Articles
The Wrestler
He slaps the side of my head--twice, in quick succession--then hooks a hand behind my neck, and we lean hard into each other, our weight stuttering us one way,...
TIME Spends the Weekend with John Irving, Literary Legend
John Irving was the quintessential American novelist. Now he's poised to reclaim his title with his most controversial novel since The Cider House Rules. We...
Books: A Saga of Loss And Recovery
It has been 20 years since John Irving's fourth novel, The World According to Garp, made its author famous. Not only did the book attract a massive readership,...
A Letter From The Publisher: Aug. 31, 1981
In his 1978 review of The World According to Garp, Senior Writer R.Z. Sheppard declared that John Irving had moved into "the front rank of America's young...
Books: The Message Is the Message
A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving; Morrow; 543 pages; $19.95 Accidents usually accelerate John Irving's antic plots and keep his readers tuned for what...
Life into Art: Novelist John Irving
COVER STORY Garp Creator John Irving strikes again The pieces of the dream machine are in place. Scaffolding has been erected against a brick building for a...
Books: An Orphan Or an Abortion: The Cider House Rules
Although he appears in name only, Charles Dickens is one of the undisputed heroes of John Irving's sixth novel. This homage seems both fitting and inevitable...
Letters: Sep. 21, 1981
Irving's World To the Editors: John Irving [Aug. 31] is not only a masterly writer, he is a master teacher as well. At a Breadloaf workshop, he read a...
Books: Love, Art and the Last Puritan
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving; Dutton; 437pages; $10.95 Why is an artist like a bear on a unicycle? John Irving does not have an answer; he does...
Books: Trumper's Complaint
THE WATER-METHOD MAN by JOHN IRVING 365 pages. Random House. $6.95. In John Irving's fine first novel, Setting Free the Bears, two Vienna University students...
Education: Talking Writing
Conferences for novices If I had to give young writers advice, I would say, 'Don't listen to writers talking about writing or about themselves.' " So said...
FOOD: Cold & Juicy
In the booming frozen orange juice business, no one had squeezed himself a bigger glass than husky, 37-year-old John Irving Moone, president of Manhattan's...
J.K. Rowling Speaks! Oh, and Two Other Writers Too
It's not every night that you see novelists treated like rock stars. But for two performances at New York's Radio City Music Hall this week, a capacity crowd of...
Cinema: The Cider House Rules
John Irving's rural sprawl of a novel becomes, in his screenplay, a small epic with subtle strengths. The setting is harsh--a Maine orphanage in the early '40s,...
Why Writers Attack Writers
The small but insignificant world of media chitchat was fluttered last week by Renata Adler's new memoir that takes a brilliant flamethrower to the New Yorker...
Revolt Of The Gentry
Vermont sometimes feels as if it is one sprawling town. It is a place where families go back eight generations and the Governor answers his own phone after 5 in...
BOOKS: Circus Maximalist
Ever since the roaring critical and commercial success of The World According to Garp (1978), the arrival of a new John Irving novel has been an occasion for...
Books: Rattling
The customer at Politics & Prose, a busy bookstore in Chevy Chase, Md., is mightily perplexed. There is this book, she tells the manager, something about the...
Cinema: Watery Grave
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP Directed by George Roy Hill Screenplay by Steve Tesich The world according to Novelist John Irving is a dangerous place, the...
Books: A Prodigal Daughter Returns THE COMPANY OF WOMEN by Mary Gordon
THE COMPANY OF WOMEN by Mary Gordon; Random House; 291 pages; $12.95 American fiction in 1978 rang with two strong young voices: John Irving's in The World...
