John Irving Immortalizes Iowa City in Upcoming Novel

Albeit a work-in-progress, award-winning author John Irving’s upcoming novel, “Last Night in Twisted River,” pays homage to his old stomping grounds at the University of Iowa.Irving, 66, gave Iowa Citians a taste of his newest novel effort Wednesday night by reading the 10th chapter of the book, which takes place in Iowa City during the late ’60s when Irving attended the famous UI Writers’ Workshop. Irving also taught in the workshop from 1972 to 1975.

The event was originally scheduled to take place in the Van Allen Lecture Hall on the UI campus, but due to the overflow crowd and potential fire hazard, the event was moved to another venue a minute before the 8:15 p.m. start time.

The announcement prompted Irving aficionados to take to the streets of Iowa City and head toward the Pappajohn Business Building with the hope of commandeering a seat for the legendary, alumni writer. The mass exodus of people momentarily shut down traffic on Dubuque Street as the literary mob, undeterred by the threat of jaywalking charges, blindly marched across one of the main downtown arteries.

Irving was introduced by Samantha Chang, director of the Writers’ Workshop, who started with a quip about the last-minute venue change. “It’s great to see 500 people walking in Iowa City who aren’t going to a football game,” Chang told yet another overflow crowd at Buchanan Auditorium, although apparently not enough of an overflow to merit a fire hazard.

Chang began by telling a story about her induction into Irving’s fictitious world, when she read “The World According to Garp” in the eighth grade. First published in 1978, Irving’s fourth novel became an international bestseller and cultural phenomenon, catapulting Irving’s writing career by guaranteeing him bestseller status for all of his subsequent books. “Garp” won the National Book Foundation’s award for paperback fiction and was later adapted into a film starring Robin Williams and Glenn Close. The film garnered several Academy Award nominations and features a cameo by Irving, who plays an official at a high school wrestling match.

Chang said her debut experience with “Garp” served as a blueprint for a novelist’s life and she always knew she wanted to be a writer, but she didn’t know what that really meant. “T.S. Garp, the book’s protagonist, is a writer, and his life is not always glamorous. He spends some mornings at home reading the phone book. He was committed; he had that driving necessity that pushes so many other pursuits out of a writer’s life,” Chang said. “Garp also gave me an artistic truth that I pass on to my students: Writers only learn by coming to the end of one thing and coming to another thing.”

Since the publication of “Garp,” Irving has penned several novels, including “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” “The Hotel New Hampshire,” “Trying to Save Piggy Sneed,” “A Son of the Circus,” “A Widow for One Year,” “The Fourth Hand,” “A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound” and, most recently, “Until I Find You.” Irving also tried his hand with screenwriting by adapted his novel “Cider House Rules” to the big screen. The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and earned Irving an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Picking up the narrative strand where Chang left off, Irving joked about the venue change as well. “This building is unsuitable, and we’re moving to another building on the other side of campus,” Irving said sarcastically to the audience, some of whom were packed in the stairwell and the auditorium floor. “I’m sorry that some of you are uncomfortable. Just wait.”

In lieu of reading the first chapter of the novel as a means of hooking his audience, Irving chose to skip forward to the 10th chapter, promising that the chapter stands alone and needs little explanation. He described the book as a fugitive novel about a boy and his father, ages 40 and 61, who are on the run, but Irving didn’t tell the audience why or who they are on the run from. Chapter 10, titled “Lady Sky,” is a flashback to 1967, when the father, Danny, is in his final year of the Writers’ Workshop at UI, and his boy, Joe, is a loquacious 2-year-old. The scene takes place in Iowa City at a pig farm rented by UI art students just outside of the city limits.

Before he began reading the chapter, Irving issued an autobiographical disclaimer. Because he uses a number of elements from his life in his novels, readers and critics have wondered which parts are fictitious and which ones are autobiographical. Those familiar with Irving know this irks him to no end, thus prompting the disclaimer.

Danny drinks excessively, whereas Irving he says he never drank in excess while at UI, nor did he do anything as excessive as Danny. “Although it is true that I was a life-drawing model as an undergraduate student, but it is not true that I met my first wife in this context, or that she and I were both models for the life-drawing class,” Irving confided to the audience.

Moreover, Irving told the audience that, like the main character Danny, he was a “Kennedy Father” during the Vietnam War era. “For those of you who don’t know what a Kennedy father is, it is not one who has fathered more children than the Kennedys,” Irving joked. “Relatively early in the Vietnam War, President Kennedy issued an executive order that granted deferments to fathers.”

Irving joined the officer-training program in Pittsburgh in 1961 and would have, more than likely, been sent to Vietnam after graduating from Pittsburgh University in 1965. But after graduation, Irving married his first wife and had a son. “I didn’t feel lucky at the time, but disappointed,” Irving said. “I wanted to be a writer, so I wanted to see what the war was like.”

“I didn’t go the war, and years later I discovered just how lucky I was,” Irving admitted.

His son is now in his 40s and has children of his own. “Every once in a while, when we get into an argument, my son will say, `Don’t forget who kept you out of Vietnam.’”

Finally, before Irving began reading the chapter, he informed the audience about an element of his writing craft, while simultaneously giving them instructions on how to listen to the piece. “I always write the last line to a novel before I begin the first chapter of a novel,” Irving said. “Similarly, in a set piece like this one, or in a very specific scene which this is, I always have an end phrase in mind that I am writing toward. I know what it is before I begin, and I am going to tell you what it is before we begin this episode.”

“I want you to keep it in your minds as this scene unfolds, remembering the end phrase in my mind when I wrote this. That way, we’ll both know when the reading is over,” Irving joked.

“The phrase is `Dead in the road.’”

For the next 30 minutes, Irving hypnotized the audience with his northeastern accent and master storytelling skills, weaving a narrative only he can tell — the scene ending with the aforementioned phrase at the end of Iowa Avenue in Iowa City.

Fortunately, Irving’s end phrase, “Dead in the road,” did not foreshadow one of his fans getting run over on Dubuque Street during the mass exodus. (Note: This was the first line written for this article.)