I am in the middle of The World According to Garp. Actually, I am at the end of it. The last 50 pages. Last week, I read A Widow For One Year. Last year, actually, 2 years ago now, I read A Prayer for Owen Meany. Prayer was good. It was absorbing, and in english class, I had a blast deciphering the symbolism, and doing all the other things you do to books in english class. It was a good book, and I made a mental note to read more by Irving.
This spring, we went to see some movie, I think it was The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which I enjoyed), and there was a preview for The Door in the Floor, which is an adaptation of the very first bit of Widow For One Year. It looked interesting...I put a star next Irving, Widow for One Year, in my mental checklist of books to read.
Early this summer, the not!boy read Widow, and recommended it. (he liked the sex) I pushed Widow up my list, displacing a Kingsolver book, some Margaret Atwood, The Tempest, and Bel Canto. I read Widow in about 2 days, and loved it. I was a little bit shocked by all the sex, and felt almost like I should be ashamed of reading something that explicit, despite Irving's obvious literary qualifications.
I told my dad that I'd read it, and he told me to read The World According to Garp. Which I'm doing. Today it made me cry.
Irving is amazing. His books are so long...not just in number of pages, but in scope. They are about a life...and they seem, while I read them, to be covering a lifetime. And in the same way that my own early childhood already seems to belong to a different person, the beginnings of Irving's books seem to be different novels than the ending. The people grow up, in the same way that I am.
He makes me want to write. Not just post in my blog, or write papers, but to write. This year in school kind of suppressed all of my writing instincts...not because I was too busy, although I was busy, but I think because of what we read. We read philosophy, and greek drama, and so on. This year's reading list was not comprised of books that are just supposed to be read. The books were written to be thought about, not just to be read. And I have no ideas that are so strong I need the world to think about them. I have a voice, as far as my writing goes. I have a voice, but nothing terribly interesting to say. And where Plato and Aristotle and Sophocles did not make me want to share my thoughts with others (they made me want to
think...and think hard...but for myself, not for the world)...Irving makes me wish I could share.
But I'm not going to. I'm not ready. Instead, I'm going to go finish The World According to Garp, and then maybe I'm going to go upstairs and start another sewing project. And then I'm going to go to work. And that's just the way it's going to be.
ETA: When I said that the not!boy "liked the sex" in Widow for One Year, I did
not mean that he liked JUST the sex. In his words, "I liked the fact that irving seems to be as obsessed with sexuality as myself". Just so we're all clear here.
