John Irving

Last Sunday John Irving spoke at the 92nd Street Y in New York City to discuss his new novel, In One Person.  As in most of his work, sex and sexual identity are issues Irving explores in this new novel.

The New York Times reported that during his appearance at the Y Irving answered questions from the audience. (In an unusual method of Q&A, audience members submitted questions in the days and weeks before the reading and Irving answered ones that he preselected.) 

One query that caught my attention was, What was the worst advice for writers he had ever heard? He assailed Hemingway’s “boring, journalistic dictum: ‘Write about what you know.’ What a horrible limitation to impose on the novel or the play. ‘Don’t learn anything.’ Why don’t you just say that?” 

The best advice? Irving offered, “Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.” That would be courtesy of Herman Melville.

I can’t say that I set out to appall with my plays, but I don’t try to please either. When I start work on a new script, I explore exciting, perhaps dangerous territory where I hope to find drama around which I can construct and tell a story.

I do like Irving’s indictment of Hemingway’s oft-cited dictum. Writing about something I already knew would be terribly boring. An important reason I write is to travel to unfamiliar lands.

Where I do glimpse some wisdom in Hemingway’s advice is at the level of the writer’s emotions and subconscious. The struggles that convulse my protagonist and other main characters must be ones that I have an acquaintance with at some level, however shallow or deep. I hold that to be an artistic truth.