EntriesHi there again,
After revealing my deep love for John Irving’s books, I now turn to a different angle of his work.
The relationship between an author and his fans is acomplex one. Often you stumble upon a book that knocks you down, sending you an a mission of finding everything written by this author. I am known to have these bouts that I prefer to call “Festivals”, during which I read three, four or five books by the same author in a row.
But when dealing with an author working for a long time and only gaining fame after publishing three or four books, as in Irving’s case, the story may differ. Because I do not live in an English speaking country, books in English are readily available but in a rather sporadic fashion. That is to say, an author’s entire bibliography may not be available, especially the books that were not great hits. There are ways to address this issue (which may be discussed in a separate post), but what is means in the context of this post is that I was exposed to Irving’s work gradually, and read his books not according to the order in which they were published but when I happened to find them.
This led me to finding two of his earlier (and not among the best) works, The Water-Method Man and The 158-Pound Marriage, in a second-hand book store in a trip to Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand, together with the fantastic A Prayer for Owen Meany, long after I read books he published much later.
When I got home, the fabulous Until I Find You hit the stores in Israel, and so it happened that I first read it and then read A Prayer for Owen Meany I brought home with me. I was astonished by the similarities between these two books that have completely different plot lines but speak of the same issues, written more than 15 years apart. They both speak about a child who has a complex relationship with a loved but somehow absent mother, of religion in the broader sense, of the power of music and classical music in particular, of the semi-incestuous love for a sister/friend, and of the search for a father.
It is amazing and thrilling to see the development of these issues in the course of time in the author’s mind. To my taste, the later book is much more compelling, dealing with the issues in a more mature and profound way, but they are both fantastic books.
It is a great joy that a coincidence made me read them together for the first time and observe this evolution of ideas.
I would love to have your input on this and other connections you may have noticed.
Tags: A Prayer for Owen Meany, classical music, incest, John Irving, Love, recurring themes, The 158-Pound Marriage, The Water-Method Man, Until I Find You, Vietnam War