Author Profile: John Irving

John Irving

BIO

John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1942. He was educated at the University of Pittsburgh and University of New Hampshire, and also attended the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop where one of his teachers was Kurt Vonnegut.

His first novel, SETTING FREE THE BEARS, was published in 1968. THE WATER-METHOD MAN was his second novel (1972), followed by THE 158-POUND MARRIAGE (1974), HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE (1981), CIDER HOUSE RULES (1985), A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY (1989), and A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR (1998) among others.

His novel, A SON OF THE CIRCUS (1995), was arguably his most different and difficult. Irving's least "American" novel, A SON OF THE CIRCUS deals with issues of identity. Ever present, though, are many of John Irving's favorite (and unusual) motifs and themes --- dwarfs, prostitutes, lust, moral offense, faith. John Irving fans will once again enjoy his amusing characters and their outrageous pursuits.

He and his wife, Janet, and their three sons live in Toronto and southern Vermont.

--- John Winslow Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1942.

--- He grew up a faculty brat in an Exeter prep-school where his stepfather --- a Harvard graduate --- taught history.

--- Irving became a bookworm despite his dyslexia.

--- Irving married while an undergraduate and had the first of three sons at 23.

--- His first teaching job was at Windham College in Vermont.

--- He worked as assistant professor of English at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

--- In 1981, Irving divorced his first wife. He remarried to Janet Turnbull, his agent, a Canadian.

--- He currently coaches wrestling in addition to his literary duties.

--- Irving and his wife, Janet, live in Toronto and southern Vermont.

INTERVIEW

For thirteen years I have been writing and rewriting my screenplay of THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, for four different directors.  The first, Phillip Borsos, died; the fourth, the Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom, will direct the picture for Miramax this September --- Richard Gladstein (the Film Colony) producer.

For eight years I have been writing and rewriting my screenplay of A SON OF THE CIRCUS for one director (Martin Bell) from the beginning.  That film is supposed to go into production, in India, in January of '99 --- with Jeff Bridges in the role of the missionary.

And, since the winter of 1994, I have also begun and completed my ninth novel, A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR.

In short, I decided almost ten years ago that I was too busy to attempt to write a screenplay for A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, in addition to feeling that the issue of an alleged religious miracle would prove harder to film than it was to write about, and that I had neither the desire nor the stamina to revisit the Vietnam years. (In the sixties, I hated the sixties; in retrospect, I hate the decade even more.)

Therefore, when Mark Steven Johnson approached me not to write a screenplay for A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY but to allow him to write and direct the picture, I was very happy to let him try.  My conditions were demanding.  I am both surprised that Caravan accepted my terms and grateful to them that they did.  I said I wanted to read the shooting script and decide at that time if I wanted them to use my titles and the names of my characters.  Mark agreed.

I read the script, which I liked; it's a good story.  But I felt that Mark's story was markedly different from the story of A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY; I felt it would mislead the novel's many readers to see a film of that same title which was so different from the book.

I respect Mark's decision not to include the Vietnam War as the period for the film, although that period was what compelled me to write the novel in the first place.  It was not Mark's period.  I also respect that he softened the degree to which Owen Meany/Simon Birch is himself a religious miracle.  In for A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, Owen Meany is a miracle; in SIMON BIRCH, that character is prescient to an unusual degree but he is not literally miraculous.  Yet Simon's curiosity regarding "God's plan" for him makes him more than a character in mere destiny's hands.  That part of the film feels very close to the spirit of the novel, although there are (of course) literal differences.  In any case, the larger differences between the novel and the screenplay --- Vietnam and the nature of a religious miracle --- made me ask Mark to come up with a different title for his movie, and to rename my characters.

The film is essentially true --- indeed, it is very faithful --- to the novel's first chapter, and to the situation of the narrator not knowing who is father is at the time of his mother's death.  Mark was honest with me from the beginning that this was his principal interest, and I think he told that story extremely well.

I also like how he changed Owen's obsession with dunking a basketball to holding his breath underwater --- brilliant!  That works very well, and the feeling is the same.

But SIMON BIRCH is really Mark Steven Johnson's story --- with OWEN MEANY's beginning.  I think it was, therefore, a happy resolution for both Mark and me that he was able to make his film, which clearly was "suggested by" (as the credits say) A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, but which is clearly not A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY.

I saw the film on Monday, August 24th in Los Angeles.  It was what I expected to see --- a good, new story that takes as its starting point the first chapter of A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY and goes somewhere else with it.  I enjoyed it.  I thought Ashley Judd was terrific as the mother and Oliver Platt was wonderful as the mother's suitor. (Naturally I like the Voice Over, too.)

Another noteworthy point of difference between the novel and the film is the sense of humor.  Mark's character of Simon is a virtual stand-up comic --- much of the comedy in the film comes from one-liners.  The comedy of the novel comes less from dialogue than from the overall situation the characters find themselves in.  Mark also does this well.  The Sunday-school teacher is more than a memorable character; she's a great situation. (The humor in dialogue was also a sizable difference between the film of THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP and that novel, too.  Steve Tesich's GARP screenplay made a similar use of one-liners.  I don't really write comic dialogue.)

And, in the case of OWEN MEANY/SIMON BIRCH, the uses made of the Christmas pageant scene are also very different; both scenes are interesting, maybe more so for their difference.  I took my seven-year-old to both a theatrical version of Owen Meany's Christmas pageant (in Seattle, last Christmas) and to the SIMON BIRCH film.  He loved them both.

