John Irving

John Irving (1942- ), American author who is one of America’s foremost exponents of the broad-scale, multi-layered novel. Irving cites the 19th-century novel, particularly those of Charles Dickens, as his primary influence. He was born John Wallace Blunt Jr in Exeter, New Hampshire, but took his stepfather’s name when his parents separated shortly after his birth.

Irving was educated at the universities of Pittsburgh, Vienna, and New Hampshire. He joined the English department at Mount Holyoke College (1967) and two years later published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, which was followed by The Water-Method Man (1972). After its publication Irving continued to teach and hold writer-in-residence positions, while working on his third novel The 158-Pound Marriage (1973). In 1978 he published The World According to Garp, which was such a commercial success that he was able to leave teaching and devote all his time to writing. The book, simultaneously both absurdist and realistic, comic and tragic, employs a panoply of extraordinary characters and events to tell the bizarre life story of T. S. Garp, a writer. It was nominated for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Irving subsequently published several bestselling novels: The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), The Cider House Rules (1985), A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), A Son of the Circus (1994), A Widow for One Year (1998), and The Fourth Hand (2001); as well as the memoir The Imaginary Girlfriend (1996) and a book of short stories, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (1993). A recurring theme in Irving’s novels is of absent parents; Irving never knew his father, a pilot who fought in Burma during World War II. The author drew on his own experiences of parental separation and of premature sexual experience in his 2005 novel, Until I Find You.

In 2000 Irving won an Academy Award for his screen adaptation of The Cider House Rules (1999). His insights into the process of adapting for the screen are recorded in the memoir My Movie Business (2000). A former wrestler and wrestling coach, Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992.