General Analysis Of John Irvings Works :: essays research papers

whoremonger Winslow Irving stands out as one of the finest contemporary American authors. Born in Exeter, New Hampshire in July 1942, Irving attended an Exeter prep school at which his stepfather taught history. Although he excelled at English, he was discour epochd by the fact that he was dyslexic, a condition which wasnt recognized back then and so had trouble retentivity up. An avid wrestler, he attended the University of New Hampshire on a combat scholarship. There, he met a young Southern novelist named John Yount, who encouraged him to write. "It was so simple," he remembers. "Yount was he first person to point out that anything I did except writing was going to be vaguely unsatisfying." Similarly enliven by Dickens work, particularly A Christmas Carol, and studying under Gnter crap in Vienna, Irving began to write what would later become his first novel, Setting clear the Bears (Irving, 1968). When he returned from Austria he married, and when his first child was born at age 23, he sold his 750 cc Royal Enfield- duly noned in Bears- and continued to write.Following the scant success of Bears, Irving wrote The Water Method human race in 1972, the story of a perpetual graduate student who cant attend to take anything to completion. Although it was criticized for lack of depth and character development, it incorporates an interesting shifting yarn and alternating time periods, which makes the book seem less traditional. Like Bears, both books contain mild autobiographical information. Fred- the implied narrator of the book- attended Exeter, studied in Vienna, and has a wrestling background. In 1978, he published The World accord to Garp, which was instantly a success and made Irving a literary sub overnight. It is the story of "TS Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields, a feminist attraction ahead of her times. Theirs is a world of sexual extremes and even sexual assassinations. however the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust ." TS Garp, a wrestler and writer, has to deal with his mothers expulsion in the feminist movement (though Jenny Fields herself was loath to squall herself a feminist). Garp also contains characteristics that seem to earmark works of Irving unfortunate accidents, wrestling, fecund subplots, an intricate cast of characters, and a humor that mocks things that are traditionally weighty and tragic. There is something to be said about Irvings talents that he can pretend humor of such tragedy, as in the terrible car accident, and not seem crass or dark.