The Water-Method Man

by John Irving, Frank Muller (Narrator)

The main character of John Irving's second novel, written when the author was twenty-nine, is a perpetual graduate student with a birth defect in his urinary tract—and a man on the threshold of committing himself to a second marriage that bears remarkable resemblance to his first....
"Three or four times as funny as most novels."
THE NEW YORKER

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Contemporary, Humor, Literature, American

Audio Cassette

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

JOHN IRVING was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven.
Mr. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. He received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for his short story “Interior Space.” In 2000, Mr. Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person.
An international writer—his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages—John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time best-selling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany.
Avenue of Mysteries is his fourteenth novel.

Reviews

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is so unique in that it's absolutely not what you would expect from john irving. It's only his second or third book, and you can see the beginnings of Garp in it, but it's so simple and streamlined compared to some of his later work. It's a sweet, funny story with extremely memorable characters - in fact, I can't believe it hasn't been made into a movie yet. I think it's crying out to be. A movie about a book about the making of a movie.
Also, it made me start going around flipping my tit at people who are full of it, and eating lots of yogurt.

[Allie Riley · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be honest, I found this novel something of a confusing jumble. It flits between first and third person narrative, the places Vienna, Iowa, New York and Maine and is continually moving back and forward in time. The beginning is promising enough - PhD student Fred 'Bogus' Trumper consults renowned urologist Dr Jean Claude Vigneron about a particularly painful dose of "clap" with which he has been afflicted, so it would seem, since he was a teenager. Not being enthusiastic about a possible surgical solution, he elects to pursue the so-called "water method" of the title in an effort to cure him of this impediment for good. At this point I was hoping that things would take off but sadly the novel failed to sustain this initial comic momentum.

It wasn't abundantly clear to begin with, whether 'Bogus' was with 'Biggie' or Tulpen or both since time-frames weren't made obvious. This may have been a failure on my part, but it took me a good few chapters to get the chronology straight. The characters feel less well-developed than those in Irving's later novels and the plot fails, in my view, to live up to its original promise (the Merrill Overturf diversion, while entertaining, felt like the nucleus of a very different novel - a thriller perhaps).

In conclusion, I found this a disappointing and frustrating read which is only really of interest as a precursor to Irving's later and infinitely better works.

[Peter Boysen · Rating 5 out of 5]

When R.E.M. recently broke up, it occurred to me that I hadn't bought one of their CD's (or downloaded any of their songs for my iPod, now that CD's are passe), since "Automatic for the People" -- which was released in 1992. Everything else was from "Out of Time," "Green," "Document," or "Life's Rich Pageant" -- all released between 1986 and 1991. That means that their last seven albums never made it onto my radar.

Some of this has to do with the fact that I adopted many of my favorite songs between 1988 and 1994. But I've heard R.E.M.'s later work, now and then, on the radio, and it just doesn't resonate with me. I used to listen to "Pop Song 89" every day after school during my senior year of high school, blaring it on my (yes) cassette deck as I tore out of the parking lot, headed over to pick up my girlfriend from her school. I made a really crappy recording of "The One I Love" using my friend Leo as a fake DJ to try and seal the deal with a different girl, a year earlier (let's just say editing is a lot more seamless today). "I Am Superman" was my sign-off song during my brief career as a DJ on KSMU Radio, which had the giant broadcast area of the Hughes-Trigg Student Center -- and no further.

The newer R.E.M. stuff, to me, goes in two directions: the weird ("What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" has a quirky title and is loud and catchy, but so did "Sliver," and we all know how that turned out) and the vapid (yes, "Reveal," I'm talking to you -- the whole disc). R.E.M. had an amazing sound, but they didn't figure out how to keep it -- or success made the karma blow away.

