29 August 2002.   Per the inside book cover of Prague:  "Arthur Phillips was born in Minneapolis and educated at Harvard.  He has been a child actor, a jazz musician, a speechwriter, a dismally failed entrepreneur, and a five-time Jeopardy! champion.  He lived in Budapest from 1990 to 1992 and now lives in Paris with his wife and son."  Prague, Mr. Phillips' first novel, has received excellent reviews upon its release this summer, but I do admit it was the "five-time Jeopardy! champion" phrase that was the clincher to make me try it.  And what kind of novel does a five-time Jeopardy! champion write, you wonder?  From my perspective, I must report that this one, at least, is what you might expect:  very impressive, highly intelligent and literary, and, for me, emotional uninvolving and a bit dry (Keep in mind, though, that I have never pretended to be a Mental Giant).  If I had any feeling for these characters (as I do with a John Irving novel) or this story, it wouldn't have taken me almost two months to read the book, and it wouldn't have happened that I never particularly looked forward to picking it up again or that I rushed to finish it in the last couple of days so that I wouldn't have to drag it along on my trip to Europe.

The story takes place in Budapest, Hungary, in the early 1990s, right after "the Wall came down".  Prague represents the place where everybody would rather be during that exciting time in Eastern/Central Europe, but nobody ever ends up there.  There are five main characters, American expatriates, sort of would-be "Lost Generation" types, none of whom is all that interesting or believable or sympathetic.  The book shines, though, with the minor Hungarian characters and the too-brief occasions when it focuses on the Hungarian history of the twentieth century and how the spirit of the people of Budapest had survived the dramatic transitions and upheavals of the previous decades.  I do admire the writing style and imagination of Mr. Phillips.  I was just expecting to like this book a lot more than I did.

Prague seems to be selling well locally (Could it be the "born in Minneapolis" phrase?).  Last Saturday, I was waiting to have my hair cut, and the lady next to me at the shop was reading Prague.  I, of course, said, "Hey!  I'm reading that same book!"  Then one of the hair stylists came to our waiting area and said, "Hey! There's a client in the back reading that same book!" (And you have no doubt, I'm sure, that these are direct quotes).  And the lady next to me said, "Wow, it's a shame we don't have a reading group!  I always wish I had someone to talk to about a book when I'm reading it!"  So I told her that she should visit my website, needahand.com, where she can always discuss what she is reading.  She gave me kind of a blank look that seemed to say "What's a website?" (or was she thinking, Is this geeko guy hitting on me?) and then was led to the back of the salon for her hair appointment.

28 August 2002.   The last week of August?  -- How did this happen?  The busyness of this particular summer has made it go by unbelievably fast.  We leave Friday evening for our now traditional September visit to Europe, and, when we get back, it will be, for all practical purposes, a Minnesota autumn.  Jerry and I both need a time away that is relaxing and refreshing and inspiring, and this is planned to be such a vacation.  We will be spending about a week in our favorite hangout, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where we will once again be staying on a houseboat on one of the city's many canals, with a floating terrace and a bottle of wine and some good books, and biking through and exploring more of that fascinating city.  From there, we will be taking a train to northern Germany to meet my needahand discussion group/email friend "German Mama" (Elke) and her husband Peter.  We will be spending about three days there in Germany and, weather-permitting, maybe do a little sailing on the North Sea.  We then take the train back to Amsterdam and fly from there back here to Minneapolis on that now haunting date of 11 September.

My book-reading schedule has suffered the last two months or so, but I hope to make amends by taking along the books I still haven't finished, Prague and Fast Food Nation, as well as several others to start.  My friend Paul has talked me into reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, a book Paul obviously liked very much, and he has given me a copy to take along on this trip.  I might also take along a Tom Robbins or maybe a John Irving re-read. 

But, in the meantime, much is to be done before that plane takes off.  Go enjoy the rest of your summer!

23 August 2002.   Is it just me, or are we seeing even more of those awful pop-up/pop-behind internet advertisements?  Does one of them ever pop up that doesn't leave you irritated and frustrated, or are you just getting used to it?  I'm not getting used to it.  Even The New York Times  web site, one of my few daily internet stopovers, has them now.  And are they effective?... Does anybody ever even look at them, or is it an automatic click to exit?  If I ever start putting them on this website, I give you permission to have me shot.  Even that non-pop-up advertisement that appears on my "poll results" on the Irving Reader Poll Page turns me off.  When I set up that poll in December, I, in my cyber-naiveté, did not realize that the price of having the poll might be that I would now and then be advertising new rap CDs!  Oh well, I hope you're not buying them.