I think Mark and I have had an admirable relationship.  We've been candid to each other --- we've never concealed our differences --- and we respect each other.  It was simply impossible for me to be close to, or feel involved with, a production of OWEN MEANY as a film --- not while I was writing two other screenplays and a new novel.

I think it took a lot of courage for Mark to push ahead with his vision of OWEN MEANY, knowing from the beginning that it was unlikely I would permit him to use my title or the names of my characters.  I like SIMON BIRCH as a title too.  Mark and I discussed many other possible titles, among them A SMALL MIRACLE, which was my idea, but I like his idea better.

I wish the film well, and I tell readers of OWEN MEANY that they should go see it.  They'll find much in it that is remindful of the novel, and sizable differences too.  I think the film as more of an interpretation of the novel than as a movie "based on" a novel.  I know Mark would agree.

As for the more general topic of the translation of novel to film, I can speak with more authority on that subject in the cases of the two novels of mine that I have adapted for the screen --- as I told you, CIDER HOUSE RULES and A SON OF THE CIRCUS --- but the proper time to address that subject is when those films have been shot and are ready to be released.

--- by John Irving

ARTICLE

My first encounter with John Irving's work was when my son, Steve, then a freshman in college, pressed THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP into my hands and said, "Mom --- you have to read this!"  Steve had been an avid reader since preschool when he used to read off the ingredients of breakfast food cereals, which made me wonder if he might not someday become a chemist. In high school he never left home without a flowered towel --- on the advice of author Douglas Adams (when I asked why, he pressed THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY on me and I enjoyed it), so I read GARP. Besides, I had just stayed up for two nights reading Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED, and he thought I needed to expand my horizons.

Expand them I did. The only comparison I can reach between John Irving and Ayn Rand is that they both render long, thought provoking novels. When I entered the world of Garp, I was hooked as a full-fledged Irving fan. From there I progressed to THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE and laughed and cried with the beleaguered Berry family. "Don't pass by any open windows" has stuck with me through many a trying time in the years since Franny and Susie the Bear and Sorrow defined dysfunctional families in ways undreamed of in my banal life.

THE CIDER HOUSE RULES was his next venture and remains, alongside OWEN MEANY, my favorite of his nine novels.  CIDER HOUSE is about to be released as a movie, starring Michael Caine as Dr. Larch. Irving wrote the screenplay and discusses in MY MOVIE BUSINESS: A MEMOIR, the agonizing process of choosing which characters and plot lines to keep and which to abort to fit the confines of two hours on the silver screen. MY MOVIE BUSINESS is due for publication at the same time the movie is released in November of 1999.  Irving discusses screenwriting not only for CIDER HOUSE but also HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, GARP, and A SON OF THE CIRCUS.

By the time A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY was published in 1989, I was in a state of high anticipation for any new offering from Irving. I was unprepared, however, for the impact that OWEN MEANY would have on me, and apparently, over the years, on thousands of other readers. Thought by many to be Irving's tour de force, OWEN MEANY tops the lists of all-time favorite books by many TBR readers. Some of the faithful refused to see the movie Simon Birch because it was based on one small segment of OWEN MEANY and they knew it could never hold up to the original. I was not dissuaded, however, and enjoyed Simon Birch on its own merits as a variation on a theme and a tribute to Irving's genius.

I was immediately enchanted by the sensitive, East Indian ex-patriot orthopedic surgeon in A SON OF THE CIRCUS, who, through his zeal to discover the gene for dwarfism, gets caught up in the strange, destitute, painful underworld of the land of his ancestors. Nowhere is Irving's diligent research as evident as it is in CIRCUS. A thread of his personal background runs through most of his other novels. He was born and raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, where HOTEL, GARP, OWEN MEANY, and A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR are loosely based. He says that his books are not autobiographical, but admits of OWEN MEANY, that if there is a "voice" that is his, it's that of the grandmother.

THE 158-POUND MARRIAGE and THE WATER-METHOD MAN are rooted in one way or another in Iowa, where Irving spent many years in post graduate work in Iowa City, and are related to wrestling which remains a passion. He says that writing only what you know would be boring. He asks rhetorically in a recent interview: "Stay in Vermont and write about a writer watching the snow falling or teaching his youngest son how to ski? Boy, that would be interesting!" CIRCUS, however, takes place in Toronto, and India --- an India of Irving's fertile imagination. The characters in CIRCUS, as in all the other Irving novels, stay with you. Is this not a mark of a great storyteller?

A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR, Irving's latest full novel, is pure Irving from cover to cover. Somehow, though, my awe in Irving's inspired writing in OWEN MEANY and CIDER HOUSE was not rekindled with WIDOW. Clearly, he did his usual yeoman's work in exquisite research which translates into characterizations of great depth and Quixotic personalities --- the Amsterdam cop and the prostitute stand out as the strongest and most compelling characters. But isn't that the charm of Irving's work? His characters are usually afflicted in some debilitating way, be it emotionally or physically. Their conflicts, trials and often heroic approach to life, as twisted and tormented as they are, usually prove to be uplifting, often in a tragic-comic way.

Irving does not hint at a new novel. He has been hard at work over the past ten years on getting SON OF THE CIRCUS and A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR into print, and CIDER HOUSE RULES onto film. He's still working on the screenplay for SON OF THE CIRCUS.

He says in MY MOVIE BUSINESS, "However many months I spend writing a screenplay, I never feel as if I've been writing at all. I've been constructing a story --- that's true --- but without language . . . I always write a lot of letters when I'm working on a screenplay because I miss using language. When I'm writing a novel, I write very few letters; my language is all used up."

We hope that Irving will soon yearn to set his language to work on his next novel.  At age 57, he must have at least several more left in him.

--- Roz Shea