My first encounter with a John Irving novel happened in a hotel near Orly Airport in Paris. I was on my way back to the U.S. after six weeks in Europe -- four in a study program and two traveling around with friends -- and I'd just gotten off a long train ride from Heidelberg to the capital of France. It was late, my flight left the next morning, and I saw "The World According to Garp" in a store in the Paris train station. I remembered the movie title (I hadn't seen it), so I grabbed it on a whim. I checked into my hotel, laid my clothes out for my plane ride the next morning, and got in bed with the book.

Six hours later, I finally put the book down -- done. The whirlwind that T.S. Garp and his mother, Jenny Fields, created, and the toll it took on them both, that brought Garp to a tragic end at the Christlike age of 33, swirled around in my mind. The next day, when my flight was delayed for six hours because of a faulty engine, I didn't even mind that much, because I was busy reading the book again.

And so, when I got home, I rented "The World According to Garp" and watched it. Like I would discover about all of the adaptations of Irving's books, the movies have to leave so much out that it's like watching a marionette play of the book. The closest that any movie gets to its Irving original, in my opinion, is "The Door in the Floor" -- but to get that close to Irving's grandeur in scope, it has to leave out a full half of the novel that inspired it ("A Widow for One Year").

So, instead, I decided to read everything else that Irving had written, from the beginning. "Setting Free the Bears" and "The 158-Pound Marriage" didn't do much for me, but "The Water-Method Man" did. It's about Bogus Trumper, who is having a really hard time making the leap from adolescence to manhood. He got his first wife, Biggie, pregnant right after they met, which led to a marriage far earlier in his life than he probably would have planned. Weighed down in Iowa by the poverty of life as a grad student, his young son, and his wife's expectations, he philanders and then just runs away to Europe, looking for his lost youth, symbolized by the nebulous character Merrill Overturf, who used to try to hook up with girls through such odd rituals as swimming out into the Danube and showing them a tank that had crashed down through the river.

Of course, there is no such tank, and when Bogus returns to Europe, he can't even find Merrill. By the time he gets back, his wife has divorced him and moved on to his best friend. He takes a job in New York City with his old friend, Ralph Packer, editing the sound for his films. He meets a new girl, has a baby with her, but then runs back to Iowa to finish his graduate degree.

In short, Bogus' life is disjointed. The structure of the novel, a wonderful mishmash of letters, diary entries, newspaper reviews, told in an order that more resembles a view through a kaleidoscope than chronological narration, suits the main character perfectly. We even get an allusion to Moby-Dick at the end.

The endings to most of Irving's early novels are glorious things, with explanations of what happened to everyone and, in general, these explanations are stories of purpose and power.

Somewhere, though, John Irving has lost his way. The whimsy that dances through "The Water-Method Man" and the powerful themes that run through "The Hotel New Hampshire" (the power of family despite a blind, befuddled father), "The Cider House Rules" (the right of a woman to choose) and "A Prayer for Owen Meany" (if Christ really were the Messiah, what would it be like to witness his coming, and to believe?) have faded, replaced by navel-gazing.

Irving's newest novel, "In One Person," will certainly be a best-seller, simply based on the author's name. Irving belongs in any discussion of the top five American novelists since 1930. But his latest efforts, "Until I Find You" and "Last Night in Twisted River," made me feel caught in an eddy that swirled around and around the hole the author feels within himself. His earlier novels were about missing fathers, which made for an almost mystical aura. All of his novels teem with lust and sensuality, but they have always had a purpose in reaching a bigger theme. In his last two novels, these elements have become virtually gratuitous. In interviews, Irving (and his publicists) promise us a novel more political than any he has written in recent years. He is at his best when he writes either with the passion of a conviction or the whimsy of a jester. We'll see whether either one of these made it this time.

[Maggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Technically a 2.5 star rating.

I'm a big big fan of Irving's later books (Garp, Owen Meany, Cider House Rules, Until I Find You) so I was intrigued to read one of his earlier works. But, it was nowhere as good, which I should have expected. This was choppier and more uneven/inconsistent than I'm used to from Irving, and his storytelling skill is not nearly as good/compelling as it becomes.

