Wednesday, September 9, 1981
page 10
daily nebraskan
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Garp creator discusses new book, life as writer
By Bill Rush
learned to my astonishment that Garp creator, John
Irving, the most successful "serious" writer in America
(according to "Time" magazine), wears jeans and a T
shirt. Irving wore his blue jeans at Middlebury College's
Breadloaf Writer's conference this summer. He also lectur
ed with his colleagues, Stanley Elkin, John Gardner, and
Erica Jong. The Breadloaf Conference was formed by
Robert Erost in 1926. The annual two-week conference
gives the writers and writing teachers a chance to share
their knowledge with writing students in a summer camp
atmosphere.
Irving, 39, is responsible for a philosophy called Gar
pomania that swept the country in the late 70s. If early
reviews are any indication, his latest book, "The Hotel
New Hampshire," will carve another notch in the
American culture. The following interview was conducted
in Middlebury Vermont this past August.
Bill Rush: Can you tell me about Hotel New Hamp
shire? John Irving: Well, it's the fifth book, and I hope it's
the best of them. But it's a love story more than any of
the others were. It's about a boy whose in love with his
older sister. And it's a story about how a family gets over
the people in its group within the family, who don't make
it.
B.R.: Where did you get the idea for Hotel New Hamp
shire? J.I.: It's probably the least autobiographical of a numb
er of books, none of which were really autobiographical.
But by the time you get to a fourth or fifth book, what
ever personal experience you've been writing about is
largely used up.
So what mattered to me most in initiating this novel
was that it's really the first novel that is completely
imagined. That is, it's a fairy tale in a sense of a story for
children . . . that you need to know the least about the
world outside in order to read or understand it. It's much
more the kind of book that is a door you enter and
another door you go out.
In a way, stories for children I think are like that. And
I wanted the whole of the novel to be like a dream that
you begin and then wake up from; a whole thing rather
than a series of events. So I think that was both the first
and sort of last idea I had with it.
B.R.: What are the "universal truths" in Hotel New
Hampshire?
J.I.: This is usually a question other people should say
of you rather than you should answer of yourself. But . . .
it's a novel that has frequent refrains, it makes use of
repetitions . . . litanies. I suppose it's in those refrains that
get repeated throughout the novel that you hear the
closest thing to universals that there are. The old man who
is the grandfather of the family says once to his grandson
in reference to weightlifting that "you've got to get
obsessed and stay obsessed." That becomes the last line of
the book, and what it really becomes is a deterrent to
suicide, or a deterrent to quitting, a deterrent to giving up.
There's also one suicide in the book. It's another way
of saying "you must have something in your life you wish
to do intentionally, purposefully and deliberately.
i X " " i wvH
Photo courtesy of E. P. Dutton Publishing
John Irving
Because without it you're subject to accident or depres
sion, and the book makes use of another old city folk tale
of Vienna. It makes use of a phrase, an old Viennese
phrase called "keep passing the open windows," which is
simply a way of saying "don't kill yourself or don't quit
on yourself," and it comes from an old sort of city history
of a clown, a man who trains animals.
He's a street performer and he never gets paid enough
and he never gets treated well enough, and one day with
The physical handicap that jocks have
is that they're never very comfortable
with getting older than 19.
John Irving
a box full of his animals he jumps out a window and all
the people then, who paid no attention to him . . . miss
him when he's gone. It's from this the phrase comes,
"keep passing the open windows," which is a sort of greet
ing. A form of hellogoodbye, hellogoodbye.
It's a book, I suppose, whose biggest universal is one of
self-esteem and self preservation to the main people in
these novels, the kind of attacks upon you that . . . assault
upon you really, that threaten to take your self away.
The heroine is raped when she's a young girl. The
youngest daughter of this family never grows. Her growth
is rusted is some way near birth and this becomes meta
phorical ... her ambition to become a writer, which in
her own eyes she never can become quite good enough at.
That's as dose as I can come to a universal conversation.
B.R.: Why did you become a writer?
J.I.: I wasn't good enough at anything to consider ser
iously becoming. I think a lot of writers start out distract
ed because they could be a number of things. I wasn't
good in school, I wasn't a very good student. I could never
have gotten a very good job, I never actually wanted to
have a job. If you grow up knowing you never wanted to
have a job . . . Jesus, you've got to find something else,
you see.
I wrestled as a schoolboy and I loved wrestling, but I
wasn't particularly good at it. So the idea of being a
wrestler who lost all the time ... this is also a wearing
process. So my options were very infrequent. I spent a lot
of time imagining I suppose, that I might be a person who
would like to have a job, or I might be a person who could
do something else. But it seemed like the best thing I
could do as a child was make things up.
B.R.: In some ways we are similar, in some ways we are
opposite. You have characters who are jocks and I have
characters who are physically handicapped. . .
J. I.: Let me try to guess that one out. You see, jocks
have another kind of handicap. The physical handicap
that jocks have is that they're never very comfortable with
getting older than 19. So that they remain perpetually
more immature than other people and they don't grow
old very well Because if their earliest form, as a kid's
form of self-esteem, was because of what they could do
physically, it's quickly recognizable to them in their 20s
that they're not doing something nearly as well-as when
they were 17 or 18.
