The Water-Method is John Irving's second book, written when he was 29 years old, but it certainly doesn't sound like it. This is, in fact, one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. It isn't too hard for me to find a book that will make me smile, but it is a rare pleasure to find one that will make me laugh out loud.

The story follows the stalled and frustrated life of Fred Trumper (alternately known as Thump-Thump and Bogus), a 29 year-old graduate student who can't seem to pay bills, finish his thesis, or maintain a healthy relationship with a woman. In addition to these fairly normal problems, Fred also has to deal with a twisted urinary tract that causes him no end of problems. Given the choice between corrective surgery and something called the water-method, well, you can guess which one he opts for.

In spite of some peculiar, interesting, and hilarious scenes, the basic plot of this story is nothing new. Marriage and dating struggles, infidelity, raising children, and love triangles are all problems dealt with in the book, but even if the subject matter tends towards the mundane, Irving's stylish and clever writing makes it enjoyable to read about. Especially clever are the various allusions to the Old Low Norse manuscript that Fred is attempting to translate for his thesis paper, and how its dramatic and epic elements mirror those more realistic experiences through which Fred must struggle.

I think even Irving was aware of the rather stunted nature of the premise. Fred is friends and co-workers with an independent film-maker named Ralph Packer who ends up making a movie about Fred (the film's title is not really appropriate for this website, however). Various reviews and comments on the film actually mirror what negative things one might have to say about the novel itself, so on that score, I give Irving points for his tongue-in-cheek humility (and for the subtle and witty self-mockery).

Although, much like water itself, this book is certainly thirst-quenching, there isn't too much substance here. It is refreshing nonetheless, and is a delight to read.

Probably the best of John Irving's novels - absolutely hilarious. Wonderful, inventive story about a man with a urinary tract issue (among others).

Over the years whenever I was sad I read this book because it was sure to make me laugh!

I had forgotten how funny John Irving was. As a general rule, books that are meant to be humourous don't gel with me. I find different things funny, and the gags just don't work. But early John Irving is laced with humour, and the jokes work with me.
I first came across him when I was 14 almost 15, and received Cider House Rules as a (spectacularly inappropriate) Xmas gift from an aunt and uncle. After recovering from the shock I went on to read a good few more, then moved on. I've occasionally dipped back in over the years.
The water-method man is early Irving, and excellent. It's really funny, but endearing. It jumps back and forth around the recent years of a man who, as well as suffering from a peculiar medical complaint, perhaps did too much too young, and then gradually finds himself.
The usual tropes of a John Irving are there, the repetitive themes that caused me to drift away. The central character is an ex-wrestler; no character has a common name; sex is frank and frequent. But this is his 3rd book, these can be forgiven.

1 Yogurt & Lots of Water
Her gynecologist recommended Dr. Jean Claude Vigneron to Fred “Bogus” Trumper, the eye-narrator of this story. Ralph Packer named him Thump-Thump. Tulpen calls him by his surname, Trumper. Urinary tract is a winding road…they are both 28. Merrill Overturf is still lost…lives w/Tulpen.
2 War-Built Things
This chapter t’would appear to take a 3rd-person look through…
Fred likes to remember Merrill Overturf, the diabetic, who called him Boggle. The Iowa phase. Biggie his wife, Colm his son.
3 Old Tasks & Plumbing News
Sep 3, 1969, date on letter. A letter chapter…like more that are coming.
Letter from Bogus to Mr Cuthbert Bennett, Caretaker, Pillsbury Estate, Mad Indian Point, Georgetown Maine. Thesis chairman: Dr. Wolfram Holster.
4 Iowa Evening Rituals
another 3rd person chapter, this.
Bogus has been recording ritual into the tape machine. “There’s a danger in dwelling on small emotional things.” Among other things, like his father’s hospital reports. …bladders which can be easily infected, though the major key is some kidney complication.
Fitch/neighbor. Recalls Great Boar’s Head, Colm teething, pot in front of Elsbeth Malka’s porch. She goes to get diaphragm. The poetess. Bogus informs the tape recorder: I resolve to go a fair bit out of my way to be polite.
5 A Dream to Me Now
This one is an eye-narrator chapter.
Bogus has been drinking a lot of water---since chapter one. Bogus had been a grad student, PhD in Comparative Literature. Thesis, original translation of Akthelt and Gunnel a ballad in Old Low Norse. And so he makes up words, too, for this dictionary that he also compiles. He imagined the author a peasant wife.

