Quicknation    John Irving

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John Irving was born John Wallace Blunt, Jr in Exeter, New Hampshire, in unusual circumstances that have since fueled the plots and themes of several of his novels: his mother Helen, a descendant of the Winslows, one of New England's oldest and most distinguished families, divorced Irving's biological father when he was two years old. The family maintained a strict silence regarding his natural father. Helen Winslow later married Colin F.N. Irving, a teacher at the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy when Irving was six years old.. John Wallace Blunt, Jr became John Winslow Irving, taking his adoptive father's name. Until the mid 2000s, he never sought the identity of his biological father—"I already have a father," he said. In 2001 he discovered he had a half brother from his biological father's second marriage.

Irving attended Exeter, where he was a mediocre student due to then-undiagnosed dyslexia, but was an outstanding wrestler. The trials of pre-sexual revolution single-motherhood, wrestling, and New England academic life feature prominently in Irving's novels, particularly i. The primary settings for both novels are based on Phillips Exeter Academy.

Irving was sexually abused at age 11 by an older woman. This event inspired his 2005 novel i

While a student at Exeter, Irving was mentored by famed Presbyterian theologian and novelist Frederick Buechner and writing teacher George Bennett, who later helped Irving gain admission to the Iowa Writer's Workshop, America's most elite graduate writing program, then the only one of its kind. Irving briefly studied at the University of Pittsburgh and eventually graduated from the University of New Hampshire. At Iowa, Irving studied alongside future award-winning novelists Gail Godwin, John Casey, and Donald Hendrie, Jr., among others. He was mentored there by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

While on foreign study in Vienna, Austria, Irving met his first wife, Shyla Leary, an art student. They married after Shyla became unexpectedly pregnant, and eventually had two sons before divorcing in the mid-1980s. Irving subsequently wed his agent, Janet Turnbull, with whom he has a third son.

Irving's career began at the age of 26 with the publication of his first novel, i. The novel was reasonably well reviewed, but failed to garner much of an audience. His second and third novels, i, were similarly received. At around this time, in 1975, Irving accepted a position as Assistant Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College.

Frustrated at the lack of promotion his novels were garnering from his first publisher, Random House, Irving chose to offer his fourth novel, i (1978), to Dutton, which promised him a stronger marketing push. The novel went on to become a massive international bestseller and cultural phenomenon, and was a finalist for the American Book Award (now the National Book Award) for hardcover fiction in 1979 (the award went to Tim O'Brien for i was later made into a film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Robin Williams in the title role and Glenn Close as his mother; it garnered several Academy Award nominations, including nominations for Close and John Lithgow. Irving makes a brief cameo in the film as an official in one of Garp's high school wrestling matches. Irving also has a cameo appearance in the film version of i transformed Irving from an obscure, academic literary writer to a household name, guaranteeing bestseller status for all of his subsequent books. He followed "Garp" with i (1981), which was poorly received by critics but sold well and, like Garp, was quickly made into a film, this time directed by Tony Richardson and starring Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, and Beau Bridges.

In 1985 he published i, a sprawling epic centered around a Maine orphanage. The novel frankly explores the controversial subject of abortion, and is perhaps the most obvious example of the influence of Charles Dickens on Irving's work. He followed in 1989 with i, another New England family epic centered around themes of religiousness. Again, the main setting is a New England boarding school, and inspirations for the characters can be found in many of Irving's influences, including i by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the work of Dickens. For the first time, Irving examined the consequences of the Vietnam War - particularly mandatory conion, which Irving avoided since he was already a married father and a teacher when the draft was instituted. i, and is now a frequent feature on high school English reading lists.

Irving returned to Random House for his next book, A Son of the Circus (1995). Arguably his most complicated and difficult book, it was dismissed by critics but became a national bestseller on the strength of Irving's reputation for fashioning literate, engrossing page-turners. Irving returned to better form in 1998 with i, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. The Fourth Hand, was published in 2001. Savaged by critics, it nevertheless became a bestseller. Irving's most recent novel, entitled i contains two specifically personal elements about his life that he has never before discussed publicly: his sexual abuse, at age 11, by an older woman, and the recent entrance in his life of his biological father's family.

In 1999, after nearly ten years in development, Irving's screenplay for i was made into a film directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, and Delroy Lindo. The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and earned Irving an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Since the publication of "Garp" made him independently wealthy, Irving has been able to concentrate solely on fiction writing as a vocation, sporadically accepting short-term teaching positions (including one at his graduate school alma mater, the Iowa Writer's Workshop) and serving as an assistant coach on his sons' high school wrestling teams. In addition to his novels, he has also published i to the big screen. He divides his time between residences in Vermont, Toronto, and New York. In recent years, his three most highly regarded novels, i (Irving disowned this adaptation, going so far as to request that all of the characters' names be changed for the film version). In 2004, i

Irving's literary stature is a subject of some debate. Advocates consider him the heir to Charles Dickens, a populist who uses eccentric characters and heavy doses of comedy and pathos to gain an audience for his politically liberal social perspectives. Detractors dismiss him as an author of crude sex comedies that exploit melodramatic circumstances to manipulate readers. Both perspectives have credence: Irving's do not compare well with the work of such praised contemporaries as Philip Roth, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy, and Joan Didion; Irving, on the other hand, enjoys a wider audience than all of those novelists combined—particularly among younger readers—and is frequently cited by younger literary writers as a major influence. Arguments about Irving's merit tend to reflect the division between those who see literature's primary value as aesthetic and those who believe that for a work to be great it must influence culture writ large. Regardless of the differing opinions on the critical merit of his work, Irving is guaranteed to be one of the few American novelists of his era who will be read and discussed for many years to come.