Irving obviously naturally gravitates towards flawed, quirky characters, but in this book had not yet quite honed his ability to make them whole and human. The constant unpredictable changes in POVs were somewhat annoying and distracting, as was his habit of referring to the main character by various nicknames, often in the same sentence. I imagine this was purposeful and intended to emphasize Trumper's lack of depth, identity, purpose etc, but it didn't really work, generally detracting from rather than adding to the story.

As always with Irving, childhood abandonment is a key theme (poor Irving!), and fathers that leave, although I'm more used to the actual fathers being absent from his books, rather than having the story told from the father's perspective. It is hard to be on this father's side, as it's obvious Irving hasn't quite achieved an understanding of the absent father's motivations, which is reinforced by the whole cast of characters saying things to Trumper like "You just leave! You don't even know why!" and Trumper conceding that, yes yes, they are all right. He just leaves. He doesn't know why.

And he (Irving and/or Trumper) never really addresses that, never figures out why Trumper leaves with such frequency, which is largely why the ending feels too forced, abrupt and pat, neatly tied up with a ribbon. It was unsatisfying, as Trumper doesn't have to deal with any real consequences of his actions, and his character arc feels unprompted and unbelievable. He just seems to have this random moment of "this is what I'm going to do!" and so he does it (also completely out of character) for no good reason, and then he repents his errant ways and lives happily ever after. It was a bit jarring.

[christa]

i want to read this because the main character has frequent urinary tract infections. but i cannot get into it.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read 10 of Irving’s novels but I missed some along the way. The Water-Method Man is his second novel and is as excellent as all the others I have read. I think readers either love Irving or dislike him. I love his books, each and every one I have read. Astonishingly, he is as good as he gets in even this second one.

Fred Bogus Trumper, whose friends call him Bogus, has been a graduate student at Iowa for longer than he should be. He has a wife, a son, and a girlfriend. He also has a birth defect in his urinary tract. So there you have pretty much all the Irving ingredients: family, marriage, friends and medical issues. Bogus is as weird as Owen Meany, as anxious as Garp. He bumbles though daily life with less than optimum results but as a reader I never thought of giving up on him.

Another aspect of John Irving’s novels that pleases me is the way his main characters manage by the end of each tale, to turn their weaknesses into a livable life. I like that idea because usually we are taught that we must overcome our weaknesses if we want to be happy, rich, successful, etc. Fred Bogus Trumper just keeps on with his life, his aspirations, and his talents and comes out fine, though neither he nor the reader nor his wife nor his girlfriend thought he ever could.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed by The Water-Method Man, which is John Irving's second book. No agent would be able to sell this book today; the story is interesting, but the execution is weak. Irving's prose is confusing and inconsistent, with jumps from first to third person and seemingly random changes in POV. Furthermore, the narrative has so many flashbacks that it is difficult to follow what is happening now, versus one year ago, versus two, three or four years ago.

The main character, Fred "Bogus" Trumper, is never fully realized. As a result, his eventual epiphany seems to lack depth. It is difficult to understand what the two female characters (both strong, beautiful and otherwise confident women except when it come to Trumper) see in him as a romantic counterpart; he seems fully detached from the world around him and more interested in himself than anyone around him, characteristics which for most women would be an immediate turn-off.

Irving's treatment of his female characters leaves something to be desired. Both Biggie and Tulpen, despite the fact that they are strong and confident women, seem to need a man to define them (either a partner or a son), which strikes me as dichotomous. Why would women who are so self-actualized require a man to get by? I can only find two reasons for this. Either the novel is dating itself, having been published in 1972 and being read by a 2009 feminist (myself), OR Irving is demonstrating a level of immaturity and a limited understanding of women common to men his age (Irving was 29 years old when he wrote The Water-Method Man). I tend to think it is a combination of both, as his female characters tend to be more well-rounded in his later works (that I have read).

