a prayer for owen meany sparknotes literature guide john irving

In addition to Garp, Irving has written Setting Free the Bears (1968), The Water-Method Man (1972), The 158-Pound Marriage (1974), The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), The Cider House Rules, A Son of the Circus (1994), A Widow for One Year (1998), and the work widely considered to be his finest, 1989's A Prayer for Owen Meany. His fourth novel, 1978's The World According to Garp, became a popular sensation-as well as a movie starring Robin Williams-and since then his novels have consistently become bestsellers. In that sense, Irving's work lies somewhere between literary and popular fiction: he has not been widely accepted as an artistically important American writer, but his work is critically acclaimed and beloved by millions of people. Irving has always aspired to be a storyteller in the Dickensian sense, and his novels-frequently long, sprawling narratives featuring fantastical plots and memorable characters-are written for the intelligent general reader. Irving became a teacher himself, working at Mount Holyoke College, but he continued to write, and began to publish novels in the late 1960s. He eventually returned to the US and graduated from the University of New Hampshire, following which Irving studied at the highly prestigious Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he was mentored by Kurt Vonnegut.

After briefly attending the University of Pittsburgh, he studied at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna under the tutelage of the acclaimed German novelist Gunter Grass. Despite his dyslexia, he became an avid reader and writer, and also developed a great love of wrestling. As the stepson of a faculty member, John grew up in and around the academy. Irving never knew his father his stepfather taught history at Phillips Exeter Academy, a prestigious boarding school in Exeter.

John Irving was born on March 2, 1942, in the town of Exeter, New Hampshire.

A prayer for owen meany sparknotes literature guide john irving