Enough ranting about the internet.  How about a little ranting about that semi-suicidal sports organization, U.S. Major League Baseball?  The baseball players may go on strike next week, an act that may be the death blow to baseball (Although my prediction is that, in the end, they won't be stupid enough to strike).  Nobody here in the U.S. has any sympathy with either the millionaire players or the billionaire owners.  As it is, even though our Minnesota Twins are having a great season, Minnesota is just barely hanging onto its baseball team, since the baseball owners want to punish Minnesotans for not building a new baseball stadium.  A season-ending strike would kill baseball here.

And then there's U.S. Pro Football, which is just beginning its season.  We are going to the preseason game tonight between our Minnesota Vikings and the Tennessee Titans.  I am much more of a football fan than a baseball fan, but we occasionally get threatened that our Vikings are going to be moving off to Los Angeles -- as punishment for Minnesotans not being eager to build them a new football stadium.  Is there anything that's not all about big corporate money these days?

In a week, we leave for Amsterdam.

14 August 2002.   Tonight, my mind is on the city of Prague in the Czech Republic.  The reports of extensive and damaging flooding in the Old Town section of Prague, as well as other catastrophic flooding throughout Central Europe, are very troubling.  We (Jerry, my two sons Jon and Tom, and I) spent several days in the Old Town in June 2000 when we were on a two-week vacation in Europe and have good memories of our time there.  The architecture and the history within those few blocks are astounding, and it would be a tragedy for there to be significant property losses there.  So much of it can't be replaced.  Meanwhile, I have been back to reading that new novel named Prague, and even though the connection between the story and the city of Prague is only by occasional reference, there right on the cover of the book is a picture of the Charles Bridge, perhaps the best known landmark in that city -- and itself under threat by floods at this moment.  So our thoughts are with the people of Prague, as well as those in Salzburg, Dresden, and all the other affected cities, as they struggle with this disaster.

12 August 2002.   We are just back from a week at my family reunion in Millville, New Jersey, my hometown.  My two brothers and three sisters were there, as well as their spouses and various nieces and nephews of mine and my son Tom and, of course, Jerry.  My siblings are all colorful characters, and I do have to say that I have the best nieces and nephews anywhere, so it was a good few days with family.  We are all scattered, sometimes around the globe, and we don't get enough good days together.  Millville is only about thirty miles from the ocean, so we also made the Jersey shore part of our vacation, Ocean City and Atlantic City primarily.  And the weather was beautiful all week, and it was good to be back "home" in Jersey, where I always know who I am (Here in Minneapolis I sometimes forget).

Now and then, in between eating cheesesteaks and Tastykakes, playing games, and visiting Cowtown (did you know there were any cows in New Jersey??), Charles Dickens would pop up as a subject of conversation among the several of us who had read Great Expectations for our "family reading project" (see 25 July).  All of us who read it liked it, and another Dickens is being mentioned as our next project.  We also watched David Lean's 1946 film adaptation of the book and, despite our usual family sarcastic comments, enjoyed that too (except for the cop-out ending, which is very 1946-ish).

And sometime during the week while I was out of town and away from my computer, needahand.com reached its one-year anniversary, so congratulations to all of us.  Thanks to all the loyal readers and friends for making this so much fun -- and very much the learning experience -- for me.  Often people ask me if John Irving has ever tried to contact me.  He has not and I wouldn't expect him to.  But I do hope that he hears about this web site some day, and I say that for only one reason:  so that he will know how deeply he has touched a core of readers around the world with his writing and how much his books have mattered.. 

31 July 2002.   More novels-to-film talk:

I was browsing through a sort of gossipy movie-talk website and stumbled upon some information, reliable or not, about the film A Door in the Floor, which is an adaptation of part of the John Irving novel, A Widow for One Year. John Irving apparently gave the filmmaker the rights to adapt only the first 183 pages of the book-- meaning the Ruth Cole as a child part, the Ted and Marion issues, and Eddie (Good stuff, but I of course would wish for the later parts of the book, the Ruth in Amsterdam segments, all the rest of it).  According to the film website, shooting of the film is scheduled to begin on 15 September in the Hamptons and in New York City.

I have seen no recent news about the film adaptation of The Fourth Hand.  It was announced last year prior to publication of Fourth Hand that Miramax would be doing the movie version, that Lasse Hallstrom would direct, and that John Irving would write the screenplay.  There was also some speculation that George Clooney would play the lead role of Patrick Wallingford.  And, even though Fourth Hand may not be the favorite John Irving novel of the hard-core John Irving fans (It only rates as his best by 3 % of the voters in our un-scientific Irving Reader Poll), I think it will turn out to be the best movie adaptation of a John Irving novel.  Just a hunch.

