John Irving does not have the patience to be politically
correct. He tells it like he feels
it. At the 92Y last night he read
excerpts from his just released novel, In One Person and spoke about the
characters, his career, politics and of course as it was mother’s day, his
mother.
Irving’s reading of
In One Person illuminated the character
of town librarian
Ms Frost. You
don’t know her until you’ve heard John read her. (
John Benjamin Hickey narrates
the audio version of the book, which I’m sure it’s a treat.) When I was reading the novel, I
had an image of a bigger and broader version of the actress Wendy Malick. Ms Frost becomes one of the many “wrong
crushes” for narrator Billy Abbott.
She was the highly regarded wrestling champion of the town, when she was
a he. Billy’s grandmother has only
contempt for her. Ms Frost becomes a key figure in shaping the course of
Billy’s life.
Being bisexual, Billy is a true outsider. He is not to be
believed by either men or women. He does not belong to any party.
If you were, like me, at an
all-boys’ boarding school in the fall of 1960, you felt utterly alone—you
trusted no one, least of all another boy your age—and you loathed
yourself. I’d always been lonely, but self-hatred is worse than loneliness. –Billy Abbott
I’ve seen John speak, read and answer questions probably 5
or 6 times. Each time something else is revealed to me. Here’s is what I learned at the Y last
night:
On his mother: The time period of his life that he thinks
made his mother the happiest was when he was wrestling. He started at 14, which coincided with
the beginning of his writing career.
His mother was a prompter in the theater as is Billy’s mother in the
novel. He said that’s where the
similarities end, as his mother was the most un-homophobic person he has ever
known. He read the passage from
the book that really got to me as I read it. It references the daily laying out of the clothes by Billy’s
mother for him. When Billy turns
13, she stops the ritual and that is when he believes his mother lost interest
in him. It seemed to me that maybe
John lived through something similar in his life. He started off the evening by
saying, “If you brought your mother here tonight (pause), I hope you bought her
something else.” His mother would
not be happy to be brought to one of his readings for Mother’s Day.
The advantage of writing with hindsight: In One Person’s narrator Billy Abbott
is in his late 60’s looking back.
It starts in the 50’s and then brings him into the 1980’s AIDS epidemic.
Irving wrote about the Viet Nam War in 1989’s A Prayer For Owen Meany. The war ended in 1975.
Politics in his writing: He views a political novel as one where the writer is taking
a side. A novel can be a form of
advocacy. He cited The Cider House
Rules, Owen Meany, The World According To Garp and In One Person as his 4
political novels. His most recent
goal in writing this book was to broaden our tolerance for sexual
differences. He thought it would
be much easier to relate to Billy for having sex with both genders, as opposed
to Johnny Wheelwright (Owen Meany) who goes through his whole life never having
sex. It is thought that Johnny was
in love with Owen, but never acted on it.
After writing Garp he thought he was done with sexual
outcasts. He felt the need to revisit, as we’re still battling sexual
discrimination. Irving’s
thoughts: Shakespeare was more at
ease with this than we are today.
The writing process:
Many submitted questions about his writing ritual, which is to conceive
the ending first and then create the backwards road map for the rest of the
story. He said it is a process and
nothing that he’s married to, but it works for him. It wasn’t until after his fourth novel, Garp that he was
able to quit his other jobs and concentrate solely on writing. His mother was not impressed when he
told her of his excitement in committing to full-time writing. Once he had the freedom to write, he
struggled with it. He said he
couldn’t work for more than three hours a day on The Hotel New Hampshire. It was a much more difficult road that
he thought it would be. His
next novel, Cider House, was the first of the constructed books. He had a method that worked for
him.
His advice to writers:
Don’t always write what you know.
How boring! The thought
exasperated him, as did the idea of Mitt Romney as president.
John Irving:
writer, wrestler and forthright.
Listen to John on the Brian Lehrer show.
For the words of When Harry Met Sally, I thank you. Nora Ephron left a legacy of great movies and writings. She had a witty way of looking at well everything including her neck. 