This is depressing news to people who insist on seeing
themselves through how well their bodies work. The point
about bodies is as they get older, they work less well.
Jocks are less capable of accepting this simple news than
the rest of the world. I suppose this is a mental handicap
as well as a physical handicap.
My uncle always referred to me as a late bloomer. One
of my uncles inisisted on this view of me, which meant
simply that he didn't like me until I did something. Un
fortunately most people don't give you credit for being a
writer until there's evidence . . . until there's the book, al
though you could, as many people have, gone through
half your life getting the book. Which doesn't seem to me,
make you less of a writer. My uncle's feeling was that
since I wasn't particularly good at, or didn't particularly
accomplish anything until I was in my late 20s .. . ergo
"late bloomer."
This is inconsistent with being a jock, because jocks
bloom in their teenage years and never outgrow them.
B.R.: What do you think of critics in general?
J.I.: Well ... I usually don't make comments about
critics. My favorite remark about a critic was said by the
writer Steven Becker, who sent me a consoling letter after
he'd read a very bad review of one of my books in which
he said: "Critics are the tick birds of the literary rhinocer
os." From this time he sent me this unfortunate letter, I
continue to see them in that way. They serve the function
of the cow's tail on a sunny day.
'Riddle' impressive but lacking commercial form
By Chuck Lieurance
and Pete Schmitz
W.I. Thomas, an early 20th century
sociologist, said situations defined as real
become real in their consequences. Perhaps
this maxim can explain the commercial
failure of Tell Me A Riddle. Adapted from
Tillie Olson's powerful novella that receiv
ed immediate acclaim 20 years ago, this
film seems to have enough winning qualit
ies to make it as a hit.
Finally, their last stop on a cross-country
journey takes them to San Francisco,
where their liberated nurse-grandchild is
given the gift of Eva's hard earned heritage
and knowledge.
The story deals with several topics that
have recently bombarded cocktail parties
and university enrichment courses alike.
The protaganists, Eva and David, are an
elderly couple who immigrated from
Russia without losing their ethnic identity
in the mythic American melting pot. The
wife and husband are involved in a struggle
of wills in which he wants to sell the house
while she insists on keeping it An uneasy
truce is imposed on them when it is dis
covered that the wife is dying of cancer.
So why didn't a studio take a chance on
distributing this intelligent and moving
film? For one thing, the director happens
to be a woman - the brilliant actress Lee
Grant. Had her name been replaced by
Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, or Burt
Reynolds (never mind Grant's impressive
work with the performers, writers and
technicians involved with this project), the
GUIS!! movie would have made it to downtown
- u w theaters across the nation instead of a few
tart museums.
Film was ignored
Because the subject matter deals pre
dominantly with the point of view of its
female characters, the film was ignored or
patronized by too many film critics. Some
have even accused it of being a soap opera.
(But of course it's different with Kramer
Vs. Kramer and Ordinary People because
they deal with men's problems).
Maybe the plot would have been more
interesting had Eva left her family 30 years
earlier. It could have then focused on single
fathers. And really, Lee Grant should have
tried for some class and used some music
by Vivaldi. After all, it worked for Alan
Alda in The Four Seasons.
But what really did this picture in was
the fact that it did not make a young white
male the main focus of the narrative.
Where was John Travolta? It all would have
been much more interesting had David and
Eva stayed with a grandson instead of
Jeannie. And one has to admit that a good
cast of performers like Melvyn Douglas
(David), Lila Kedrova (Eva), Lili Valenty
(Mrs. Mays) and Brooke Adams (Jeannie)
cannot excite audiences like the people in
Charlie's Angels or Endless Love.
If the diatribe just given sounds too
bitter, it's because the movie Tell Me A
Riddle deserved a bigger audience as well as
a better critical response. But because of
the factors discussed above, certain people
defined the movie a failure before giving it
a chance to succeed.
Political message
Admittedly, it is easy for critics to make
prior judgements and praise a certain film
just because it has a "politically correct"
line. And Grant's adaptation falters at one
point in which a new political message is
inserted.
Thus, Jeannie tells her grandmother
about having an abortion and justifies it
with the cliche' "I respect life." One can
almost see Olson cringe at this awkward
attempt to update her story with more
"politically sound" messages.
Another factor that might have displeas
ed Olson (according to the late Melvyn
Douglas, the writer had reservations about
the way her work came out on screen) was
the fact that the hard edges of her novella
were smoothed out in an attempt to attract
a wider audience.
In the original material Eva and David
do not renew their love or friendship, but
m the film they fall in love "all over
again. The film's emotional climax occurs
as the couple embrace while flashbacks of
them making love as a younger couple are
inserted. r
f , Y5t th.e rest of tn movie remains faith
tul to the intent and spirit of Olson's
gripping and frenetic prose. The opening
shots of Eva and David are strokes of
genuis.
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