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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Books Enter the John Irving Matrix

Posted by on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 4:31 PM

Today is the release date for John Irving's newest novel, Last Night in Twisted River. To celebrate, The Millions linked to Wikipedia's John Irving Recurring Theme Matrix. Here's a taste of it:

IrvingMatrix.png

You should really check out the whole thing here. I have a weird relationship with John Irving. I think he hit a spectacular sweet spot with four books—The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire, The Cider House Rules, and A Prayer for Owen Meany. I would never say that they're well-written books, but they're novels you can give to people who don't read books, and there aren't too many of those out there. Almost everyone is guaranteed to love them; they're emotionally involving and weird enough to keep a reader entertained for the full length of the book.

Almost every book Irving has written since 1990, though, has just been utter crap. With the exception of A Widow for One Year, which was a slight uptick in quality but nowhere near his best work, his novels have gotten worse and worse every time. His last book, as I wrote for The Stranger back when I was the Book Intern, was all about his own penis and it was barely readable. I have not read Last Night at Twisted River, but if it is good, then that will be the greatest literary comeback in recent memory.

But because Irving is so beloved by the general public, I wanted to warn the internet at large in advance that Irving will be reading at Third Place Books on November 3rd. He almost never tours away from the east coast, so this will be a rare appearance. If you want to thank him for his earlier books, this will be your only chance to do so on the west coast for a very long time.

 

Comments (15) RSS

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Fifty-Two-Eighty 1
NYT reviewed the new book in today's paper, and they were not kind. Oh well.
Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty http://www.nra.org on October 27, 2009 at 4:38 PM
michael strangeways 2
i liked Son of a Circus...any book with dildos, trannies and gay twins is aok with me.
Posted by michael strangeways http://www.seattlegayscene.com/ on October 27, 2009 at 4:44 PM
3
I'd add Setting Free the Bears, Water-Method Man and the 158 Pound Marriage to the list of good books by John Irving. Perhaps not as good as the middle period of his career but definitely good. But Son of the Circus marked the beginning of me not liking his work at all.

I've wondered if it's just that my life experience and John Irving's have now significantly parted ways. We had a number of things in common, but he's turned into an old academic and I'm significantly younger and semi-blue-collar.

But other people seem to agree they kinda suck, so I'm thinking maybe it's not just me.
Posted by dwight moody on October 27, 2009 at 4:45 PM
4
Have you noticed that almost no author after Thomas Pynchon could really ever be counted as literature?

I mean, Tama Janowitz? Are they going to be teaching her and Irving in 2050?

Oh yeah they might...I remember we used to have a "special reading list" for what you would call today the ADD students (we just called them druggos back then)..the would read books like "Alive". Maybe Irving could go in that pool.
Posted by Thousannaire Tyrant on October 27, 2009 at 4:52 PM
Dexter 5
I agree with your quadrufecta of Irving works. I did a report on him my senior year of high school, and those were the four I focused on. Until I Find You almost seemed like a return to the old ways, after the totally disappointing Fourth Hand (happyish ending? WHAT?!)

I am afraid to read this new one....
Posted by Dexter on October 27, 2009 at 4:53 PM
Fnarf 6
Irving is in the future going to be grouped with guys like Ken Kesey and Tom Robbins -- regional sixties relics, you could call them. Maybe John Barth; maybe Brautigan, maybe even Pynchon. Pretty minor stuff, but relatively special enough in context to get somebody's attention. When the last boomer dies, they will all seem much, much less interesting.
Posted by Fnarf http://www.facebook.com/fnarf on October 27, 2009 at 4:59 PM
Rotten666 7
The World According to Garp is still one of my favorites after all these years. Three of his last four books have been unreadable. Until I find you? Blech. It only holds a special place because both my wife and I were reading it when we met. That led to a pretty intense discussion about books in general, and I came off as charming and intelligent (for once). The rest is history.
Posted by Rotten666 on October 27, 2009 at 5:52 PM
Jaymz 8
I expected Fnarf to mention John Updike, too - I liked the Rabbit Run stuff but the future will not be kind to many of the writers we of a certain age enjoyed for these many years.... like John Irving. I also liked the four books mentioned, and the early stuff - afraid to read the later works.
Posted by Jaymz on October 27, 2009 at 6:11 PM
Julie in Eugene 9
It would be interesting to see if you removed the names of the novels, whether you could guess which novels lined up with which checkmarks. I could probably have come pretty close with the 4 or 5 I've read...
Posted by Julie in Eugene on October 27, 2009 at 6:18 PM
10
Can we just memorialize him on Facebook instead?
Posted by kinaidos on October 27, 2009 at 7:06 PM
Quincy 11
Wikipedia has " homosexuality" and "lesbianism" as separate (seperate? different?) categories, also.
Posted by Quincy on October 27, 2009 at 7:10 PM
Rhett Oracle 12
...and under 'sexual variations' how would you describe the fate of Garp's wife's boyfriend as she was going down on him in the front seat of her car when Garp arrived home, speeding into the driveway, hitting her car and - ahem - neutering the b.f.? The Hotel New Hampshire blew me away, and I still remember seeing for the first time ever in a respectable book the word "beshitted".
Posted by Rhett Oracle on October 27, 2009 at 7:19 PM
13
Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz is a fabulous book. So there
Posted by Michael Wells on October 27, 2009 at 10:37 PM
attitude devant 14
Oh, I'm with Michael Strangeways--Son of the Circus is terrific. What other book has a huge hollow dildo used to smuggle drugs? I quote the aerialists and smile inwardly: "We are still falling into the net."
Posted by attitude devant on October 28, 2009 at 1:42 AM
Free Lunch 15
Seems like you could make a pretty check-filled grid with a lot of authors. Clive Cussler would have a heavily checked column labeled "Something important is underwater." Carl Hiaasen - hell, you can't even tell from the description whether it's one you've read before.

Of course, Irving being a "serious writer" is what makes this grid so great. The presentation does have an undertone of mean-spiritedness, though. I wonder what he thought when he first saw it.
Posted by Free Lunch on October 28, 2009 at 5:54 PM

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