Gunnel uppvaktat aft titta Akthelt.
Hanz kniv af slik lang.

Uden hun kende inde hunz hjert
Den varld af ogsa mektig.

Gunnel loved to look at Akthelt
His knife was so long.

But she knew in her heart
The world was too strong.

There is still the matter of Bogus’s urinary tract.

6 Prelude to the Last Stand letter chapter, this.. another letter, Otct 2 1969...Bogus’s address in Iowa City is 918 Iowa Ave. Letter to Cuthbert again.
Bogus knows a fine young fire for Couth; Lydia Kindle. Bogus sells buttons and pennants and cowbells at the Iowa football games. 10% of sales. Hawkeye Enterprises--Go Hawks! #501 his badge. Head of sales is one Fred Paff. Couth has sent portraits; self portrait w/seaweed…..dead gull no. 8.…etc. Bogus makes a request, one of him, dead…etc. Last word of 83rd stanza: Klegwoerum fertile, fecund, rank, it does not matter.

7 Ralph Packer Films, Inc. 109 Christopher Street New York, New York 10014 An eye-narrator chapter, this.
Tulpen and me at work. R.P. Fan Club kid named Kent who runs errands. RP’s 1st film The Group Thing When Bogus meets RP at Iowa, believes he is Old Thak, Akthelt’s old man. RP’s films lack a resolution…he fails to commit himself to a point of view.
Soft Dirt was about a rock group. The leader’s dog is electrocuted by an amp…dog’s name, too. S.D.
3rd film about a traveling circus….elephant keeper who lost three fingers on his right hand when the elephant stepped on him. The elephant felt terrible about it.
Working on one called Down on the Farm about a hippie commune called Free Farm.
Tulpen and Ralph…mutual stalemate…sleep to work…good at to work..etc. Kent. Ralph comes in bundled in fur…Kent saw the new Grontz film White Knees Kent sent to get doughnuts. Kent is sent for additional….crullers.

8 Other Old Mail letter chapter, this one. dated Oct 3, 1969
Just what is says…mail, letters, to, from, etc etc. These are all to businesses, and Fred is buying time, etc. w/these businesses… Fred Trumper, Iowa City, letters to Humble Oil & Refining….w/a check for $3, reducing his bill to $44.56 He questions an item on his phone bill, a call to Maine--claiming he knows no one there--although he does know what’s his face. Last is to Milo Kubik, Peoples Market on Dodge Street.
Oops, not the last, as there are at least 3 more…the one to Sears about the Model X-100 is a hoot. A vacuum cleaner and the easy payment installment plan….and Oops again, as there are @3 more yet…
Fred’s student ID number 23 345 G…if it matters…
Signs himself Dismally, Fred Trumper to Mrs. Florence Marsh at the U of Iowa Educational Placement Service.

9 Mice, Turtles & Fish First!
Eye-narrator chapter, this one.
Tulpen takes care of the bills now. I don’t even see the checkbook. Ritual. Etc. When he lived w/Biggie, his wife, he wrote letters to her. Never gave them. He shows one to Tulpen. Oct 5 ‘69. Once he worried about a mouse in the basement, and whether or not Colm broke his neck in his sleep….and now it is turtles and fishes.

10 Let’s Not Loose Track of Certain Statistics
T’would appear that this chapter is a 3rd person look-see. It grieves him to remember lovely little
Lydia Kindle…from earlier…freshman German…etc. He made a tape for her…She critiques the pronunciation of the word(s)  mude or the same word w/two dots over the “u”…. She is careful not to touch him with the hem of her clothes. She is going anywhere, nowhere. Biggie in line at the A&P Her check is no good there…on a list. Colm empties some Cheerios on the floor….is separated from, cries. Etc. Biggie informs Bogus of the $ problem: It’s your father, the prick…

And then it switches to eye-narrator part-way thru…Bogus down to basement again, springing the trap…though the Mouse has sprung it himself…apparently.

