I’m wondering whether John Irving thinks fiction writers today bear any responsibility for the generally lackluster sales of literary fiction. Are readers getting dumber or are too many fiction writers failing to speak to them in a meaningful way?

Where does Mr. Irving get ideas and/or inspiration for his main characters? Especially, Owen Meany and Homer Wells. These characters are very human with many strengths and failings and also so very unique. Those qualities seem to speak to many readers because we can identify with the humanity but also strive to be unique in our own right. How does the author craft these unforgettable people?

Garp still reigns as one of my top most favorite novels.

I am listening to every word today!

The Pension Grillparzer was one of stories that made me want to become a writer. Craft question for Mr. Irving – you have said you write backwards – how do you decide the sequence of events, given how critical they are to the laying out of your stories.

I was first introduced to Mr. Irvings writing as a student at Vermont Academy. We had the pleasure of hearing him read passages from A Prayer For Owen Meeney. Since then I have eagerly read every one of his books and look foward to the newest eagerly.

I have been a fan since I found Water Method Man remaindered in the mid-70s. When Garp came out, I fell in love and have loved Owen, Johnny, the Coach…so many of Irving’s character that I quote them regularly. “Keep passing the open windows.”

Great show, Tom. John Irving is one of the most important literary fiction writers of the late twentieth century and into these times. I found the interview to be insightful. I also liked how Mr Irving shut down all of that talk about comparing writers and their styles; that’s something for critics and scholars to debate not for writers talking about their own work. And as he pointed out, it would be arrogant to discuss how one of his contemporaries should and shouldn’t approach writing.

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This interview was terrific, second only to the interview on Owen Meany. What else can be added to the interview? Not much. So much of the whole Irving experience is, to me, simply experiencing it as he fashions it and gives it out to us. Analysis and exigesis of his books seem to me to miss the point of what he focuses on imparting — creating a story (or, better yet, stories within the story) and having the reader just drink it in and see where it takes him / her. I think that’s why I like and admire this guy so much — just as he shies away from taking on the hook of criticism of Wolfe by the caller to put the hook out to him, he does nothing to tell us what we ought to be taking out of his stories and doesn’t that, ultimately, give us the utmost respect as readers by letting us get what we get from him and not tell us what he expects us to get?

In terms of overall osmossis — getting what you can out of what he gives us — I personally found Owen Meany the best of the best of his stories — the characters and the sub-stories were so incredibly nuanced and the book so beautifully written — and I found Widow for One Year a close second. Twisted River is certainly an interesting story but, to me, not half as complex (in a good way) than Owen Meany and even several others he has written.

No question, I am glad I got Twisted River for a birthday gift and had the chance to read it, but I can’t wait for the next really developed book Irving comes out with. Kind of like my ongoing waiting for Mailer’s sequel to Harlot’s Ghost which I’m afraid we’ll be waiting a terribly long time for now that Mailer is gone from us.