The World of 'The World According to Garp' (Interview with John Irving, 'Rolling Stone' 1979)

People leave stuff out on our street.  Last year I found a battered copy of John Irving’s The Cider House Rules. I remembered the movie—with Michael Caine as the dedicated 1930s-40s abortionist when it was banned everywhere, Toby Maguire, Charlize Theron—better than the book. So I took it home  and was instantly returned to the world of its pages: the warmth, the humor, the nobility of character and motive, the infinite complexity Irving was able to build while never losing the thread of the essential simplicity of the story. It wasn’t until I was 100 pages in that I realized I’d found the book the same day the Supreme Court ripped up Roe v. Wade.

I was eager to see Irving’s newest, The Last Chairlift, though I’m leery of books calling themselves the last anything. I couldn’t get fifty pages into it. I gave up after the narrator came up with his, I don’t know, 20th, 40th, way of describing how short his would-be stepfather was. Especially since, when we met for the interview below, the unquestionably short Irving mentioned how much nerve it must have taken a short person like Randy Newman to put out “Short People.” I told him Randy Newman was six feet tall. Irving wasn’t happy to hear it.

All of which is to say that he has been around, part of the common conversation, for a long time, and with luck for a good time to come. I hope the conversation that follows is still a small part of that.