Fitch, the neighbor, used to work for the Bureau of Statistics…and Trumper believes he has died…his imagination….sheesh, what next, hey? Fred, born March 2, 1942.…delivered by father, Dr. Edmund Trumper, urologist and substitute obstetrician…impregnated a member of US ski team…Sue Biggie Kunft of East Gunnery, Vermont.
And by chapter’s end, back to 3rd person again…or earlier….yabba dabba dooo. He has a problem concentrating…heh heh heh! Drops child…loses at wrestling! Is pinned. 3rd! 1st!
Believing in God went wherever Merrill Overturf went…friend from Europe.

11 Notre Dame 52, Iowa 10
An eye-narrator chapter. Football. Selling things. Heh! Attacked by the crowd, I forget why. This is…strange…the way the Iowa crowd is described as…ummmm, possibly going for the saints (or anyone) from another place, winners. This wouldn’t have happened. I was there…guy from Texas was coaching and they were Hawkeyes, through and through.

12 Do You Want to Have a Baby?
3rd person…Tulpen, Ralph, Bogus. Free Farmers. Whud? Something about a farm, Morris the free farmer hippie, run over by the real farmers, etc. All this descriptive language, camera angles and the like. And these fish tanks in Tulpen’s…something ate the eel, he can’t find it. Another bites the dust. Has happened before.

13 Remember Merrill Overturf?
Eye-narration….Europe w/Merrill…meeting Biggie, the winning skier in some event. Bar scene w/them all, Biggie, Merrill, two other women skiers and so on and so forth. Some amusing narration about going up, and down the mountain…yay boy howdy.

14 Fighting the Good Fight
Eye-narration, the past, though the previous and the next is a more distant past.
Risky Mouse, 918 Iowa Avenue, Iowa City phase…mouse that lives in the basement. Biggy, Bogus, Colm. Bogus has big peering pores. Unnerving. Also, hairy. To cover the peering pores. Benny’s, a place. Calls Flora Mackey Hall for Women. Lydia Kindle….ha ha ha: Flora Mackey was a Virgin to the End. The potential fag poet who works at Root’s Bookstore comes out of the stall…he’d been crying… When Bogus returns, he smells like Eau de Cologne that the faggot had in his pocket…oops. Biggie is royally peeved. All is well…Bogus gets laid. Biggie, too.

15 Remember Being I Love with Biggie? Kaprun. (European Rockies I take it)
Eye-narration. What is that, 3-4 in a row now? Doobie, doobie dooooo. Back in Europe, Bogus carrying Merrill to his room. Cracks his head on door, after taking steps 2-at-time to show Biggie he is manly. Ug ug ug! Oooga. The team is worried about the car. They ask Biggie about Bill. Bogus opens door, him holding Merrill’s pecker in a jug to pee in, yada yada…closes….and this too, déjà vu. Bogus tests the pee. Diabetic. This happened? Apparently so. Biggie and Bogus, the poem in his room….etc. This is the 1st time they did it, Bogus and Biggie. No love involved, just sex. Interest, curiosity.

Later, Merrill appears, frostbit, in need of some CC stuff, diabetic. Bogus sends it home. They bring him into the bed (puff) w/them. All better.
Merrill has a Zorn-Witwer, ‘54...whatever that is. Biggie is to go w/Bogus, it is understood…though the explanation is not in the narration. She will explain to a French girl…they are at the hotel. Bill/coach, Robert, etc. Biggie gets pregnant and they worry that the IUD is in the baby as it is lost the device…heh! Named after uncle, Wild Colm MacTrumper. Chapter closes w/this: At the time I was assuming that someday we would be seeing a lot more of Merrill Overturf. If I’d known otherwise, I’d have called out baby Merrill.

16 Fathers & Sons (Two Kings) Unwanted Daughters-in-Law & Fatherless Friends
A letter chapter. What’s the word for that? Epistolary? Yeah, I think so. Nov. ’69 1st one, letter to Bogus’s old man, Edmund Trumper. There’s like 3 letters from Biggie to Bogus’s old man, all same date. They get sent, oh my. When the phone rings, they don’t answer it. Biggie calls him a prick. He is.
And some eye-narration. Fitch the neighbor, defending his lawn against leaf attack. Couth. Heh heh!
Bobby Pillsbury. Colm and Bogus and the DUCK POND…dead duck…last to land, dies landing?
Oh, and the 1st letter, or after it? A puzzle, that…there’s this bit about Fred & Couth getting VD from Elsbeth Markas, who, when they were 15, went to Europe and “brought back the world in her crotch.”
Oh my gosh, such shameless misandry? Miss Andry.

