-Our next guest is a best-selling author
and Oscar-winning screenwriter whose books include
"A Prayer For Owen Meany," "The World According to Garp,"
"The Hotel New Hampshire," and "Cider House Rules."
His 15th novel,
"The Last Chairlift," is out now.
Please welcome to the show John Irving, everybody.
[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪
Welcome to the show, John. I'm so honored to have you here.
-Thank you. Thank you. -Now, this is your 15th book.
You're a prolific writer. This is 900 pages.
This is the longest one. Did you know when you set out?
-I sincerely hope it's the longest one.
And I'm almost certain that's the longest one.
-Yeah, you're not going to beat this record?
-No. There's only short trains in the station.
That's it.
-When you had the idea,
did you know this was going to be the long one?
-I knew it would be long.
I didn't know it would be my longest or longer --
forgive me -- than "Bleak House,"
almost as long as "David Copperfield."
I didn't know it would be that long.
But when you follow the lives of
the main characters' extended family --
his cousin, her girlfriend, his mother,
her girlfriend, and the stepfather,
who transitions to female --
you have a lot of lives to follow.
-Yeah.
-And it's my intention
to take each of those characters to an ending.
-You -- I think a lot of writers begin with
an idea of how a book should start.
I've heard you say you like to begin knowing
what the ending is going to be.
Have you always found that reverse engineering to be
the right approach for you, creatively?
-Always, yes, but I needed to write four books
before I realized it wasn't going to change.
I needed to realize
that there wasn't something really wrong with me.
It's that I see endings first.
I don't have the confidence to begin a novel
unless I'm writing toward an ending that I have foreseen,
that is, in my mind, predetermined.
And that's -- It's just always been that way.
-Well, certainly as a reader, I appreciate when
that moment, sometimes of dread, when you realize an author
might not know where this was going.
And so I like when you -- the confidence when
you're reading, you know, again, an author
that you have a relationship with.
Being in safe hands is a nice feeling.
You sort of mentioned a lot of the characters,
and maybe people picked up on it,
but the protagonist is a straight white male
surrounded by LGBTQ characters.
Is this -- Was it a plan of yours to write about
his perspective of that world or to make him sort of
the outsider amongst that group?
-It was certainly my intention to make him the odd guy out,
to make him the queer member of the family,
queer in the sense of strange and not up to speed.
And he is the slowest member of his extended family.
He's learning from all the rest of these people.
And I don't think it will be a surprise to anyone
that he's also, as the only straight guy,
the most badly behaved sexually.
-Yeah. You've been writing about sexual and gender politics
for a very long time.
I feel like, you know, perhaps the --
you know, the take on those topics
from your readership has changed.
Has it made it easier to write about,
has it made it harder to write about,
more satisfying to write about?
-It's made it depressing that it hasn't gone away.
-The issues? -Yeah.
I remember, when I was starting "The World According to Garp,"
that I was even naive enough to imagine that a novel
about these extremes of sexual intolerance,
these extremes of sexual hatred, I honestly thought
the novel was in danger of being passé,
or out of date, before I published it.
-You -- Another book of yours, "Cider House Rules,"
which took place in the '40s and was sort of a book
about what would happen if abortion was illegal,
is it also shocking to you that we haven't --
or it seems as though maybe we moved past it
and now maybe we're moving back?
-Well, we sure are moving back.
I remember, at the time, some of my friends
thought it was quaint that I was writing an "historical novel"
about that time when abortion was unsafe and illegal.
And what they meant was,
"Now that we have Roe v. Wade, now that it's secure."
Well, I wrote that novel intentionally as a warning,
because there were already the voices in --
The anti-abortion zealots were already there,
and this was my way of saying,
"Everything that happens in this story
can only happen at a time
when this procedure is unsafe and illegal.
Do you really want to go back there?"
And it doesn't make me feel prescient.
I'm not prescient.
I'm really bad at guessing the future.
But I've also been really bad at underestimating the pushback
against everything progressive
in women's rights and LGBTQ rights.
I underestimate that there's going to be a pushback.
-Yeah. Progress is not permanent.
-And that the pushback doesn't go away.
-Yeah. This is really special to have you here tonight.
I grew up reading your books. My mom is your biggest fan.
She came to the show tonight.
She went in your dressing room beforehand with me.
Overall, how do you think she behaved?
[ Laughter ]
-I thought her behavior was exemplary.
I was very happy to meet her.
-Well, you have not sacrificed your role
as her favorite living author.
You clinched it. You clinched it right there.
John Irving, everybody.
"The Last Chairlift" is available now
wherever you buy your books,
and please support local and independent bookstores.
We'll be right back with music from Rina Sawayama.