Passing the Open Windows

Getting my ass kicked in my the 30 in 30 November poetry project. Started out rough as nothing was coming out that was any good. Wrote down a bunch of shapeless nonsense that did not help my confidence. Might have pulled out of it, or not.

Finished the new John Irving book.



Last Night in Twisted River starts out with a bang. A perfectly crafted narrative of a young man drowning in a river. It set the bar high for the reader. Sadly, the next 500 pages does not come close to the power of the first fifty.

It does not mean that it's a bad book, far from it. I think this is a book Irving wrote for the fans. I'm one of them having read everything I could find that he has written. He brings back so many familiar themes from his previous work. The meanness and protection of bears, New England prep schools, fathers telling sons stories disguised as warnings, physically large and powerful women, tragic events centered around a holiday and so much more. It was very hard at me to be mad at him when he used a throwaway line about being bonkers over a dog. If you've read Garp you should get that reference. He even throws Kurt Vonnegut, one of his teachers at the University of Iowa, into the plot!

His prose gets circular and obsessive about details, which has always been a major flaw of Irving's writing. You read a bit more about the logging industry on New England rivers and cooking in North Boston Italian restaurants that you need to. Irving also gets even more autobiographical with one of his main characters, making him an author who writes a political novel about abortion.

The book did not disappoint me. The endings were sad, mostly inevitable. Somehow, and I want to be wrong about this, after twelve novels now, I think Irving is trying to say goodbye. While I understand that there are no happy ending, I'm not sure I'm ready for the ride to end.