17 Reflections on the Failure of the Water Method
App’t w/Dr. Jean Claude Vigneron. Heh heh! Patients, the nurse/receptionist, talk, whispers, listening. A young girl child, an older one, woman, in leather, an old man w/all the apparatus, the mother of the yellow child. Mr. Kroddy is the old man, his bag, leaking. People get upset when he empties it before them, the bag. Miss DeCarlo is the young woman, whom Bogus asks if she has the clap….cause he thought her insensitive. Vigneron comes to get the clap girl….he says he’ll have the operation… His record is broken….he gives him some packets… Ralph’s new film, subject Bogus…etc. Called Fucking Up
Tulpen and Bogus let the phone ring.

18 One Long Mother of a Day
Eye-narration. Biggie/Bogus/Iowa. They call Edmund Trumper, the old man, but Bogus is mute. Trumper thinks it is Mr. Bingham, again, having another attack….he’ll be right over.
Bogus spends the night in the Iowa Library Ph.D. thesis alcoves. Harry Petz, an example….but not Bogus. Akthelt, ever-warring Greths. Thak gooses Gunnel when he comes in.
Lydia Kindle. In an Edsel. 2 . She is taking him to a hunting….blind? Shack? Heh heh! Near the Coralville Reservoir! They picnic in the back of the Edsel. He died of exposure on the duck-flown shores of the Coralville Reservoir!

There is a disagreement of sorts….she leaves him naked, but w/clothing…and he meets Eddy and Harry, the two duck hunters. There is a dead duck….doobie doobie doooo, in the truck…. They pass her, dressing on the side of the road, but she passes them again on I-80. Go, you little honey!

They drop him off on Clinton Street. Ralph Packer to the rescue, gets him back, into the cellar. Fitch nods him home. Bogus steps on the trap, pees in the condom, is remembered by Colm as the daddy w/special presents. Dead ducks. The mailman comes in. Special Delivery! Special Handling! Letter from dad.

19 Axelrulf Among the Greths
3rd person here t’would appear.
A bit from Akthelt and Gunnel is used to illustrate or foreshadow or whatever to-do w/ Bogus & family. Father, taking son, etc. Not. Colm flies to Pappa. Zoo. And so on and so forth.

20 His Move
He stands on the dark sidewalk…(3rd person narration again) Bogus, Fitch, Ralph. A check from the old man, five grand…Bogus Trumper pays bills. Cables Merrill, I am coming. Boggle. I think he mails the dead duck to his old man…gives Colm a Amish-made duck…Bibbie, a mauve bra, French-uplift. She has a rack, truly, nothing finger. Dr. Wolfram Holster. Zanther. Trumper gets sick on the flight. Nice.

Home Movies
Kent ran the projector…Trumper ran the recorder…Big scene about it all….Trump, Kent, Ralph, Tulpen hits play. Fucking Up. A mess of tape on the floor, etc etc and so on and so forth.

22 Slouching After Overturf
He was very lucky…3rd -person again? Yes. Trumper spending night in STUTTGART. Hotel Fehls Zuner, German U-boat, frogman, lost at sea. Dream, Merrill’s pee, the old man’s egg. Etc etc. This dream scene is nice….yet another writer who uses dreams to great effect. Noises from life intrude and play in the dream.

23 Taking It Personally
Film chapter…movie, making a movie….cuts, lines of dialogue from Bogus, Couth, Ralph, & Biggie. Who left whom? Biggie or Bogus?

24 How Far Can You Get w/an Arrow in Your Tit?
Fred Bogus Trumper in Europe, looking for Merrill. Not much luck.

25 Getting Ready for Ralph
Bogus, in Tulpen’s apt…hopping mad…furious fuming. Trumper vs. the blow fish. Ralph Packer calls. He wants film footage of Tulpen/Bogus going to bed. They don’t do it enough. Bogus is worried about his pecker I guess. Ralph persists and on the 3rd ring, Tulpen tells him to come.

