I can't believe that I finished a book about wrestling. Wrestling is a subject I have absolutely no interest in. I picked it up because I saw that it was written by John Irving and I had heard about the author and knew that many people liked his writing. It was marketed as a memoir of his life.

I give the author a lot of credit for keeping me interested enough to read the whole book in a couple days since I really didn't have any interest in wrestling. He talked a LOT about his wrestling career, his career as a wrestling coach and the wrestling careers of his sons. He name dropped a lot - people I never heard of in the wrestling world and really didn't care about. It's a credit to his writing ability that he kept me interested enough to read the whole book.

He is very passionate about wrestling and also a gifted writer. The two would not seem to go together...so, I found it very interesting to read about. I like being exposed to subjects that I know nothing about. In the process of reading the book, I learned a lot about wrestling - some of which I found interesting. I did not understand the discipline that is required to succeed with the sport. I also was unaware of the unusual things that athletes do to make their weight class for tournaments.

What the book lacked for me as a reader was any real insight into Irving as a complete person. Although he was married twice, he hardly ever mentions his wives. He has three children but only mentions them in terms of their ability to wrestle. There is more to life than wrestling and writing. This book was marketed as a memoir but it's really more about Irving's careers as a wrestler and writer.

I was intrigued by his writing - in the midst of all the wrestling stuff - there was some very good writing. He also has a sense of humor. The title really made me laugh when I understood what it meant after reading the book. I will read another book by this author.

I first read Irving's 'The World According To Garp' in 4th grade. I haven't read him as consistently as other authors, but he was my first truly mature writer, read as a nearly mature reader. That I later fell into writing and wrestling was a happy coincidence.

I really enjoyed this book and think you will to.

You don't need to be a wrestler, athlete or writer to enjoy 'The Imaginary Girlfriend.' This crisp, autobiography following his athletic and early literary career communicates the joys and pains of both worlds clearly enough you can get it. You also don't need much time. It's a quick read.

And absolute worth it.

Nic innego od tego gościa nie czytałam, ale mamy podobny gust jeśli chodzi o książki i teraz jestem ciekawa, jak on pisze powieści

Not what I expected from John Irving in the way of a memoir. It's mostly about wrestling, which I have zero interest in. But I guess it's a lesson in it being good for writers to be fanatical about a non-writing hobby.

Relatable and honest

This is a great, quick read. The writer's self-deprecating references to his own wrestling, along with quick but thorough explanations of the sport are terrific. Irving's thoughts on writing and the writing
process are also well worth reading.

Dull.
I don’t like to give negative reviews but I will make an exception for John Irving who describes Oscar Wilde as an inferior writer.
Unbelievable.
Here we have the perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black.

I think someone familiar with wrestling would really enjoy this.Of course I love John Irving and enjoyed his voice.

Slight, but very readable (as always). There is really no insight into his writing here. Pretty much for completists.

Irvingov vlastný 100 stranový životopis. Napriek tomu, že kniha pojednáva hlavne o jeho zápasníckej vášni, dosť som si to užil. Najmä výlet na jeden zápasnícky turnaj. O písaní je tam pomenej a ku koncu striela rôzne mená, s ktorými sa stretol na žinienke, človek až stráca pochopenie pre zmysel tejto knihy, no i tak by som ju fanúšikom jeho románov odporúčal!

Autobiographical reflections on his wrestling career

I learned more about wrestling than I ever wanted to know! But I can relate with Irving’s first obsession: for me it was weightlifting. His coach, Ted Seabrooke is unforgettable. What a great mentor. His idea about how talent is only a very small part of the equation rings true for me as it did for Irving.

I pulled into Iowa City yesterday afternoon, not planning to be in Iowa at all when I had woken up that morning. But while I was mowing my front yard, my son came up to me and said his ride back to college had fallen through; there was something about a texted dispute with the girl driving him about how much gas money he would owe her, and he told me that he had told her to stick it...

I suggested to him that he needed to work on his interpersonal communication skills, especially with women, but secretly I was not displeased because I was hoping to get back to Iowa City, even if it was in such an unexpected manner and for only a quick visit.

So what does one do in Iowa City on an unexpected Saturday afternoon? Well, after a walk through the pedestrian mall and a gander at the vagrants, I headed over to a used book store, Murphy-Brookfield Books on Gilbert Street, and took a look, a rare pleasure for a guy like me who grew up in Iowa City with its used book shops (as well as Prairie Lights, one of the better bookstores in the world) and who finds himself sadly living now in a part of the world with barely any bookstores at all, and none of them used. And I enjoyed myself tremendously, browsing the tall shelves crammed with second hand books. I even enjoyed the cat there, and I'm not much of a cat person.

And when I left, I had a couple of books in hand, one of which was an attractive copy of the British Bloomsbury edition of John Irving's memoir, The Imaginary Girlfriend, which I started reading later that evening and then finished in the middle of the night when the paper thin walls of the crappy Days Inn where I was staying failed to keep out the noise of the Coralville Strip and the voices from my neighbors' television.

So what? you might ask, and I'd reply that sometimes a book's rating might be more than just in response to the words on the page; the rating could be based on an entire sequence of events, a process of sorts involving an infinite number of factors like a surprise visit to Iowa City and a cat in a bookstore and a photo on the book cover of a young John Irving in his wrestling gear, captain of the Exeter Academy wrestling team, staring into the camera without any sense of where his life would be taking him over the next fifty-some years.

