Reading John Irving

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
E. B. White

Half my life is an act of revision.
John Irving


My wife absolutely loves John Irving’s work. No question about it. I have to admit to being a bit jealous, and sometimes I think I should start writing like him.

I’ve only read two of Irving’s novels: A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Widow for a Year. (And I've read his non-fiction: Saving Piggy Snead and My Movie Business.) I’m a slow reader to begin with, and John Irving’s novels seem to take me longer than those of other contemporary authors.

I’ve concluded that the elaborateness of his fiction is responsible for my sluggish reading pace. John Irving, a professed disciple of Charles Dickens, is every bit as painstaking as his master when it comes to Victorian attention to detail. What’s more, like Dickens’s novels, Irving’s are full of coincidences that most writers wouldn’t dare to include in their manuscripts, let alone dream of pulling off. (I seriously considered leaving A Widow for a Year unfinished when, with only fifty pages left, the happy twists of fate started to strain my willingness to believe the story.) Moreover, I confess that I’m amazed—and certainly envious—at his lavishly long expository passages (this in an age when readers demand that authors get to the point quickly).

Indeed, Irving’s talent for describing a setting—down to its minutest elements—is astounding. I remember, in particular, spending several pages locked in an attic as Owen Meany and his friend, John, took turns rummaging around while they play “find the stuffed armadillo.” Irving describes the enclosure so vividly that, for a moment, I was overcome by an attack of claustrophobia and had to take a walk around the block. And, most recently, in A Widow for a Year, Irving almost did it again by making me stand—again for several pages—in the closet of an Amsterdam prostitute. (What’s his deal with closets and attics?)

But it’s precisely Irving’s fascination with minutiae that makes me, as a reader who also writes novels, anxious. When I delve into his fiction, I’m constantly aware at how hard he works at writing (his frequent use of italics also unnerves me). His novels, although masterful, come across as arduously labored. In interviews and essays, Irving states that he plans his books meticulously, leaving nothing to inspiration or surprise.

I admit to being a thorough planner as well, but I like to leave room for surprises to emerge during the first draft—and I love inserting spontaneous flights of fancy during revision, when I’m gaining confidence and control over the narrative.

Upon reading Irving’s novels I can tell that he’s a person of astounding willpower. Otherwise, how else can one explain that a person who's dyslexic—which John Irving is—can become a remarkably successful writer? But Irving’s extraordinary personal determination also makes his novels feel as if they were willed into existence, rather than brought forth with the help of large dosages of that elusive elixir called inspiration.

Almost every author will assure his or her readers that inspiration plays only a small role in writing; that worthy fiction is the product of hard work, and little else. But the object of good writing, I think, is to make the reader believe that the muses were constantly sitting on the writer’s shoulder, making the task effortless.

Still, in spite of my misgivings of John Irving’s approach to the craft of writing, the fact remains that he has produced superb novels and that he possesses the ability to create a setting so verisimilar, so truthful, that readers are able to fully grasp that the environment affects a character's behavior. And in this respect, Irving has no equal.