26 Gra! Gra!
“Just how long his mind was lost he didn’t know, or how fully he’d recovered it by the time he wa are of some more writing in the typewriter before him….”
His reflection in the windows ascairts him. Europe, the distant past again, like chapter 25, whereas 25, I take it, though past came after this one, too. Someone died on Jolanta he whore. Frau Taschy’s place. All through the hallways, men emerge carrying their shoes. Polizei come, 3 of them. Not dead, not drunk, but an insulin reaction. It is Merrill. One carries Merrill out, the other two kidnap Bogus.

But now, this was all…dream apparently. He comes to, or awakes, or something. He leaves. He goes to the Kaffeehaus Leopold Hawelka where the prophet boomed at him, asking if he found Merrill Overturf. There is a neon-green girl there. Outside, qqc hits him w/a brick of hashish…a mentholated slab of fudge.
Sees the whore w/the muff, only no muff. But a spring suit. He asks her the time.

27 How Is Anything Related to Anything Else?
Ralph attempts to explain his film by comparing it to a contemporary novel: Helmbart’s Vital Telegrams There is a “chapter 77” here from that. Each sentence seems unrelated to the previous. Nine of them. Trumper reads them in the can. The phone is in the can. To do w/LONG Distance. Sprog, Akthelt, Gunnel and Fluvia…[love shack]…Old Thak. His best dog: Rotz. To IUD or not. This chaper has the first line of the story: “Her gynecologist recommended him to me.”

28 What Happened to the Hashish?
In East Gunnery, Biggie, your mother put us in separate rooms…Aunt Blackstone.
Funky start to this chapter.
End of it is story. Bogus gets taken down by 3 American….cops? Who knows. Has to do w/the hashish. But, they ask why he left his wife. The top cop? Is none other than Arnold Mulcahy.

29 What Happened to Sprog?
He was de-balled w/a battle-ax. Exiled to the coast of native Schwud. Fluvia exiled w/him. For sexually assaulting a member of the royal family. Gunnel.
Then: eye-narration: When I asked her why her gynecologist recommended that she have her intrauterine device removed, she does this infuriating thing with her hotshit tit--flipping the big bosom of hers as if to tell me thathe contraceptive device, or lack of one, is entirely her business. PRESENT TENSE, TOO!
Her= Tulpen
Then, it swtiches to past tense, 3rd person, and so it goes.
Talk of haing a baby: Sprog, the old horse-basher, uprooter of trees. Gunnel was nearly humbled by him. Castrations always take place at night. ….There is more about Sprog…heh heh! Running after one of the brothers…

30 What Happened to Merrill Overturf
Once Trumper had read a magazine article on espionage. He was in a rar office of the American Consulate in Vienna….Merrill drowned in the Danube looking for a tank…Polly Crenner was on shore
This chapter details Bogus’s adventure w/the drug cops or whatever they are…to do w/the hashish, the gra! Gra ! Man…flying back to NYC…taxi to Maine to see Couth. Bogus has been gone for 6 months?

31 A Pentothal Movie
This is a movie, or film, in words…description…the operation to fix his pecker. Ralph and Tulpen soap her breasts as Trumper is in hospital….Ralph, getting them on film…actually, Kent getting them on film.

32 Another Dante, a Different Hell narration is back and forth up and down you’re turning me, upside down, round and round.
Dante Calicchio is the limousine drive taking Trump Trump to Maine to see Couth. (taxi from 30) Georgetown, an island serviced by a bridge. Pillsbury something or other. Biggie and Colm are with Couth, have been for a time.
Eventually, they go back to NYC, Dante the chaffeaur and Bogus. Dante defends Bogus vs. the federales. No win. Etc.
ends w/some eye-narration.

33 Welcome to the Order of the Golden Prick
Eye-narration. Surgery over, done w/ etc….

34 Into a Life of Art: Prelude to a Tank on the Bottom of the Danube
Thumper narrating what Merrill’s last days must have been like…note the title. Polly Crenner.
The Group Thing a movie thing that Bogus was the sound man on…missing person….Wilson, Mulcahy etc etc. Mulcahy’s wife…they set his path for him…

35 Old Thak Undone! Biggie Puts on Weight!
Biggie and Couth were lovely to him. Cohm. Moby Dick. Etc.

Akthelt Beset with Doubt! Trumper Grinds to a Halt!
In Iowa his old stitches fell out. Akthelt and Gunnel again…the truth this time, to a completion….etc…only there is this bit about her cutting off their penises, along w/the live eels and their heads on the table. An inside joke from Akthelt and Gunnel…”Gaf throgs!”…..is Give thanks! When they wanted to congratulate one another for a job well done. A homosexual airline pilot afraid of the rain.
Trump Trump gets his phd. And so it goes.

