The novel-by far Irving’s longest, funniest and scariest-came out in hard cover in 1978. Both motifs would reappear in Garp -at once as foundations for a new central character, and as borders of the fictional territory Irving was mapping out for himself-and perhaps a good reader could have understood that as he put his imaginary house in order, Irving was getting ready to invent people who could take it over.īeginning Garp, Irving left Random House, which he felt had written him off, settling finally on Dutton and the editorship of the late Henry Robbins, who died suddenly of a heart attack this summer. The Water-Method Man and, especially The 158-Pound Marriage, drew on Irving’s long involvement with wrestling. Bears might have seemed a fluke, as if Irving had reached the high point of his career almost before he had begun it.Īll three books drew deeply on the years Irving, as a student, had spent in Vienna.
Moving from the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa to New England colleges closer to his home in Putney, Vermont, Irving supported his family-his wife, Shyla, a photographer, and their sons, Colin, 14, and Brendan, 10-by teaching. Neither was as good as the best parts of Bears. The Water-Method Man (1972), which might have been called Fuck-Up’s Progress, and The 158-Pound Marriage (1973), the acrid story of an affair between two couples, visited and departed the bookstores like ghosts. Irving’s first novel, Setting Free the Bears, a tale of two young Austrians who decide to let all the animals out of the Vienna zoo, was published by Random House in 1968 reviews were good, and it was very nearly made into a movie. Certainly given a paperback ad campaign almost as offensive in its vulgarity as the campaign for Woody Allen’s Interiors was in its avoidance of same, if you haven’t yet cringed at the slogan, BELIEVE IN GARP you lead a sheltered life. His latest novel, The World According to Garp, has achieved all the fame a writer could hope for-maybe more. John Irving, 37, remains little known but he is no longer unread. Who the fuck doesn’t do their apprenticeship? Who’s to say there’s going to be money? I never wanted money so badly as I did then, when I saw those pigs. You know, ‘It’s mine, I earned it, I did my apprenticeship…’ I kept thinking, you assholes.
Now they had a great righteousness about the money they were making. Around the time my second novel was published, I looked at some of the people I’d gone to school with-young doctors and lawyers-and they were so fucking proud of how they’d suffered through their fucking medical school and their law school. It took this book-and not the book, but the success of the book-for her to stop feeling that way. She didn’t understand why I didn’t just stay at a university and get tenure. “My mother would always think of me as either just writing, or working-teaching.
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