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John Irving biography

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Quick Facts

  • NAME: John Irving
  • OCCUPATION: Educator, Author
  • BIRTH DATE: March 02, 1942 (Age: 71)
  • EDUCATION: Phillips Exeter Academy, University of Pittsburgh, University of Vienna, University of New Hampshire, University of Iowa
  • PLACE OF BIRTH: Exeter, New Hampshire
  • Full Name: John Winslow Irving
  • AKA: John Irving
  • ZODIAC SIGN: Pisces

Best Known For

Award-winning, bestselling American novelist John Irving is known for works like The Cider House Rules and The World According to Garp.

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The new millennium saw Irving continuing his literary craft with works like The Fourth Hand, Until I Find You, Last Night in Twisted River and the children's book A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound. In 2012, Irving published his 13th novel, In One Person, which follows a narrator's erotic exploits and yearnings from youth to adulthood.

Literary Themes

Irving's novels often deal with controversial subject matter in a way that's been heralded as quirky, humorous and brave. He's dealt with the issue of married couples swapping partners, parental loss, feminism, childhood abuse, and both open bisexuality and repressed homosexuality in narratives that explore conventionality and challenge tradition.

Elements of Irving's own life—including his wrestling career, absentee father and own sexual fantasies as a young man—have inspired much of his writing, though the author says that he prefers to rely on an open imagination as the springboard for ideas rather than strict autobiography. Irving also constructs his stories aware of what his endings will be, hence being able to play with foreshadowing in a directed way. Critics have had a range of responses to his work, with some titles, like Garp, being more favored than others.

Irving has been married twice, and wed his literary agent, Janet Turnbull, in 1987.

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