Audience Craze, Criticial Acclaim and Rave Reviews for Fucking Up
Variety arrounced that Ralph Packer’s newest film is clearly the best thing….
His parents read a pile of reviews of Fucking Up….which seems to be a comment on this story, as Fucking Up is this story….but it is Ralph Packer’s film. Bogus did the sound. Two scenes after the two that Bogus put in, those reversed….Tulpen, pregnant at the end. Afterward the kids recognize him…and so on.



38 The Old Friends

Ich liebe John Irving so sehr. Dieses Buch ist nicht großartig gealtert, wahrscheinlich, aber es hat viel Herz und ist wahrlich ein Buch, wie für meine Eltern geschrieben. Fred "Bogus" Trumper ist kein großartiger Mensch, aber seine Geschichte ist so verwoben und absurd, dass man ihm kaum böse sein kann.

Fred Trumper's story mixes filmmaking with Phd study and real life in a heady mix. Not all sequential the reader determines the situation by circumstances. Entertaining and funny.

Um. What a hot mess!! It started with an interesting narrative voice and Irving's usual brilliance with language but took a turn for the...dare I say it...BORING!! Talk about creative writing, my beloved Johnny went wild in this book...going from epistolary, to screen play script, to third person, to first, to bizarro collage. Too creative. The transitions from one time and place to another lost me. Am I in Maine or Vienna? Am I asleep or daydreaming or is this happening?? And certain lines feel a bit too dated and make me uncomfortable...John, not every woman wants to trap a wrestler into being her baby daddy, c'mon now. To be honest, I skimmed the last one hundred pages it from what I can tell the deterioration worsened.
I learned a lesson!!!! This is one of J. Irving's first works and holy shadooby has he gotten better. Writers improve!! There is hope for my own hot messes!!!!!!!!!! Yes.

p.s. I love you John Irving.

Sunkiausiai skaitoma Irwingo knyga. Pirmus 150 psl net kankinausi,kad nenumest į šoną. Po to situacija kiek pasitaisė, ir ištraukė rezultatą 1,65 -> 2 žvaigždės.
Pagrindinė problema. Veikėjas neįdomus. Suprantu, kad tą netikėtą paviršutinišką gyvenimą ir buvo stengtasi parodyti. Gi apie jį knygoje bičiuliai net filmą susuko, nes jis buvo toks. Keistas? Plaukiantys gyvenimu be gilesnio užsikabinmo. Galbūt veikėjas pavyko tobulai, bet skaityt reikėjo vietom prisiversti.
Yra visa krūva puikių autoriaus knygų - šitą galit apeiti ratu.

Far from vintage Irving, the plot is meandering and it's difficult to feel much sympathy for many of the characters. But there is still plenty of his familiar offbeat wit and sympathy for the frailties of human relationships; it's just that this smacks of a novelist who has spent so much time around academics and academia he appears to have struggled to write about anyone else on this occasion.

Not my favorite Irving novel, but what he does here with time management (as in handling plot lines that take place in two or three different time periods) and point of view shifts is fascinating to read as a writer. Flashbacks can be problematic in fiction - keeping track of what's happening when can get confusing quickly for readers - so Irving gets around that issue by separating them out into different chapters. The POV changes as well, but I had a harder time determining the system he'd set up for that as it corresponded to the time periods.

As is typical for Irving, all of these characters are fundamentally flawed and they often skew toward being unlikable at times. But somehow he manages to make us root for them, want to see them succeed in life even if they are a flaming mess.

Hilarious and tragic. I had a hard time deciding which word to put first.

This is your opportunity to watch John Irving become John Irving.