The Water-Method Man isn't quite as funny as the cover blurbs make it out to be, but it is clever and very sad at the same time. The beginning was intriguing and the ending was satisfying, but he middle seemed to meander more than necessary. This book hints at the future inventiveness and ingenuity of Irving's later works, but truly this is a sophomoric effort. For Irving fans, I certainly recommend reading this; I enjoyed it simply for the fact that it helped me see how Irving has developed as a writer. For those who have not read Irving, I would recommend reading a later book, such as The World According to Garp or Until I Find You, first. If you dislike Irving, then you might enjoy reading this book simply for the sheer joy of pointing out its flaws.

[Daniel C · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!

[Keri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of his earlier books, and it is amazingly written. The first sentence alone still makes me shake my head in wonder.

[Fred · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Danam · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite book of all times, I want to give it as many stars as there are in the sky, five is so not enough!
Written in Irvings beginnings, it's extraordinarily fresh, incredibly funny and deeply moving simultaneously, as has become Irvings trademark (not so much lately, he's getting older but not wiser, alas).

I've read it many times now (5?) and it never gets boring. It is a deeply humane book, full of understanding and love for the people in it and their failures.
Beautifully imagined characters, even the minor ones. I almost took up Old Low Norse!
Irving had a great sense of slapstick in his early books, but I believe it's honed to perfection in the story of Akthelt and Gunnel, the protagonist's bogus thesis in progress.

It doesn't have the gravitas of his later work, where he combines so skilfully comedy with tragedy, as in Garp or Widow for one Year, but it compensates with freshness. And as in many of his novels, I found my tears of merriment transformed in real crying in the course of one sentence.
I find nobody does that so well as Irving.

[Jaslo · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Sierra · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 3.38 stars on this makes me want to start shooting, this is the funniest, most absurdly graspable and ridiculous offering to my brain I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I will think about this book for the rest of my life. Fuck you

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

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)

[Corinne · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Leila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most people would consider this a very light Irving book, and not one of his great ones. It was one of his first novels, written before "The World According to Garp." I certainly wouldn't put in it the same category with "Garp," "Hotel New Hampshire," or "Cider House Rules." But I have an enormous amount of affection for it.... It involves a graduate student who fakes his dissertation, in the most ridiculous way possible. I found this almost unbearably hilarious when in graduate school myself. Not a classic Irving, but worth the read for Irving fans. You can definitely see the development of his style here, and the themes that would appear in his later books.

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

What does the low Norse language, a UTI, and Salzburg, Austria have in common? After nearly 400 pages I have no idea, either!
John Irving is one of my absolute favorite authors, but this is a super early work of his (that predates my birth year), and I’m so glad he has grown as a writer. I felt that this was written as complete stream of consciousness, and toggled between past and present throughout the plot. I normally don’t mind that format, but going from a urologist office to a brothel in Austria, well…..I just couldn’t wrap my brain around it. I will say that Irving has always had a knack for quirky characters and character naming, and this does not disappoint in that regard.

[Sue]

I’m parking this book for now. A friend had gifted me a duplicate copy, and I lost my kindle for a while so I picked it up. 13 chapters in, I am finding it a confusing and generally unappealing read. There are moments of humour, but not enough for me to enjoy it. Rather than skim-read what’s left I am going to put it away for a while and see if I get the urge to return. I think I’m more likely to pick up one of Irvivg’s later and better known novels.

[Thomas Stroemquist · Rating 2 out of 5]

The second book by Irving is a stumbling step forward (from Setting Free the Bears), but this is still for completistst only I think. Sex-obsessed and way to bizarro to be a truly enjoyable read.

