{"id":13124,"date":"2014-06-06T00:01:25","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T04:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=13124"},"modified":"2014-06-05T23:51:21","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T03:51:21","slug":"john-irving-in-one-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2014\/06\/06\/john-irving-in-one-person\/","title":{"rendered":"John Irving: In One Person<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll bet there are not very many John Irving “completists.”\u00a0His place amongst Yates,\u00a0Cheever, Updike et al.,\u00a0amongst the essential chroniclers of 20th century Americana, is secured on the basis of what are by almost everybody’s estimation a colossal distance his three best and\u00a0most famous works: The Cider House Rules<\/em>, A Prayer For Owen Meany<\/em>, and The World According to Garp<\/em>. Casual readers may struggle to name more than a couple of his ten others (including this one). The “big three”\u00a0are such shatteringly good works of sensitivity, humor, and above all consummate story-telling\u00a0that a new offering of their quality would be a highlight of any literary year. In One Person<\/em> (2013)\u00a0is a novel of several merits,\u00a0a novel which covers many classical Irving themes and features numerous of the tropes for which\u00a0Irving is easily recognized.\u00a0In common\u00a0with one or more of “the big three” are Vienna, transsexuals, absent parents, wrestling, and\u00a0mishaps\u00a0presented through the most mordant\u00a0black comedy. Perhaps above all\u00a0else, though, Irving\u00a0uses\u00a0an unerring sympathetic eye for those amongst his characters who\u00a0carry the largest burden, fight the\u00a0hardest conflicts — often with themselves — stand out from their surroundings and have the conviction to be who they are and not who their peers would rather they be. So, with the raw material apparently encouraging and with Irving enthusiasts on reassuring ground, can we now speak of a “big four”? Well, no.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

In The Cider House Rules<\/em> it is abortion. Dr Wilbur Larch is an illegal practitioner whose views on the subject Irving once described as “corresponding exactly with those of my own.” In In One Person<\/em> it is sexuality and gender issues. We have reason to think that Irving’s novels contain a great deal of himself, and\u00a0his experience as father of a gay son has evidently informed his rendering of William Abbott, the bisexual main character and narrator\u00a0of In One Person<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In common with Irving’s other novels, the timescale is broad. We\u00a0meet William as an\u00a0old man, then trace his story through\u00a0confused teenage years\u00a0and leave him some fifty years later. We see\u00a0him emerge from small town Vermont, where he learns to love literature, Shakespeare and most of all the totemic librarian Miss Frost (“I’m going to begin by telling you about Miss Frost . . .”). Surely\u00a0Irving can never, as it happens, have held a character in such high regard as he does Miss Frost. Via a\u00a0fractured timeline, Abbott loves, loses, writes, wrestles (of course), and sees the AIDS epidemic account for almost everyone he knows. The introspection process which results in the tragic realization that he will never sufficiently love anybody (no one person can ever satisfy all his desires) is calmly but decisively delivered by Irving.<\/p>\n

Yet still, unease over In One Person<\/em> begins to develop because Abbott just doesn\u2019t seem to suffer enough<\/em>.\u00a0The taunts he receives over his desires amount to little more than playground banter, and even the alpha male Kitteridge, who later comes to embody the novel’s key message in improbable fashion (you could probably already make a decent guess how), is bristling with envy for Abbott’s unconventional sexual congress with an unlikely companion.\u00a0Here we have, it seems, a novel about sexual conflict which lacks very much conflict.<\/p>\n

We are also with Abbott as he lives a perfectly healthy and comfortable novelist’s life in New York and San Francisco, where he is surrounded by friends and lovers. Here too, Irving seems to struggle more with Abbott’s life than Abbott does. San Francisco and New York, incidentally, are\u00a0locations about which we learn essentially nothing.\u00a0Martin Amis once said that Philip Roth left the many and various locations in which The Professor of Desire<\/em> is set\u00a0“blissfully unobserved.” What is the purpose of Irving taking Abbott to New York and San Francisco, liberal cities the 1970s and 80s\u00a0bisexual experience, of which there\u00a0are surely plenty of interesting things\u00a0to be said, and then not to talk about them?<\/p>\n

This is one example of where In One Person<\/em>, it may be said, is a novel as notable for its omissions as its inclusions. Irving writes long novels — In One Person<\/em> stretches to\u00a0625 pages and 50 something years — but despite the omissions, by 500 pages it is about time to wrap things up. Nevertheless, the remaining 125 pages contain three rather fundamental developments and all seem rushed and unsatisfactory. One even features a character “who changed my life more so than any other,” though exactly why Georgia wins this distinction rather than any number of earlier characters is left unclear, at least to me.\u00a0It seems unusual to speak of a 625 page novel\u00a0giving the impression\u00a0of having been rushed.<\/p>\n

The dominant feeling is of the reader being rather set up, or even patronized.\u00a0We knew the book was about sexual minorities and cross-gender issues when we picked it up and bought it. As it is unlikely that this is our first Irving, we knew\u00a0where\u00a0his sympathies would likely lie,\u00a0and\u00a0we also\u00a0knew that we would have the company of these themes for over 600 pages. We are unlikely, I would submit,\u00a0to be of an illiberal disposition where such subjects are concerned. And yet we are somewhat prodded with this endless “don’t judge them!” message. There is\u00a0hardly a gay, bisexual, cross-dressing,\u00a0or transsexual character in the novel for whom anything negative could be said.\u00a0Irving is simply too nice to them. Barely one of them\u00a0misbehaves in any way. There is a plot twist\u00a0at once silly and predictable which\u00a0explains why the one of them that does, did.\u00a0The sympathy Irving wishes to provoke almost makes the novel qualify as a manifesto. But we are grown-up enough to know that such people usually deserve our regard and often our admiration without Irving demanding it from us. The social commentary here is plainly well-intentioned, but much too obvious.<\/p>\n

Let it not be said, however, that this novel is not without its merits. It is Irving’s ability as a storyteller which makes this novel worth perseverance.\u00a0His prose is measured (though strangely placed italics<\/em> become wearisome)\u00a0and even whimsical in places, the main benefit of which is the increased effectiveness of the sporadically delivered jolts he administers (“what made the eighties last forever was that my friends and lovers kept dying.”). And he knows how to capture a moment, alright. There are death-bed scenes as effective as any of the set pieces in “the big three.” But those novels were memorable as works of the utmost completeness and not only for a few notable vignettes or turns of phrase. Irving has a lot to say and there are unusual perspectives he wants us to understand. Yes, his sympathy is directed towards those who deserve it, but it is perhaps this high regard for his characters\u00a0which impedes him\u00a0from inflicting upon\u00a0them what In One Person<\/em> could most benefit from:\u00a0rather more wickedness, cruelty, argument, unpleasantness and strife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his first post for The Mookse and the Gripes, Chris Phillips reviews John Irving’s 2013 novel, In One Person<\/em>. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":13125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"In his first post for The Mookse and the Gripes, Chris Phillips reviews John Irving's In One Person http:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-3pG","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[619],"tags":[],"coauthors":[620],"class_list":["post-13124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-john-irving"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/In-One-Person.jpg?fit=425%2C642&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-3pG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13124"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13173,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13124\/revisions\/13173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13124"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}