John Irving Comes to Buffalo

Lucy Rados '25  ~  March 2024

During March, the AP Literature classes read John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. John Irving is regarded as one of the great American writers of our time, with a large number of awards for his writing including an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. 

On Thursday, March 21, John Irving came to Buffalo, and eight Nardin students were lucky enough to go to a small talk with him at the Just Buffalo Writing Center, to ask him questions and hear his thoughts, before attending a talk at Kleinhans Music Hall that night to a much larger audience. Also present were some students from City Honors and Buffalo Seminary.

Getting to ask Irving questions was an incredible experience. He was not what one might expect from an author of such renown: funny and very personable. For example, when he was asked about how he developed his complex and dynamic characters, he discussed his time as an actor in Shakespeare plays, saying that he played Tybalt and calling him “dumber than a dog turd,” which was not quite the thing I would have thought he would say! He talked about his time as an actor a lot, but said it was not the best path for him; he was once told that he was an “over-acting” and after that, realized that he should start taking writing more seriously instead.

It was also fascinating to hear his background in writing. He said the first book that really influenced him was Great Expectations. Although he had read other Dickens novels, this one “affected [him] so strongly” that at age fifteen, he knew that he wanted to be a novelist, but only if he could be one like Dickens. He also read Moby Dick as a seventeen year old, and the more he read it, the more he realized he was an “ending guy,” interested that he could tell from the first chapter of Moby Dick that Melville “knew everything” about where the story would go.

He talked a lot about this focus on an “ending driven story,” which not a lot of authors have in their minds. He does not just start with an idea, but rather the sense of the dust settling in the aftermath of events. He put it as picturing that “something calamitous or life changing has happened.” I find this a fascinating concept, as Irving’s approach allows him to imagine what events would get to that closing scene, a technique that he said many of his writer friends find very different from their own.

Irving’s background is also interesting, and seems like it would influence his work, as often the families in his books have unique structures, and he similarly never knew his biological father. However, he did address this topic and said that he does not want to write an autobiographical novel, calling that boring, but rather, “the what-ifs that always interested [him].” For instance, he is from New Hampshire, so many of his books are set in New Hampshire or New England; however, using his experience for the setting is where the resemblance to his own life stops.

Hearing Irving’s thoughts was very enjoyable, and reading more of his books in the future with new insights about his writing will be a great experience.