The Novels of John Irving

THE NOVELS OF JOHN IRVING BY WAYNE LESLIE JAMES A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUNCIL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1981 DEDICATION In memory of my father, whose wisdom of how the world really works far exceeded that of his son. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to my chairman, Dr. R. Brandon Kershner, for his in- valuable criticism, his unflagging encouragement, and his unremitting compassion. Very special thanks to Victoria LaPlaca for her expert typing and editorial assistance throughout all the stages of this long project, and for her constant faith in me. Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii ABSTRACT v INTRODUCTION 1 Notes 14 CHAPTER ONE: SETTING FREE THE BEARS 17 Part One: "Siggy" 22 Part Two : "The Notebook" 27 Part Three : "Setting Them Free" 42 Notes 48 CHAPTER TWO : Tlffi WATER METHOD MAN 49 Notes 84 - CHAPTER THREE : Tffi 158 POUND MARRIAGE 85 Notes 112 CHAPTER FOUR: Tlffi WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP 113 Notes 159 BIBLIOGRAPHY 161 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 164 IV Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy THE NOVELS OF JOHN IRVING By Wayne Leslie James December 1981 Chairman: Dr. R. Brandon Kershner Major Department: English John Irving is a contemporary American novelist whose works have captured a large popular audience and serious, but not extensive, critical attention. The popularity of Irving' s best-selling novel, The World According to Garp (1978), sent many readers back to his earlier novels: Setting Free The Bears (1968), The Water Method Man (1972), and The 158 - Pound Marriage (1973). All of Irving 's novels draw upon his experiences in the various places he has lived: parts of New England, Iowa City, and Vienna, Austria. Irving has employed his imagination to, in his words, "trans- late" these experiences into the characters, incidents, and themes of his fiction. Irving stresses very heavily the role of imagination and inventiveness in fiction, and this emphasis is evident in the various kinds of humor, the verbal wit, and the originality of characterization found throughout his novels. Irving also deals extensively with the phenomenon of imaginative creation; several of Irving' s protagonists are artists of one sort or another, and the nature and place of fictional creation are prominent issues in most of his stories. Because he some- times writes what has been called "fiction about fiction," Irving has certain connections with the postmodern literary movement. But the nature of Irving' s themes and narrative structures is essentially traditional. His narratives consistently employ social and historical verisimilitude, and the values which his works champion are those that have generally concerned humanitarian artists in the liberal tradition. Irving' s works are valuable as commentaries on the institutions and lifestyles that characterize our age. Unlike many contemporary writers, Irving is partly a satirist in the traditional sense; his works often attack the worst in modern society: the persistence of prejudice, the predilection for violence, and the overemphasis on mate- rialism. Irving' s novels often deal with the dangers, both emotional and physical, which abound in a world characterized by social and political chaos, but they also focus on those human values and institutions, such as the close-knit family, which can provide purpose and stability within that dangerous world. vi INTRODUCTION Greil Marcus begins his interview with John Irving published in December of 1979 by stating, "John Irving remains little known, but he is no longer unread."^ This observation was precisely right in 1979, but today John Irving is quickly becoming as well known as his novels. Thanks to the enormous amount of "press" given to his last two books, The World According to Garp (1978) and his newly released The Hotel New Hampshire ,^ and to his extensive exposure through feature articles and inteviews in popular magazines and appearances on various television talk shows, the name John Irving is well on its way to becoming a house- hold word. Indeed, Irving has become, in certain respects, the epitome of the "popular" writer; his latest book soared straight to the top of the best-seller list even before its official release date. Irving has found himself in much demand for such things as public readings and various sorts of creative writing conferences, and he seems somewhat less reluctant than previously to participate in such events. Part of Irving' s reluctance to become a public figure is no doubt a manifesta- tion of his simple desire, which he has made well-known, to remain a private, family-oriented man. Moreover, Irving consistently maintains, as many other authors have also, that public and critical attention to him tends to distract attention from what he sees as truly important about a writer: his work. At various times, Irving has expressed the same sentiments as his protagonist (who is also a novelist) in The World According to Garp : "Read the work. Forget the life."^ But to abide — strictly by Irving' s own admonition would be to miss at least part of what is important about his novels. John Irving grew up in Exeter, New Hampshire, where he received his private school education at Exeter Academy. He was, in his words, "a struggling C/B student" who maintained interest and showed promise in two activities: writing and wrestling."* He credits wrestling with teaching him the value of determination and hard work, and maintains that there was a "metaphoric" connection between how he learned to wrestle and how he learned to write. He notes in the Rolling Stone interview, I was not a very good wrestler, but I did well. ... I could learn one thing, and do it over and over and over so that I could do it on anybody. I thought I could learn to write that way too; I was very mechanical about it. I had straightfor- ward teachers who taught me all the basic things first. Just a sense of clarity, and the variations that are possible on the sentence- -just that.^ After graduating from Exeter, Irving attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he attempted to continue his wrestling, but he dropped out when he could not achieve the same kind of success at wrestling that he had enjoyed at Exeter. Irving then attended the University of New Hampshire and from there went as a student to Vienna where he devoted himself to his writing. After returning from Vienna and graduating from the University of New Hampshire, Irving spent two years at the Iowa Writers Workshop, during which time he published his first novel, Setting Free The Bears (1968). Irving received positive critical response to his first novel as well as to his second and third The Water Method Man (1972) and The 158 - Pound Marriage (1973)--but none of his first three books sold well enough to earn him much money. Irving relied for his livelihood on teaching at various places, including the Iowa Writers Workshop, until the overwhelming success of his fourth novel, The World According to Gar£ (1978) gave him the financial inde- pendence to devote himself to writing full time. Irving makes no secret of his distaste for "biographical readings" of fictional works, but it is quite clear that his fiction has drawn heavily upon his personal experiences. (I will examine more closely Irving 's attitude concerning the place of personal experience in writing as part of my analysis of Ga££ in chapter four.) Irving's first novel, for example, is set in and around Vienna; its background descriptions draw upon Irving's firsthand observations of Vienna and the Austrian countryside, and much of its subject matter emanates from his knowledge of Austrian political history during and around World War Two. His next three novels are all set in American locales where Irving has lived (various parts of New England and Iowa City, Iowa), and in each are characters who travel, at some point, to Vienna to live or visit. Moreover, his third and fourth novels both include characters who are in some way connected with wrestling; the protagonist in Gar£, in fact, forms a devotion to wrestling, both as a participant and a coach, which shows an uncanny resemblance to Irving's own. (The wrestling motif in GarH was heavily exploited, somewhat to Irving's dismay, by Pocket Books in its promotion of the novel.) And, finally, all of Irving's novels deal to one extent or another with the phenomenon of imaginative, fictional creation; again, in Gar£, there are striking parallels between the writing career of and the actual books produced by the protagonist and Irving's own career and novels. When questioned about his reliance on his experiences as a source for his fiction, Irving has consistently played down the role of those experiences with qualifications such as the one he voiced during the Rolling Stone interview: "Any writer uses what little experience he or she has and translates it. It's the translating, though, that makes the difference."^ "Translating" for Irving involves a fiction writer's use of "imagination" to transform the raw materials of his experience into stories that are, above all, "orig- inal"; the power of fiction, in Irving' s view, lies in direct proportion to the energy of its "inventiveness." But terms like imagination and invention have taken on such a wide range of connotations within the contemporary era that one must consider Irving' s use of these terms carefully to avoid being misled about the essential nature of his fiction.

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