Talk:John Irving

message: There seems to be disagreement about his early life (prior to his adoption and name change), viz.
  John Irving was actually born with the name John Blunt, and was later
  changed to Irving when his mother remarried.
  
The Dictionary of Literary Biography offers additional details:
  
  "...John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, on 2 March 1942.
  His birth name was John Wallace Blunt Jr., in honor of his biological
  father, a World War II flyer who was shot down over Burma. Irving's
  mother, Frances Winslow Irving, legally changed his name to John
  Winslow Irving when he was six years old after he had been adopted by
  her second husband, Colin F. N. Irving..."
  
Another take on the story is provided by the Wikipedia entry on John Irving:
  ...  
  
  "...John Irving was born John Wallace Blunt, Jr. in Exeter, New
  Hampshire. His mother Helen, a descendant of the Winslows, one of New
  England's oldest and most distinguished families, divorced Irving's
  biological father, an airman serving in the pacific, when Irving was
  two years old. The family maintained a strict silence regarding his
  natural father. When her son was six years old, Helen Winslow married
  Colin F.N. Irving, a Russian History teacher at the prestigious
  Phillips Exeter Academy. John Wallace Blunt, Jr. was adopted by Colin
  Irving and became John Winslow Irving in name..."
This comes from here, and is quoting an earlier version of the WP article.  Some clarification would be nice!  -- Slowmover 15:02, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no disagreement here; both of those "takes" are correct. John Blunt (Irving's biological father) was shot down over Burma, but survived. According to various newspaper and magazine articles, Irving's parents divorced when he was two years old and his mother made it a condition of the divorce that Blunt have no parental access. Sample sources:    --Mathew5000 (talk) 06:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  There may have technically been no disagreement, but the implication of the first account was definitely that his biological father died in the crash. --Saforrest (talk) 02:20, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Birth name

message: I found it very strange that the article does not mention the autobiographical The Imaginary Girlfriend , which was published in 2002 (http://www.powells.com/biblio?show=TRADE%20PAPER:USED:0345458265:6.95).
Fls 12:44, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Imaginary Girlfriend 

message: While I think the Fourth Hand deserved to be "savaged by critics", there is some evidence that it wasn't.  The following site -- http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-0375506276-3 -- includes some excerpts from half a dozen quality reviews (including one from Richard Eder of The New York Times Book Review) who seem to give the book a largely positive review.
Should the claim be substantiated by a reference or two? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.77.36.219 (talk) 03:27, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fourth Hand reviews 

message: I am wondering if the spellings "begining", "sentance", "books" [instead of book's], "pulication" and "semicolin" in one of the Irving quotes are satirically intentional misspellings or not? Sorry for asking but I'm not an English native speaker. Wikipedia has masses of (unintentional) misspellings everywhere but when they occur in a quote one supposes they are original and intentional. 82.212.50.163 16:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: (mis)spellings?

message: Hey yall! there's a good John Irving video and he's being interviewed by Ernie Manouse...
go to:
www.houstonpbs.org/InnerVIEWS
scroll down and look on the right side. there are other great celebrity interviews too! You can also buy any of the interviews. check it out! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fleetswimmer (talk • contribs) 20:22, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello and welcome to Wikipedia!. You can sign you name with four tildes  ~~~~ so that we know who is talking.  Anyway we agree the interview is good as we already link to it in the article. Look under the external links section. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 20:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  JOHN IRVING VIDEO!!! 

message: One theme not already in the discussion is that of unusually small people or dwarfs, also having some extraordinary abilities of empathy, insight, or wisdom.  Hotel New Hampshire, Owen Meany, and Son of the Circus all have such characters... I haven't read over half of his body of work, but I'll bet that a similar character appears in some of his other books too.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cheesegunner (talk • contribs) 05:01, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recurring Themes: Small People 

message: May I suggest that the Boarding School be included as a recurring theme in the table shown in the article? I am not knowledgeable enough to complete it, but maybe someone else can help. Arved Deecke (talk) 22:15, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boarding School as a recurring theme 

message: along with the other sexual variants mentioned, perhaps oral sex should be mentioned. It is quite important in Garp and keeps occuring in a number of other novels (Til I find You, Last Night at Twisted River, etc) (79.190.69.142 (talk) 22:56, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I for once don't understand exactly why sexual variants should be mentioned at all as a theme. In my opinion, this can lead to misunderstandings and prejudices.Reykholt (talk) 06:28, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  oral sex recurring theme

message: Heavy kudos to whoever did the table of recurring themes. If you've ever thought that John Irving has been writing essentially the same book for forty bleedin' years, you now have scientific proof.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.86.13.230 (talk) 17:01, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: The table

message: Weren't Owen Meany and/or the narrator in wrestling at school?  Tcdpenn (talk) 22:09, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Owen and Hestor wrestle several times in the attic. 207.167.42.62 (talk) 18:49, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I question the inclusion of wrestling as a theme in The Cider House Rules. Apart from some very brief, passing mentions of horseplay between Angel and Wally, there's no wrestling in the book. Consider revising the table? 58.177.241.177 (talk) 04:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recurring themes: wrestling 

message: In addition to New England, Canada (Toronto) has popped up in quite a number of books.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.183.230.185 (talk) 06:26, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recurring Themes: Canada 

message: This article has been reverted by a bot to  as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) This has been done to remove User:Accotink2's contributions as they have a history of extensive copyright violation and so it is assumed that all of their major contributions are copyright violations. Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. VWBot (talk) 13:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked over User:Accotink2's contribution to this article and it was a reference to the Paris Review website with an interview with Irving. No copyrighted material just a journal citation with a link in it. So I'm going to restore reference since it seems useful.  The smilodon (talk) 20:40, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright problem