Author John Irving New Hampshire Born Iowa Bred

John Irving

Iowa City looks harmless. Bookstores. Brick streets. Workshop gossip. Then John Irving shows up and says, “Sure, but what if we make it weird?”

He comes to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the mid-60s, and ends up studying under Kurt Vonnegut—who’s basically a human smoke alarm with a typewriter. Funny. Furious. Allergic to fake seriousness.

 

Irving’s young. Full of big-story energy. A writer who loves accidents, coincidences, and fate like they’re all cousins at the same chaotic family reunion.

 

At Iowa, he drafts Setting Free the Bears. A thesis that turns into a full-blown novel. Europe. Wild turns. That shaggy, runaway-cart feeling that becomes his signature. Kirkus called it “a wonderfully fresh, wildly imaginative notion of a book,” which is reviewer-speak for this kid might be trouble in the best way.  

 

Then he cranks out The Water-Method Man and drags the chaos closer to home. Iowa City shows up. Graduate school creeps in. Relationships get messy. The jokes get sharper. The plot keeps slipping sideways like it’s trying to escape the room.

Kirkus said it was cleverly coordinated, but also “exhausting,” like a kid you want to stick in the corner for five quiet minutes—except the kid is likable and has a “tremendous comic drive.”  

 

Irving comes back to Iowa City in the early 70s as a teacher in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He writes The 158-Pound Marriage and suddenly it’s not travel and adventure anymore. It’s adults making decisions they can’t undo. Two couples. One affair. Moral fallout that spreads like spilled ink.

 

Kirkus called it “energetic” and “often intelligent.” It praised the sharp dialogue, and implied Irving was doing literary sleight-of-hand without getting precious about it.  

 

The Washington Post summed up the vibe, saying: Irving looks past the flashy action to the “morning-after implications.”  

 

By the time The World According to Garp hits in 1978, Irving is no longer warming up. He’s charging. Big stories. Sudden damage. Sex, violence, and tenderness all tangled together. Comedy shows up at the worst possible moment, because that’s how life works when it’s being rude.

 

The New York Times review points out that the book contains a truly horrifying car accident—described as so brutally realistic you’d have to explain a ridiculous number of plot details just to show how it happens.  

 

That’s Irving in a nutshell: the tragedy is awful, the setup is elaborate, and you’re laughing in self-defense.

 

Then he keeps going.

 

The Hotel New Hampshire turns the dial up even higher. Stranger. Darker. More dreamlike. Like a family road trip that accidentally drives into a nightmare and decides to rent a room.

 

The Cider House Rules is warm and unsettling at the same time—big moral questions wrapped inside a story that still knows how to punch you in the heart.

 

A Prayer for Owen Meany is tighter, louder, more controlled. Fate isn’t just lurking in the corner anymore—it’s sitting at the table, eating all the bread, and telling everyone how the night ends.

 

More books follow. A Son of the Circus (1994), A Widow for One Year (1998), The Fourth Hand (2001), Until I Find You (2005), Last Night in Twisted River (2009), In One Person (2012), Avenue of Mysteries (2015), and later The Last Chairlift (2022).

The surface details change—but the Irving DNA stays visible. Characters who remake themselves, and coincidence that doesn’t feel like coincidence because it hits too hard.