Hang in there, Barb! Glad you read HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE. For readers (OK, some readers) of my generation, we were blown away by THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, and stuck with Irving afterward--some of us felt a moral attachment to the issue at the heart of THE CIDER HOUSE RULES (at our house anyway); A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY accrued him a new batch of readers, I think. After that several things began getting in the way: Irving's repetition of motifs (I don't mind Murakami's cats, but Irving's bears, dunno). And during the course of his writing life, fiction has had a profound shift toward women's concerns--social and aesthetic--and Irving began to seem old-school, part of the Big Male Novelist camp. I haven't read a novel of his in the 2000s, but I probably should do one more at least. He's a major writer, even with the reservations I have.
And thanks for being a loyal followers of DAVID'S LISTS 2.0! I hope your body is better to you than it has been!
Hang in there, Barb! Glad you read HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE. For readers (OK, some readers) of my generation, we were blown away by THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, and stuck with Irving afterward--some of us felt a moral attachment to the issue at the heart of THE CIDER HOUSE RULES (at our house anyway); A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY accrued him a new batch of readers, I think. After that several things began getting in the way: Irving's repetition of motifs (I don't mind Murakami's cats, but Irving's bears, dunno). And during the course of his writing life, fiction has had a profound shift toward women's concerns--social and aesthetic--and Irving began to seem old-school, part of the Big Male Novelist camp. I haven't read a novel of his in the 2000s, but I probably should do one more at least. He's a major writer, even with the reservations I have.
And thanks for being a loyal followers of DAVID'S LISTS 2.0! I hope your body is better to you than it has been!
The bears again?? I should read some of his other works. Thanks so much for sharing, David!