Not my favorite Irving but lovable in its own ways. I laughed aloud at several excerpts and felt empty reading others. For me there was something that felt incomplete about the novel. The constant switching of POV & time with the thread of the Norse epic made it a tad difficult to follow & it lost me at points.

Irving shouldn't have let anyone publish it. Uninteresting characters, zero plot, zero engagement (excluding the very first pages which is all you need to read). This is a book that, to be worth of attention, would have required several major re-writings. It's a writer experimenting on ideas and styles, fine, but not worth to be published as it is.

Been awhile... but my favorite John Irving from my youth. The saga of Bogus with Biggie, Tulpen and Cuthbert are some of the most interesting studies of human relationship developed over time I'd encountered. Better than World According to Garp not as good as Last Night in Twisted River.

The book shifts from the past to present, from real life to a film or letters heaps throughout and is quite hard to follow in the first few chapters because of this. I found the protagonist and most other characters hard to care for or even like some of the time due to how they are described and the decisions the main character makes- all quite selfish and poor. As the book progresses though the plot sort of connects and unveils itself to you, which makes it all the more enjoyable and I found myself cheering the characters on. In the end, it is one of my lesser favourites of Irving but as always I loved his writing style, and it contained his signature humor that I appreciate. Due to the desperation and sad mood that follows the main character, I felt an overall melancholy tone as I read, but found that it added to the excitement and joy in the (mainly) happy ending. The entire premise of the novel, and the reasoning for the title, is very silly and adds a general nonchalance to the otherwise at times stressful and frustrating plot line. Good read and entertaining but just middle ground enjoyment for me.

Estoy descubriendo que los primeros libros de John Irving no están tan bien como sus obras posteriores, éste en concreto no me gustó nada cuando lo empecé aunque me obligué a seguir leyéndolo y al final no me disgustó del todo. Los temas recurrentes favoritos del autor están ahí pero falta algo, personajes más empatizables, mejor estructura narrativa, no sé, cierto toque que sí tienen sus trabajos más modernos. Supongo que eso es bueno, que es señal de que ha ido mejorando con cada nueva publicación.

Įvertinimas labiau 3.5/5, bet dėl knygos pradžios (kokie pirmi 100 puslapių) apvalinu į mažesnę pusę, nes tikrai norėjosi numesti šią knygą, buvo labai nuobodu ir niekaip nekabino. Visgi, vėliau pramušė ir likusią istoriją skaičiau tikrai susidomėjusi, su šypsena, kaip kad būna su Irvingu.
Tai ne pirma šio autoriaus knyga ir ją vertinu gana gerai, siužetas nors ir sulipdytas iš tų pačių visose knygose pasikartojančių elementų, bet buvo įdomus, įtraukiantis. Veikėjai ryškūs, gerai atskleisti. Žodžiu, dar viena gera Irvingo knyga mėgstantiems lengvai komiškas istorijas su įdomiais veikėjais.

I like how this isn’t as over refined as Irving can get, and there is some great stuff, but it is a bit too adrift and it was challenging to maintain momentum. Kind of a mixed bag. I wish he could have kept some of this style as he developed his arcs more.

Fred “Bogus” Trumper es un hombre con un problema prostático, quien embaraza a una campeona olímpica de esquí –razón por la que el padre de Fred decide suspender su apoyo económico con el que nuestro protagonista contaba para terminar su tesis de doctorado sobre una epopeya escrita en antiguo nórdico bajo– para luego huir de ella y atravesar el Atlántico en busca de un amigo austriaco cuando es detenido kafkianamente por el Servicio Secreto… es innegable que la fértil imaginación de John Irving estuvo presente desde los inicios de su carrera como escritor, como lo demuestra “La epopeya del bebedor de agua”, su segunda novela, que data de 1972.
Lo descrito previamente es apenas la punta del iceberg de una vasta narración (cuatrocientas páginas con tipografía pequeñita), pero no se siente para nada pesada, pues el bombardeo que hace Irving de imágenes, símbolos –anti y pro estadounidenses o europeos, que se cuentan por montones a lo largo de la narración– y situaciones cada una más disparatada que la anterior te envuelve, te deja reposar y te acomete de nuevo pues, como dice Jan Carew de “The New York Times”, “después de soltar la novela y dejar transcurrir el tiempo, los personajes y el caleidoscopio de hechos asumen una forma mucho más cohesiva y llena de sentido”.
Obviamente, los que anhelan una prosa compleja como la de Joyce o la de Proust (algo absolutamente encomiable y plausible, desde luego) deberían buscar en otra parte. Pero para quienes un relato lleno de inventiva y habilidad narrativa los satisface, “La epopeya del bebedor de agua” (y, en general, cualquier novela de Irving) es una muy proba opción.

Herlezing. Blijkbaar duiken personages, of toch in ieder geval thema's, uit The Water Method Man op in de allerlaatste roman van Irving, The Last Chairlift, die in het najaar verschijnt. En daar wil ik klaar voor zijn. Zoals altijd genoten van zijn schrijfstijl en humor.

