On Writing the Last Sentence First/John Irving

I love the New York Times Book Review conversations with authors—Sam Tanenhaus meets a writer meets a camera.

The current subject is John Irving, now nearing the completion of his twelfth book, Last Night in Twisted River.

What I find extraordinary about this conversation is what Irving reveals about his process. He writes, he says, his novel's last sentence first, and that sentence never changes, not even the slightest grammatical bit. Seven months to a year after finding the book's last senten