Author John Irving Talks About His Work and His Life

What follows are a few of American novelist's John Irving's (Cider House Rules) thoughts on writing just before the release of his twelfth book (Last Night in Twisted River) when addressing the American Writing Program conference in New York City:

Q: "Is it true that you were a model in life drawing classes when you were a student at Iowa?"

A: Yes, I was a model... It is not true that I met my first wife in a life drawing class. That's one work place situation where you might not want to do that.

Q: "Why did you name your dog Dickens? I thought you liked Dickens?"

A: This is actually a tragic story. My youngest son, who was then 4 or 5, had wanted a Labrador Retriever... He named the dog Dickens, because he knew I liked Dickens. When we went out to see the litter---and the dog was a male--- the litter died before they were weaned. All of them. And so we took a dog from an earlier litter. Only one dog left, and it was a female. The dog was big now, 40 pounds bigger than my son was.

He says, "That can't be the same dog?"

"Sure it is, Honey. It just grew." But the dog was female.

"How can they make a mistake like that?" he says.

"Must have been dark or something, kid."

So, we get home and my son runs in the house and tells his mother, "Mom, Dickens was a woman!"

Q: Your stories are all plotted and plotted in great detail. Care to comment?

A: A woman said to me recently, "Even your conversation has a plot," spoken disparagingly, as though it were a dead animal or something I had stepped in and brought to the dinner table. It was as though I were a dinosaur or, worse, a reactionary.

If I don't know the endings of my stories, I can't begin. I need to know the tone of voice and the moment in time. From the last sentence, I work myself back to the first chapter. When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it. Rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened. In Garp, it was, "We are all terminal cases."

When we made the movie version of "Cider House Rules," I knew that the next-to-last scene would be the train, bringing Homer Wells back to St. Cloud, Maine. That scene was more expensive than Michael Caine or Charlize Theron, at that time, or Toby McGuire. They had to ship the antique train in from a museum on another train. We shot the scene in Bellows Falls, Vermont, because it was on a hillside, and we were able to digitally impose the orphanage, but that was the only scene that was CG (computer generated). The house we used was in Lennox Massachusetts and once belonged to Edith Wharton's sister. The North Hampton State Mental Hospital, unused for years, doubled as the orphanage. I begin a screenplay the same way I begin a novel: at the end.

When Todd Williams approached me and wanted to make the film "The Door in the Floor" from "A Widow for One Year," the way he wanted to make it, the film had to begin and end in different places. I asked him if he knew the ending, and he said, "Oh, I already know the end," so I sold him the rights for $1.00. He directed it and the ending scenes were the only scenes that weren't changed.

You may wonder about this old-fashioned obsession with knowing where I'm going before I start. It's a sense of predestination. Nineteenth century authors used to know where they were going. Charlotte Bronte's preface to the second edition of "Jane Eyre" indicates that she knew she was going to take some criticism...talk about foreshadowing and knowing where you're going. (quoting "Jane Eyre"): "It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility. It is narrow-minded to say that women ought to be condemned to making pudding..." Go, Jane! Yet many contemporary critics have dismissed "Jane Eyre" as a soap opera. You've got the mad wife in the attic, the fire, Rochester goes blind. That's called a plot."

I have developed a dislike of not knowing where I'm going. I like knowing where I'm going. It's impossible to talk about my books without the intrusion of sex, also.

I also like to know the titles and chapter titles. Chapter 7: More Lust. This presumes there's already been a lot of lust in Chapters 1 through 6. Chapter 12: It happens to Helen. More lust, of course. The most obvious truth is that you can't have consistency in style if you don't have a plot.

In "A Prayer for Owen Meany," I describe "the boy with the wrecked voice." (Irving imitates Owen Meany's voice, reminiscent of Truman Capote's in real life.) That novel has a number of pre-ordained chapter titles: Chapter 2: Armadillo. Chapter 8: The Finger. Owen Meany decides to keep his best friend out of Vietnam by cutting off his trigger finger with a diamond saw.

"The Lord's work". This could be considered either birth or abortion, in "The Cider House Rules." In French, they entitled it: "The Work of the Lord: the Contribution of the Devil." The title of the book sounds like an instruction manual for how to build and dismantle a tank in German. In "Cider House" there is a chapter entitled "Flying the Hump." It describes flying over Burma. My father was shot down over Burma and walked for 45 days and was rescued; one of the characters in "Cider House Rules" is shot down over Burma, but he doesn't walk out.

The unlikely title of Chapter 3 in "Until I Find You" is "Rescued by a Swedish Accountant." In Chapter 5, Jack Burns asks his mother, 'What is the red light district?"

And she says, "Well, I guess you're going to find out."

There's a chapter entitled "Safe Among the Girls." There's one entitled "Not Old Enough." Jack asks Emma about her condition and she says, "Vaginismus can't kill you," But, of course, it does, in a way.

Almost everything in my novels is foreshadowed. The novels are conceived from back to front. "Sleeping in the Needles" means death, but it also means being poor, because tattoo parlor artists, like Daughter Alice in "Until I Find You", had to go sleep in their shops when they ran out of money.

I have taken control of my novels, planning every word...even the random acts are planned. From the moment I wrote my first novel ("Setting Free the Bears")---I was 26---I unfailingly follow a plan.