Prescience had a powerful impact on our culture, and all cultures.

WhatĮnthralled audiences and critics alike, besides a riveting story-line, were Irving�s fascinatingĬommunity of characters, who made the exotic (transgenderism, dwarfism) familiar, and theįamiliar uncomfortably and often tragically flawed. That skyrocketed Irving to a zone of celebrityhood never experienced by most authors. Garp was not only a publishing blockbuster but a cultural phenomenon The World According To Garp (1979) received a National Book Award and was a finalistįor the Pulitzer Prize. Guffaws at any suggestion that such a thing might exist, yet he himself has written three worksĬritically considered to be worthy of just such an appraisal. Irving, a famous contrarian, claims to disdain the label �Great American Novel,� and Later work as well Irving proved to be an enthusiastic globe-trotter, always expanding the playingįield for his art and enhancing his universal appeal.

Although New England would serve as the focus of many of the author�s narratives, in Beginning in 1968 with Setting Free The Bears, published a year after Irving hadĮarned an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, Austria played a pivotal role is his first five History to be both inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame and presented with an Oscar forīorn in 1942 in Exeter, New Hampshire, Irving�s early wanderlust landed him in Vienna,Īustria, at age 21, a decision which prevented Irving from ever being pigeon-holed as a Yankee It can also be said with some certainty that John Irving is the only Literary Lion in Have made him a household name in dozens of nations, and earned him the rare status of anĪcclaimed literary writer who has simultaneously achieved stratospheric popular commercial Translated into more than 35 languages, Irving�s narcotically-addictive fictions With controversial subject matter, and for the depth of his empathetic humanity, both as an artistĪnd as a person. Storyteller and comic genius, and praised resoundingly for his intrepid and fearless engagement The 76-year-old Irving has been widely celebrated, both here and abroad, as a master Planet as the novelist John Irving, the indefatigable author of fourteen novels, ten of which Over the past 50 years, no American literary lion has roared as mightily across the

Setting free the bears by john irving