Trying To Save Piggy Sneed
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About the Author

John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942, and he once admitted that he was a 'grim' child. Although he excelled in English at school and knew by the time he graduated that he wanted to write novels, it was not until he met a young Southern novelist named John Yount, at the University of New Hampshire, that he received encouragement. 'It was so simple,' he remembers. 'Yount was the first person to point out that anything I did except writing was going to be vaguely unsatisfying.'

In 1963, Irving enrolled at the Institute of European Studies in Vienna, and he later worked as a university lecturer. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, about a plot to release all the animals from the Vienna Zoo, was followed by The Water-Method Man, a comic tale of a man with a urinary complaint, and The 158-Pound Marriage, which exposes the complications of spouse-swapping. Irving achieved international recognition with The World According to Garp, which he hoped would 'cause a few smiles among the tough-minded and break a few softer hearts'.

The Hotel New Hampshire is a startlingly original family saga, and The Cider House Rules is the story of Doctor Wilbur Larch - saint, obstetrician, founder of an orphanage, ether addict and abortionist - and of his favourite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted. A Prayer for Owen Meany features the most unforgettable character Irving has yet created. A Son of the Circus is an extraordinary evocation of modern day India. John Irving is also the author of the international bestsellers A Widow for One Year, The Fourth Hand and Until I Find You.

A collection of John Irving's shorter writing, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, was published in 1993. Irving has also written the screenplays for The Cider House Rules and A Son of the Circus, and wrote about his experiences in the world of movies in his memoir My Movie Business.

Irving has had a life-long passion for wrestling, and he plays a wrestling referee in the film of The World According to Garp. In his memoir, The Imaginary Girlfriend, John Irving writes about his life as a wrestler, a novelist and as a wrestling coach. He now writes full-time, has three children and lives in Vermont and Toronto.

Reviews

Inventive incident, deft characterization and vivid language are all here
*The Times Literary Supplement*

Irving proves himself, once again, a garrulous and engaging raconteur in this collection of fiction and nonfiction divided into three sections: Memoirs, Fiction and Homage. In the last, while admiring the work of Gunter Grass, he notes that ``Grass is never so insecure as to be polite.'' Given Irving's fascination with the malfunctioning or assaulted human body, one can't help feeling that he's defending his own work‘both acne (in the story, ``Brennbar's Rant'') and genital warts (the O. Henry Prize-winning ``Interior Space'') figure in these pages. Sometimes, however, Irving's grotesquerie lacks the compassion with which his favorite writer, Dickens, moderated his caricatures. In the title essay (in which Irving relates his discovery of the powers of fiction-making), Piggy Sneed, the retarded garbage collector and pig farmer whose disappearance stimulates Irving's imagination, is harshly ridiculed: Sneed ``smelled worse than any man I ever smelled‘with the possible exception of a dead man I caught the scent of, once, in Istanbul.'' There are other, more engaging pieces: an amusing account of a dinner at the Reagan White House; an early, sentimental story, ``Weary Kingdom,'' about a lonely woman; and, best of all, ``The Imaginary Girlfriend,'' a rambling autobiographical sketch with a heavy emphasis on the mentors and rivals who shaped Irving's defining obsessions‘wrestling and writing. Each of the 12 sections is followed by ``Author's Notes''; ``The Imaginary Girlfriend'' is supplemented with personal photographs (not seen by PW). 150,000 first printing; BOMC selection; author tour. (Feb.)

Inventive incident, deft characterization and vivid language are all here -- Irving Weinman * The Times Literary Supplement *

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