[Zsanett Imre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reinster Fiebertraum

[Jim Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, keep in mind that I’m a big Irving fan. This book is well worth reading if only because the characters here will grow into those of The World According to Garp and several other Irving novels. The themes of friendship, what makes a family, and what is marriage today will pop up again and again in his work. His obsession with sex shines through here. He uses the technique of stories within stories here, which he also uses in many other of his books, and the plot, the places, and the people are all quite weird, though loveable. I’ve heard Irving compared to Dickins. I can see that in his characters, but I like his funny plots much better than Dickins.


This is the story of Fred “Bogus” Trumper and we find out from the very beginning that his nickname is quite appropriate. Bogus is writing a dissertation involving the translation of an ancient poem but he’s bored with the drudgery of translation, so he simply makes up the story. This isn’t unusual behavior for Bogus; he lies about everything and to everyone.


But Bogus wants to change. He wants to be a good man, but he simply can’t.


So the book tells the story of Fred’s efforts to stop being Bogus. The sprawling plot moves well with only minor hiccups. Bogus and a few of the minor characters like his male friends, his girlfriend, and his wife, are well developed. Bogus changes over the course of the book, though maybe not always in ways or by means we would expect. There are many different settings in the book. Some are well drawn, like the mansion where Bogus’ friend serves as caretaker. Others, like all the European settings, are much less well developed.


I enjoyed this book, but I AM a fan. Give it a try, then move on to Garp then, if you’re hooked, roll on through Owen Meany and the Cider House. If you’re really hooked, there are plenty more Irving books. Some are great, some are good, a very few are bad. He implies that the book he published last year, The Last Chairlift will be his last. I hope that isn’t true.

[Robert Poor · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Her gynecologist recommended him to me. Ironic: the best urologist in New York is French. Dr Jean Claude Vigneron: ONLY BY APPOINTMENT. So I made one." Thus begins John Irving's "The Water-Method Man," his second novel, my favorite of his. Published in 1972, it is by far his funniest book. It is also his quirkiest book, part epistolary novel, part reminiscence, part farcical spy thriller, part movie script, part translation of the Old Low Norse epic "Akthelt and Gunnel." Its jumbled structure nicely symbolizes the chaos in the brain and soul of Fred "Bogus" Trumper, the man who stumbles through life never sticking with anything challenging - his doctoral thesis, his marriage to former US Olympic skier Sue "Biggie" Kunft, the independent movie in which he stars, the partial solution to his urological problem by which this novel gets its title ... to cite several examples.

In 1981, when I had lost my mind trying to survive Plebe Summer at the United States Naval Academy, a classmate, Matt Plotkin, who lasted an entire five weeks at Annapolis, made a reference to John Irving's "The World According to Garp." I, the future English Major, had never heard of John Irving or "The World According to Garp." (I had barely heard of Matt Plotkin.) Anyway, while he was quitting the Naval Academy, he purchased Garp in the Midshipmen Book Store. He seemed so happy! So I bought a copy too, and nearly inhaled it while not learning all of the Navy stuff I was supposed to be learning. (I was a poor-to-mediocre Midshipman. Every day, I had to walk around in uniform with a nametag that said "POOR." Symbolism, right?) I soon read "Setting Free the Bears" and then quickly discovered "The Water-Method Man."

Between 1981 and 1989 I probably read this novel a dozen times. Now, I have just re-read it for the first time in over thirty years. Four thoughts:

1. I can see why I loved this novel so much when I was younger. Its chaos and uncertainty and use of humor in lieu of any real answers or knowledge neatly paralleled my own young adulthood.

2. It is still wonderfully and compellingly readable. The humor generally holds up, although some allusions to homosexuality are a little dated. It feels like a very 1970s novel. I remember reading John Updike discussing his "Memories of the Ford Administration" and saying something to the effect that, in the 1970s, any two members of the opposite sex left alone in a room for more than a minute felt compelled to have sex. That truism is upheld here in Water-Method. Lots more sex than I remembered. I am not complaining, just saying.

