Friends of the Folsom Library: John Irving

I subscribe to author John Irving’s Facebook page, and the other day he had a posting on his new novel, In One Person, to be published May 8, 2012. Irving notes “My thirteenth novel, In One Person, is about sexual identity. Billy the bisexual narrator and main character, tells the story of his life as a “sexual suspect” – from his adolescence in the fifties, through the AIDS epidemic, into the present…. In One Person is my most political novel since The Cider House Rules and A Friend for Owen Meany.”

Thanks to the generosity of a number of donors, we have every novel written by John Irving available in the Folsom Library including The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. And thanks to the Friends of Folsom Library, we have the DVD The Cider House Rules starring Toby Maguire, Charlize Theron and Michael Caine (who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor). Irving has a cameo appearance in the film as the stationmaster in the train sequence.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is my favorite book of all time. Touching, funny, and the best novel ending I’ve ever read. The DVD adaptation of this book is called Simon Birch. I have a good friend, who I didn’t know was a John Irving fan, who has a one-year-old son named Owen. I asked her how she came to name him Owen. “We named him after Owen Meany, my favorite character from my favorite novel of all time.”

Irving has been involved in wrestling all his life. He is a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. He mentions RPI in his memoir The Imaginary Girlfriend (within the collection Trying to Save Piggy Sneed): “In the quarterfinals, I pinned a guy from R.P.I. – I remember where he was from only because Lee Hall or Caswell asked me what “R.P.I.” stood for and I realized that I didn’t know how to spell Rensselaer or Polytechnic. …”

Try some John Irving out during the upcoming holiday break!

Bob Mayo

Director, Rensselaer Libraries