John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt Jr.; March 2, 1942) is an American-Canadian novelist and screenwriter. Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978.
While a student at Exeter, Irving was taught by author and Christian theologian Frederick Buechner, whom he quoted in an epigraph in A Prayer for Owen Meany. Irving's biological father, whom he never met, had been a pilot in the Army Air Forces and, during World War II, was shot down over Burma in July 1943, but survived.
In One Person features a 60-year-old, bisexual protagonist named William, looking back on his life in the 1950s and '60s.
In the late 1960s, he studied with Kurt Vonnegut at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
In 1975, Irving accepted a position as assistant professor of English at Mount Holyoke College. Frustrated at the lack of promotion his novels were receiving from his first publisher, Random House, Irving offered his fourth novel, The World According to Garp (1978), to Dutton, which promised him stronger commitment to marketing.
John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt Jr.; March 2, 1942) is an American-Canadian novelist and screenwriter. Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978.
It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979 (which ultimately went to Tim O'Brien for Going After Cacciato) and its first paperback edition won the Award the next year.
Irving makes a brief cameo appearance in the film as an official in one of Garp's high school wrestling matches. The World According to Garp was among three books recommended to the Pulitzer Advisory Board for consideration for the 1979 Award in Fiction in the Pulitzer Jury Committee report, although the award was given to The Stories of John Cheever (1978). Garp transformed Irving from an obscure, academic literary writer to a household name, and his subsequent books were bestsellers.
"Interior Space", a short story originally published in Fiction magazine in 1980, later appeared in the 1981 O.
The couple divorced in the early 1980s.
(The incident was incorporated into his novel The Cider House Rules.) Irving did not find out about his father's heroism until 1981, when he was almost 40 years old. ==Career== Irving's career began at the age of 26 with the publication of his first novel, Setting Free the Bears (1968).
"Interior Space", a short story originally published in Fiction magazine in 1980, later appeared in the 1981 O.
Henry Prize Stories collection. In 1985, Irving published The Cider House Rules.
In 1987, he married Janet Turnbull, who had been his publisher at Bantam-Seal Books and is now one of his literary agents.
They have a daughter, Eva Everett, born in 1991.
(Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as an "Outstanding American" in 1992.) In addition to his novels, he has also published Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (1996), a collection of his writings including a brief memoir and unpublished short fiction, My Movie Business, an account of the protracted process of bringing The Cider House Rules to the big screen, and The Imaginary Girlfriend, a short memoir focusing on writing and wrestling.
Irving returned in 1998 with A Widow for One Year, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. In 1999, after nearly 10 years in development, Irving's screenplay for The Cider House Rules was made into a film directed by Lasse Hallström, starring Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, and Delroy Lindo.
Owen Meany was adapted into the 1998 film Simon Birch (Irving required that the title and character names be changed because the screenplay's story was "markedly different" from that of the novel; Irving is on record as having enjoyed the film, however).
Irving returned in 1998 with A Widow for One Year, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. In 1999, after nearly 10 years in development, Irving's screenplay for The Cider House Rules was made into a film directed by Lasse Hallström, starring Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, and Delroy Lindo.
After its publication in 1999, Irving appeared on the CBC Television program Hot Type to promote the book.
In 2010, Irving revealed that he and Tod "Kip" Williams, director and writer of The Door in the Floor (2004), were co-writing a screenplay for an adaptation of A Widow for One Year (1998). In 2002, his four most highly regarded novels, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year, were published in Modern Library editions.
In 2004, A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound, a children's picture book originally included in A Widow for One Year, was published with illustrations by Tatjana Hauptmann.
In 2004, a portion of A Widow for One Year was adapted into The Door in the Floor, starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger. In 2005, Irving received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In a New York Magazine interview in 2009, Irving stated that he had begun work on a new novel, his 13th, based in part on a speech from Shakespeare's Richard II.
In 2004, a portion of A Widow for One Year was adapted into The Door in the Floor, starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger. In 2005, Irving received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In a New York Magazine interview in 2009, Irving stated that he had begun work on a new novel, his 13th, based in part on a speech from Shakespeare's Richard II.
Shindler) Pages magazine, July/August 2005 ("The Creative Crucible" by Dorman T.
In 2004, a portion of A Widow for One Year was adapted into The Door in the Floor, starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger. In 2005, Irving received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In a New York Magazine interview in 2009, Irving stated that he had begun work on a new novel, his 13th, based in part on a speech from Shakespeare's Richard II.
In 2010, Irving revealed that he and Tod "Kip" Williams, director and writer of The Door in the Floor (2004), were co-writing a screenplay for an adaptation of A Widow for One Year (1998). In 2002, his four most highly regarded novels, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year, were published in Modern Library editions.
Shindler) Portland Magazine, May 2012 ("Singular First Person," interview by Colin W.
The novel shares a similar theme and concern with The World According to Garp, which was Irving says, in part about "people who hate you for your sexual differences." He won a Lambda Literary Award in 2013 in the Bisexual Fiction category for In One Person, and was also awarded the organization's Bridge Builder Award to honor him as an ally of the LGBT community. On June 10, 2013, Irving announced his next novel, his 14th, titled Avenue of Mysteries, named after a street in Mexico City.
He described the project as being in the early stages. According to the byline of a self-penned, February 20, 2017 essay for The Hollywood Reporter, Irving completed his teleplay for the five-part series based on The World According to Garp, and he is currently working on his fifteenth novel. On June 28, 2017, Irving revealed in a long letter to fans on Facebook that his new novel will be, primarily, a ghost story.
I'm calling Act I 'Early Signs.' I began writing it on New Year's Eve—not a bad night to start a ghost story." On August 1, 2017, an update about Irving's fifteenth, in-progress, novel, was posted to his Facebook page: "It's been 45 years since John Irving published The Water-Method Man.
John's work in progress may ultimately be his funniest novel since The Water-Method Man." In an interview with Mike Kilen for The Des Moines Register, published on October 26, 2017, Irving revealed that the title of his new novel-in-progress is Darkness As a Bride.
The title comes from lines in Shakespeare's play, Measure for Measure: "If I must die, / I will encounter darkness as a bride, / and hug it in mine arms." In July 2018, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize announced Irving would be the recipient of the 2018 Richard C.
Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award at its annual gala October 28, 2018, in Dayton, Ohio. == Bibliography == Setting Free the Bears (1968, Random House; ) The Water-Method Man (1972, Random House; ) The 158-Pound Marriage (1974, Random House; ) The World According to Garp (1978, E.
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