John Irving

Discover the life, literary journey, themes, and lasting legacy of American-Canadian novelist John Irving (born March 2, 1942). Explore his signature style, major works, and inspiring quotes.

Introduction

John Irving (born March 2, 1942) is a celebrated novelist, screenwriter, and teacher whose work combines sweeping narratives, deeply felt characters, humor, tragedy, and moral questioning. He gained broad recognition with The World According to Garp and continued through acclaimed novels such as The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. His stories often explore themes of identity, family, loss, faith, and the consequences of choices. Irving’s ability to balance the comic and the tragic, the personal and the epic, has earned him a devoted readership and cinematic adaptations.

Early Life and Education

John Irving was born John Wallace Blunt Jr. in Exeter, New Hampshire. After his parents divorced, his mother remarried, and Irving’s surname changed. He has said he never met his biological father and that this absence influenced his writing.

Irving attended Phillips Exeter Academy, where he also took up wrestling—a lifelong passion that appears frequently in his novels. He struggled academically with dyslexia, which made reading and writing more challenging, but he persisted in his literary ambitions.

He later enrolled in the University of New Hampshire, earning a bachelor’s degree in English in 1965, and then obtained a master’s degree in English from the University of Iowa in 1967. While at Iowa, he studied in the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was influenced by authors and teachers such as Kurt Vonnegut.

Literary Career & Major Works

Early Novels & Breakthrough

Irving’s first novel, Setting Free the Bears (1968), emerged from his master’s thesis. He followed with The Water-Method Man (1972) and The 158-Pound Marriage (1974), which gained moderate attention.

His big breakthrough came with The World According to Garp (1978). This novel, blending comedy, violence, and richly drawn characters, made him a literary figure of global stature. It was a National Book Award finalist and later won the paperback edition award. In Garp, Irving explores complex topics such as sexuality, feminism, death, and storytelling.

After Garp, Irving continued producing both popular and ambitious works:

• The Hotel New Hampshire (1981)

• The Cider House Rules (1985) — adapted into a film for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2000

• A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) — a deeply personal novel about friendship, faith, and fate

• A Widow for One Year (1998)

• Last Night in Twisted River (2010) — a novel that Irving said had been “20 years in the making.”

Many of his works are adapted into films and remain in print in multiple editions.

Style, Themes & Method

Some consistent elements in Irving’s writing include:

• Story structure: Irving often begins with the ending in mind, then works backwards to arrange narrative threads.

• Revision is central: He has said, “Half my life is an act of revision.”

• Moral complexity: His novels routinely pose questions of right and wrong, the burdens of choice, and the legacy of actions.

• Blend of comedy and tragedy: Even in dark or violent stories, his voice often leavens with humor, irony, or absurdity.

• Recurring motifs: Wrestling (as discipline and metaphor), absent fathers, identity secrets, the consequences of loss, fate, redemption.

• Sensitivity to place and time: Many stories are set in New England, with particular attention to social and cultural detail.

Personal Life & Citizenship

John Irving has had two marriages. He first married Shyla Leary in 1964; they had two sons, Colin and Brendan, and divorced in the early 1980s. In 1987, he married Janet Turnbull, who was formerly his publisher and is now one of his literary agents. They have a daughter, Eva Everett Irving. He has homes in the United States and Canada, and in 2019 he became a Canadian citizen while retaining his U.S. citizenship.

In 2007, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and subsequently underwent a radical prostatectomy.

Legacy & Influence

John Irving’s impact is multifaceted:

• He helped keep the big, complex, character-driven novel alive in an age where shorter, minimalist styles often dominate.

• His success in both literature and screenwriting builds a bridge between novel and cinema, showing how deep narrative can adapt to visual media.

• Many writers cite him as a model for blending ambition with accessibility—crafting stories that reach wide readership without sacrificing depth.

• His voice as a moral novelist—concerned with justice, human foibles, suffering, and redemption—continues influencing discussions of what fiction can address.

• His novels remain taught in literature courses and studied for their structure, themes, and character work.

Memorable Quotes by John Irving

Here are a selection of quotes that reflect Irving’s voice, philosophy, and reflections on writing and life:

“If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.” “Half my life is an act of revision.” “You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.” “With every book, you go back to school. You become a student. You become an investigative reporter.” “Your memory is a monster; you forget — it doesn’t. … You think you have a memory; but it has you!” “I believe in rules of behavior, and I’m quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.” “Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it’s still going to be a comic novel.”

These lines showcase his awareness of craft, human complexity, and the interplay of structure and impulse.

Lessons from John Irving

From Irving’s career and work, we can draw these lessons:

1. Persistence and revision
   The willingness to revise and rework is essential to good writing—a novel is rarely born fully formed.

2. Begin with the end
   Knowing where you intend to go—even in tone or image—can anchor a complex story.

3. Engage both heart and mind
   Blending emotional stakes, moral inquiry, and narrative ambition can make novels that resonate deeply.

4. Use personal experience as springboard, not script
   Irving uses elements of his life (wrestling, family absence) but reimagines them in fiction, giving them broader truth.

5. Lighten the darkness
   Even in tragic stories, humor, absurdity, or irony can provide balance and human grounding.

6. Narrative scale matters
   Big stories across years, lives, and generations can still be intimate if anchored in strong characters and voice.

Conclusion

John Irving remains a towering figure in contemporary fiction: a novelist who dares to wrestle with the epic and the ordinary, the tragic and the comic, the moral and the messy. Through his many novels, he challenges readers to inhabit complicated lives, question choices, and see how memory, identity, and storytelling interweave.