When you look at his career, it's an imperfect bell curve. Three books warming up (the second of which is "The Water-Method Man"). There's a strong sense of an author finding out what he's all about. These books are by no means perfect (same as the bell curve), but I have a soft spot for them. Or at least for the ones I read in my mid-to-late teens during my "read everything by John Irving phase" which included The Water-Method Man. And during this time, the books ooze swagger, and experimentation, and feel like they're being written by a young man in his 20s/30s with nothing to lose and everything to say. Which they were.

And then come the opuses, more polished and perfect and acceptedly better than what came before. The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules. Irving found out what he was all about.

And then, who knows why, but things kind of start falling apart after that. I haven't read much of what was published post Owen Meany (1989), but I've dabbled a little, and just looked at the Goodreads review averages. I think this thing happens where an author gets old and his writing gets old and it is what it is.

The Water-Method Man is certainly not perfect, but it's also certainly not that^. Essentially, our feckless and wayward protagonist, Fred Trumper aka Bogus aka Boggle aka Thump-Thump goes around fucking everything up, and then things generally work out. More or less. Kind of. We learn of his two great loves (Biggie, Tulpin) and his cohort of memorable friends (Merrill Overturf, Couth, Ralph Packer). And Irving tries out a LOT of stuff, including a mixed media non-linear narrative, a movie within a book (about Trumper, and literally called "Fucking Up"), a number of weird ways to refer to a penis, extensive delving into Trumper's thesis project on a (I presume) made up story (Akthelt and Gunnel) in a made up language (Old Low Norse). So there's a story in a story there, and probably some parallels to other part of the narrative to be drawn by someone reading more critically than me. And then we have the allusion that the whole book is written by Trumper himself sort of thrown in for kicks.

Many vignettes throughout are outlandish. Several of them are a lot of fun (especially Trumper skiing through the children. I lol'd.) Emotional stakes hit high as Trumper is shitty to just about everyone, especially the two main women in his life.

I dunno y'all. It's not perfect and can be a tricky read in spots, but I'll take this class of young Irving novel any day.


This quote is not illustrative of the book's feel or tone by any means. But I liked it and jotted it down:

"He is aware that he's been waiting for the point in his trip when he'll be suddenly exhilarated, struck with the adventure of returning. It's not until he arrives, still unfeeling, in Vienna that he considers the possibility that adventure is a time and not a place." (Pg 156)

I was pleasantly surprised in reading this early John Irving novel to find so many precursors of the documentary style I first encountered in The World According to Garp. In addition to both first-person and third-person passages of narrative, the book is filled with letters, bits of film scripts, translations of a supposed Nordic epic, and other bits of ephemera. Irving's liberal doses of humor, much of it morose if not actually dark, are also on display, as is his skill at creating memorable, unusual characters and complex comic scenarios.

Because I have so enjoyed his later works, I was glad to discover that these elements were well developed even in this, his second novel. Though why I didn't expect them to be is a mystery to me. I suppose early novels often fail to measure up to later ones, which is of course natural, and if one comes to the early works late, then they feel like examples of an author's waning powers, when of course they're hints of what was to come later.

While The Water-Method Man is clearly the work of a writer building up to something even greater, it holds up quite well on its own. If I had stopped reading it 3/4 of the way through, I think I would have rated it higher than I did, because it was only the final stretch of the book that I felt the pace falter, and I wished for something more out of the final chapters. In part this is because the structure of the book, in which the main character's current relationship, earlier marriage, and even earlier courtship, are relayed in alternating chapters. By the time one reads enough to ties those strands together thoroughly, it feels as if there should be a resolution already close at hand, but there is a further development yet to come, and as a reader, I was by that time just as annoyed with the protagonist's inability to commit himself to anything as were all the people he'd left behind.

Maybe this was intentional, but it made the last part of the book less enjoyable than the first part. The protagonist certainly doesn't do much in most of the book to engender anyone's good will, apart from his often amusing antagonism and his tendency toward failure in spite of his obvious intellectual gifts. So after he has fled from all those who have tried to help him throughout most of the novel, it's hard to root for his success. Yet he does succeed, and while that success is proportional to his efforts, it does not feel as hard-won as one might expect. His frank, self-effacing failure has simply been too well-catalogued. His redemption, by comparison, seems a little too easy.

Still, I'll remember this novel for a long time to come, and that's an important distinction when so many books fade from memory. And I'll very likely try the other few early Irving novels I haven't read, because I trust there are treasures there to find.