There was a time when John Irving’s madcap, endearing, and at times implausible fiction ruled the American imagination. From his 1978 coming-of-age classic, The World According to Garp, to his 2000 Oscar for best adapted screenplay for The Cider House Rules, he outshone practically every other literary novelist.
In those two decades, Irving was everywhere, thanks to his signature vision of genteel alienation among the upper middle classes. But his command of the country’s arts and letters has loosened considerably ever since two airplanes flew into the World Trade Center. When the nation’s priorities changed profoundly and unexpectedly in the George W. Bush years, Irving’s idea of Americans began to feel almost quaint. His writing has never really recovered, and most readers would be hard pressed to name anything he’s published in the twenty-one years since.