3. His descriptions of fatherhood and friendship are timeless. This time, I found myself struck much more by his descriptions of fatherhood than I did pre-children-of-my-own. Watching his baby son's breathing while sleeping, sharing a good story like Moby Dick, the joint discovery of awesome stuff on the beach at low tide, the inevitable despair that sets in when you realize your kids need you less than they used to.

Reading this novel again was like running into old friends. "Ralph and Couth and Bogus hung around, with their slightly off-putting morning smells and a certain prickliness of appearance. Matje and Biggie and Tulpen were blowzy, wearing not quite clothes; bathrobes and soft slept-in stuff - a warm rumpled sensuousness about them."

4. His descriptions of alienation are universal. "He wished he understood what made him feel so restless. Then it occurred to him that he was actually at peace with himself for the first time in his life. He realized how much he'd been anticipating peace some day, but the feeling was not what he'd expected. He used to think that peace was a state he would achieve, but the peace he was feeling was like a force he'd submitted to."

Highly recommended. "The Water-Method Man" is a proud member of Poor House Hall of Fame.

PS: Where are all the Matt Plotkins of yesteryear?

[MavM · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Greg Strandberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed myself silly during the scene in the waiting room with the old man and the urine bag...well, you'll just have to read it.

This is a great book, just like the other 3 Irving books I've read, often because there's these small details that really flesh out characters.

Sometimes I don't want to read Irving's books because I want to save them, waiting every few years so I know I'll always have one left before I die.

[Labijose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Encontré la novela bastante confusa. No está ni mucho menos entre lo mejor que he leído de Irving, del cual destacaría “ Las normas de la casa de la sidra “. Empieza bien, pero luego se me hizo bastante tediosa. El estilo, mezclando entre primera y tercera persona, me resultó poco satisfactorio. Se salvan algunos pasajes cómicos, pero en su conjunto está lejos de figurar entre mis lecturas más estimulantes. Su época posterior es mucho más recomendable. Me costó bastante terminarla.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the John Irving book I am most likely to reread.

[wally · Rating 4 out of 5]

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, O ct 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

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know if it's a generational thing, or his stream of consciousness style, or what, but the more John Irving I try to read, the less-impressed and interested I find myself in his characters and the events they sort of stumble through. His protagonists rarely have any agency over their lives, and it bugs me. I bought this one at a used bookstore a few yrs ago, and finally decided to read it. It only took a couple days, in between work, etc., so it held my interest just enough, as I kept waiting for more to happen. I didn't like the main character, Fred "Bogus" Trumper, or really, any of the people in his life that he irritates, disturbs, or endears in one way or another.

I think this quote, from a review of the awful-sounding cheap documentary a friend makes about miserable ol' Bogus sums it up best, and I laughed out loud: "the women are beautiful! What's missing in Packer's film is any clue whatsoever as to why two such frankly open and stunningly complete women would have anything to do with such a weak, enigmatic, unfulfilled man..."

Indeed. At least Irving was aware this guy is a waste of oxygen. Bravo for that honesty. Off he'll go to ruin some other woman's life. The end.

[Verena · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 ⭐️

Unpopular opinion: Ich finde John Irving grob überbewertet! Verschiedenste Romane hab ich schon probiert; dieser, von vielen Kritikern als sein bester gefeierte, ist der erste den ich auch beendet habe. Und leider muss ich sagen: Schon lange hat mich kein Buch mehr so genervt!

Das lag vor allem an den viel zu vielen Slapstick-Szenen: Alle paar Seiten stolpert jemand, reißt die gesamte Einrichtung nieder, pinkelt sich dabei an und landet schließlich im Dreck. Lustig fand ich das kein einziges Mal.
Dazu kommen unzählige meiner Meinung nach völlig sinnlose Briefe, Rezensionen oder Balladeninhaltsangaben, die das Buch nur in die Länge gezogen haben.

Und wie die Frauen dargestellt und beschrieben werden, ist ein eigenes Thema, über das ich mich weiter ärgern kann.

Das war leider so gar nichts für mich.