John Irving

Biography

John Irving (born 1942) grew up in Exeter, New Hampshire, attended Phillips Exeter Academy, and studied under Vonnegut at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is known for sprawling, Dickensian novels that combine comic social realism with elaborate, fate-driven plots. A Prayer for Owen Meany, his seventh novel, draws heavily on his New Hampshire childhood, his experience at Exeter (the model for Gravesend Academy), and his opposition to the Vietnam War and American interventionism. Irving is an avowed Dickens admirer, and the novel's architecture — parentage secrets, long-delayed revelations, comic set pieces with devastating emotional payoffs — is explicitly Dickensian. He has called Owen Meany his favorite character.

John Irving at a glance