And so the five stars is partly based on all that, and it's based of course on my fondness for John Irving, who you'll see over to the right in my profile, listed as one of my favorite authors, and it's also based on how much of the book takes place in Iowa City (just about my most favorite place in the world) and how much of it focuses on wrestling and writing. And if you don't understand the relationship between Iowa City and wrestling and writing, then you probably don't get the attraction here because, more than anything, that is what this book is all about, Irving's lifelong relationship with wrestling and writing and about how those two pursuits have informed his life.

When Irving first came to Iowa City as a student in the Writers Workshop, Dave McCuskey was coach of the Hawkeye wrestling team. Irving had wrestled for Pitt and not done particularly well there, but unlike most former wrestlers he wasn't content to just let that part of his life slide. Irving visited McCuskey's wrestling room on the top floor of the Fieldhouse and wrestled with the team now and then. Later, when Irving returned to Iowa City in the mid-70s as an instructor in the Workshop, he wrestled in the room with Kurdelmeier's squad and then with Dan Gable's team. In fact, there's a hilarious photo at the end of the book of Dan Gable throwing Irving to his back with a wicked foot sweep. And he kept wrestling, and reffing wrestling and coaching wrestling all the way through the first part of his writing career. One of the last chapters in the book is called "My Last Weigh-in," about the final tournament he wrestled after publication of The World According to Garp. And he also devotes a great deal of time talking about his two older sons' wrestling careers, and all of this adds up to the point where many of the reviewers of the book here on GoodReads have complained about "too much wrestling" in the pages of this memoir. Maybe these folks haven't been reading their Irving very closely, and maybe they just haven't read much about Irving up till now, but beyond Garp and Iowa Bob and all the other wrestling references in his novels, John Irving really loves wrestling. Maybe they just didn't know that about him. But if you aren't in it for the wrestling, and if you don't understand the way wrestling has helped create the man John Irving is today, then you don't want to read this book, and you certainly wouldn't give it five stars.

Speaking of wrestling and Iowa City, in what might be considered a tremendous coincidence (a word that Irving uses several times in The Imaginary Girlfriend--and what sprawling nineteenth-century novel does not make use of the coincidence, and where would Irving [the closest writer we have to Charles Dickens today] be without ample use of the coincidence in his novels?), yesterday afternoon as I was walking in downtown Iowa City I passed Dan Gable right in front of the old Post Office by the little drive-in bank where my mother would often do her banking and where as a small boy I was constantly amazed by the little door that would pop out from the side of the wall when you pulled in for your transaction. There was Dan Gable and his wife and a group of what I could only imagine were his grandchildren on their way to some event in downtown Iowa City. Gable's old now and his hips are bad, but he's still the greatest wrestler in the world, and he's still a tremendous part of the fabric of Iowa City. As a lad I spent a lot of time in the Fieldhouse watching his teams wrestle, and I spent a lot of time in his wrestling room watching his practices before my wrestling club would use the room. Who knows, but maybe Irving was even there. Gable was relentless, and he would often stay after his practices were done, drilling alone in the room on the dummies, working on technique. Back then, even though he was long finished as a competitive wrestler on the mat, he could still beat everyone in that room, and watching him was a joy, so seeing him on the street yesterday was its own special kind of joy, as well.

So that's all part of why this book gets five stars from me, even though I'm one of the few reviewers to give it five stars. And there's a lot more, but I'm sure you're tired of reading this. And I could easily understand why someone else without a keen interest in Iowa City or wrestling or the Writers Workshop might give it a one-star review. After all, the book is a bit of a toss-off, written while Irving was recuperating from shoulder surgery. It's rambling and discursive, while at the same time maddeningly brief and undeveloped (it's less than 150 small pages). Irving tosses out names without much background, and the reader is left wanting to know a whole lot more about the author than what he gives here. No doubt there is a larger, more developed autobiography coming one day from Irving, and no doubt there will be biographers both sleazy and academic who will unfold more of the mysteries of John Irving's life, but this small book isn't going to give a lot of insight to the fan who is looking for profound revelations into the life of the artist.

As for me, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Here's something, though: on the "By the same author" page, the list of works ends with A Son of the Circus. And this might be another reason why I have taken so well to this small book published in 1996--it seems to me that despite the slapdash quality of the book, it's written at the peak of Irving's career, or at least at that part of his career that matters most to me as a reader. After A Son of the Circus, my appreciation of Irving's works begins to dwindle...maybe it's after Owen Meany. Even A Widow for a Year, which a lot of Irving fans seem to enjoy, fails to captivate me as well as those first seven or eight books, and what has followed Widow really hasn't impressed me too much. (I admit I haven't read the most recent book, but I'll get there soon enough.)

Here's what Kurt Vonnegut told John Irving all these many years ago back in Iowa City: "You may be surprised...I think capitalism is going to treat you very well." And it has, oh yes it has. Just maybe, though, it's treated him too well, and what's left now in the second half of Irving's career is only a shadow of what he put into those first books. But The Imaginary Girlfriend has little to do with that second part of Irving's life. This is the Irving of Exeter Academy and the Writers Workshop, of New Hampshire and Iowa City, and it's the Irving who sits on my Favorite Authors list.