In One Person

I was very lucky to get a ticket to see my favourite author John Irving this week at a literary event in Toronto.  He was here to talk about his new novel, "In One Person".  This is his 13th novel and as he says it is his fourth political one, in the sense that it deals with an issue that people will undoubtedly take sides on.  This story is about having crushes on the people that one shouldn't have crushes on.  It features love between transgendered and bisexuals.  I have just this morning started the novel and I just love the way John Irving writes, you can tell that this is going to be a story that takes the main character to places that are going to be hard to read about.  Irving talked at length about the craft of novel writing and told how he always has the ending of a story first, often the last line and then the rest of the story will unfold from there.  Often, he has several of these story endings waiting in the wings for their turn to emerge.  He talked about his influences, when he was younger definitely, Dickens and Melville.  He revealed how he does not think a story worth telling unless there is an element that will be painful for the reader because it involves something that you would not want to happen to you or anyone you love.  His protagonists are usually searching for some meaning or knowledge and the reader is always aware of the answer before the character finds it for himself. 
Irving compared his other love, wrestling with his love of writing.  He feels that in both cases he enjoys the process of perfecting the skills over the result and that is what compels him to keep doing it.  He says the pleasure comes in doing something well but you have to put in the work to get to that stage.  At the end of the evening John Irving was very generous in answering questions that the audience had put to him.  He was very funny and smart when he answered and seems a very down to earth approachable man.  He talked very proudly of his youngest son Everett, who was in the audience and it was to him that he gave consideration when he writing this novel as this son is gay.  He finally admitted that he is working on his 14th novel, and that the ending came to him on Christmas Eve, he would not say what it is going to be about, but he did give us the last line.  It had something to do with being on a collision course (did not write it down!), but as he said that could apply to most of his novels. Can't wait!