humorous) moments include nine-year-old Owen being chosen to play the baby Jesus in a school play because he is so small (and the booming sound he makes when reprimanding his parents for attending, from his crib) – a Christman season that is ruined by Owen’s fainting when he claims that he has seen a gravestone with his own date of death carved into it. As the years go by, throughout prepatory school, Owen and John practice “The Shot”, a basketball move where John lifts Owen over his head so that he may dunk the ball (which takes on graver implications by the conclusion of “A Prayer for Owen Meany”). As he gets older, Owen becomes fixated on going to Vietnam, believing this is where is meant to serve as an instrument for God, and also to die. As the date approaches, Owen ends up placed in a fateful situation, in which he must make the choice he has spent his life preparing for. This is a life-affirming novel; wonderful in even its weirdest turnings.

3. “A Widow for One Year”, by John Irving, 1998

In this family-tale, told in three parts, the primary character is Ruth Cole. Ruth is first introduced in the summer of 1958, when, five-years-old, she walks in on her mother having sex with 16-year-old Eddie, her alcoholic father’s summer-assistant and a student at Philips Exeter Academy. The death of Ruth’s older brothers, years before she was born, has turned her mother into a semi-zombie, and Ruth is haunted by photographs of Tommy and Timmy hanging on the walls. Her father is a writer of children’s storybooks, and womanizer. Part two begins in 1990, and Ruth is now a famous writer; she is in Europe, doing research on prostitutes in Amsterdam, and she witnesses the murder of a prostitute by a client. The third segment of the novel is in 1995, and Ruth now has a small son and has literally been a widow for one year. On a trip to Paris, Ruth becomes involved in a whirlwind romance which leads to a happy marriage. By the end, through strange coincidence, certain characters from Ruth’s far-off past return, bringing the novel to a clean resolution.


Commentary: This flight is a good introduction to John Irving, particularly when read in order. “The World According to Garp” is a great entry-point into Irving’s strange, complex, often extremely funny worlds. Structurally, it is the most straightforward, and its weirdness is compacted because of this; also, themes that will recur throughout his work are present here – strange animals; limbs having lives of their own; loss of family; adultery; travel to Europe; New England and its boarding schools; problems with sex and sexuality; complex issues both family-related and ethical. “A Prayer for Owen Meany” has a slightly stranger bend, with its zealous and tiny main character, and its somewhat fractured narration; yet is still a story about the human spirit, and contains a lot of joy. “A Widow for One Year” is probably the “hardest read”…yet its story is powerful, and its experiments with Irving’s themes is great for a reader, particularly after having been introduced to them in other novels. A part of this novel has been made into an excellent movie, “The Door in the Floor.” Another candidate for a 3rd or 4th Irving novel is “The Hotel New Hampshire”, 1981; but this is such a lumbering bear of a book that unless you find that you love Irving, its wild breadth can be too much to deal with.