Bogus Trumper breaks my heart every time. Such a loser. Such hope. I have read it 3 times.

I claim John Irving to be one of my favorite authors. That being said, I lack reading parts of his work and with this book, I’m trying to make up for it. Before reading this one, I haven’t read either of the two novels published before The World Accord to Garp gave Irving his huge break-through, so it’s interesting to see what Irving could do before that.

In this novel, some of the familiar themes in John Irving’s work are already present. As most of Irving’s novels, it takes place in part in New England – and in Vienna, Irving’s second favorite place. We meet hookers, there’s wrestling, writers and film-makers. All things that are often apparent in Irving’s work and feels familiars while he manages to put a new spin on them with each novel.

The Water-Method Man is the story of Fred Trumber/Bogus/Thump-Thump and the two loves of his life as well as his work on his Ph.d. thesis, a translation of the Old Low Norse epic poem Akthelt and Gunnel. Chronologically, we jump around between Bogus living with his first wife Biggie, Bogus and Biggie meeting and falling in love and Bogus’s relationship with his girlfriend Tulpen – which in a lot of way is a repeat of his relationship with Biggie – and his attempts to be a better father to Colm, his son with Biggie. We also get to experience parts of Bogus’ childhood – for instance the time where he and a friend both got crap from the same girl…

In this novel, there are some very Irving’sk episodes that are so hilarious that they’re almost hard to read because they’re so funny. One is Biggie and Bogus’ huge wrestling match where Biggie thinks Bogus has been cheating on her when in reality, he has helped a young gay man from the restroom where he was attacked, to his home. The man had some perfume water for his sister in his pocket, of course the bottle broke and he reeks of this – and of course, so does Bogus after helping him. Biggie immediately thinks Bogus has so little respect for her that he doesn’t even bother to shower after being with his mistress and in order to prove his innocence, Bogus wants her to smell his crotch – of course. Now Biggie has no inclination to do so – hence the wrestling. Biggie is a big woman and she can hold her own so it takes a while for Bogus to get her pinned down so he can force her to smell his crotch – and these pages are so funny!

My other favorite scene is where Bogus actually wants to cheat with a girl from the language laboratory he’s working at. They drive far out into the country and once there, there’s a long description of how hard it is to actually do something in the back of a small car. And then Bogus has second thoughts and jumps out of the car. The girl gets angry and throws all his clothes out and drives away, stark naked. Bogus runs after her, clutching his clothes and boots to try to catch up with her, running across barbed wire and more on his way and ending up almost being run down by her. He meets two duck hunters who has seen the almost hit and the naked girl behind the wheels, and they offer him a ride home. He dresses first luckily, and then there’s an absurd ride home where one of the duck hunters is plucking the duck inside the truck with the feathers at one point all in the air like a giant pillow, driving down the streets. When back in the city, Bogus gets a friend to help him home and he’s down in the basement, hoping to clean himself and especially his injured feet a bit before Biggie discovers him – when he of course steps on the mouse trap and screams so loud that Biggie hears. He has half convinced her that he went duck hunting and went out in the lack to get the ducks and therefore took off his boots and pants to not ruin them, when he goes to the bathroom in front of her and starts peeing – with the condom still attached …

Now I haven’t talked about the name of the book yet. See, Bogus is suffering from a narrow urinary tract. He doesn’t have the courage to have a surgery to correct it and he doesn’t have will-power to abstain from sex, so instead he tries the water-method – which means drinking lots of water, especially before and after sex, as well as limit his intake of alcohol. For most of the novel, this water-method is quite symbolic of all of Bogus’ actions – he’s to scared to do anything major to change his life even though he says he wants to change so he keeps to the middle ground and avoids to commit himself too much to anything.

Since I come to this book now and with the knowledge of The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, arguably Irving’s three best novels, I have a hard time with seeing this book’s merits on it’s own and without comparing it to these novels – as well as The Hotel New Hampshire which I also love. I can’t judge this book solely on it’s own – I have to compare it to the rest of Irving’s work (that I know of). And in that comparison, this falls a bit flat for me. I remember once reading a review of an Irving novel where the reviewer wrote something along the lines of that an 3-stars Irving novel was better than most author’s 5-stars novels. And it’s true. Irving has a special way of writing that’s just so exceptional. When I look at Irving’s work, this is not as good as the above mentioned novels which all have been 4 or 5 stars read for me. So this is a 3 stars read. To me, it’s an exceptional second novel, it’s an author who hasn’t quite found his powers yet but it’s almost there. And it was almost there – Irving’s next novel is The World According to Garp, my all-time favorite novel.

Possibly the funniest book I’ve ever read. Hilarity is balanced by Irving’s crisp, confident handling of the English language. One review called it “hallucinatory.” I agree. Moments of absurdity move into moments of pure, tender sentiment. It definitely isn’t for everyone, but if it’s for you (and you’ll know right away), you’ll laugh and cry.