Speaking of movie adaptations, I found a DVD of the classic 1946 David Lean film of Great Expectations.   In our family "book group" discussion of that book next week (see 25 July), we're going to watch the film and see if we agree that it is one of the best film adaptations of a novel ever.

25 July 2002.   "Summertime... and the living is easy..."    And, Gershwin might have added, how busy summer is, and how fast it goes by, and before you know it, July is almost August.  Summertime here in Minneapolis is beautiful.  Meanwhile, I get emails most days from "German Mama", sailing around the Scandinavian Baltic Sea with her husband (and her shipload of novels) for most of the summer, and she is telling me about the wild, rainy, stormy weather they have been having for most of this time.  Jerry and I plan on meeting them in September (after we spend a few days in Amsterdam) and sailing around the German North Sea with them, so we of course are hoping that their stormy weather will be done by then.

We have another trip coming up before the September Europe trip, my family reunion in a couple weeks in my hometown of Millville, New Jersey.  My five siblings will be there, as well as most of their now grown-up offspring, for a wild week of reminiscing and who knows what.  It's a very cool and, shall we say, slightly eccentric family, and I'm looking forward to spending time with them back in Jersey.

One of our not-too-wild events coming up:  the family reading group project.  I told you once about the ill-fated attempt by some of us to read Ulysses two years ago; then last year, some of us made a half-hearted effort to read The Fellowship of the Ring.  This summer, to coincide with the upcoming reunion, the pick is Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.  This choice, of course, very appropriate for you and I who are John Irving fans, because Charles Dickens is John Irving's role model as a writer; in fact, Great Expectations is the book that inspired John Irving to be a novelist.  The particular edition of Great Expectations that I'm reading even has an introduction by John Irving.

And the book?  I am about halfway done reading it, and I find it to be a remarkable book.  I can see the similarities between the Dickens and the Irving plot styles, the emotions, the details.  It is the first Dickens book I have ever read, and I think it will lead me to some more.  And this seems to be the first successful choice for the family "reading group".  Those reading Great Expectations, that I know of, are my brother in New Jersey, my nephew in western New York State, my niece in Pennsylvania, my sister Joan in St. Paul, and myself here in Minneapolis.  We have discussions about it on the family website.  Feel free to join us in reading Great Expectations.  If you have already read it, it would be fun to hear your thoughts about it.

10 July 2002.  Jerry and I spent the long weekend with his parents in his hometown in southern Illinois (almost in Kentucky).  His hometown  is, unfortunately, one of hundreds of towns and small cities in America that, I feel, probably used to be a great place in which to grow up but has had its own distinct character sucked out by a Wal-Mart opening on the outskirts of town several years ago -- and now suffers the blandness and depressing sameness of too many other places.  (Wal-Mart to me is a mega-corporation retailer without a conscience and specializes in basically shutting down downtowns by bullying "mom and pop" businesses into oblivion.  I boycott Wal-Marts wherever they are and always will.  If, however, you bought your John Irving books at a Wal-Mart, that just shows that good can always come out of bad.)

Jerry comes from a card-playing family, so we played a lot of cards while there, and that is always fun with them.  I also had a chance to finish the book I was reading, How To Be Good, by Nick Hornby.  It has dawned on me why I like the Nick Hornby books.  The reason I find them such a pleasure to read is that, if I were to write a book, this is the basic style I would naturally use--casual, sort of cynical, yet (on a good day) fairly intelligent.  Even though I would love to write a structured, classic-style John Irving type book that would be read by people for two hundred years, I would also know the limits of my talents and my patience.  My modification to the Hornby style, in an ideal world, would be to be a bit more subtle (as German Mama has pointed out to me) and to be less dependent on the pop culture of the moment, so that my books would be relevant for longer than ten minutes.

So, I have finished my third Nick Hornby novel this year, and three is all there is for now.  I've moved on to a new release, Prague, a first novel by Arthur Phillips.  I'll tell you more about it as I get into it, but I will tell you this for now:  none of the story takes place in Prague -- it all takes place in Budapest!

02 July 2002.  The air conditioning in my little red Volkswagen went out the other day, so of course that immediately sent the Twin Cities into an extreme heat wave.  And what a busy weekend it was to have no air conditioning -- such as, Friday night we had a political fundraiser to attend for Clean Water Action; Saturday night, a wedding and elaborate reception for the daughter of our friends Tim and Judy O.; Sunday, marching with Wellstone in the Pride Parade.  Now, my VW is in the repair shop, so that should cool things off for a while.

And seeing Caroline Kennedy?  It was such an honor to meet her.  As she was autographing my copy of Profiles in Courage For Our Time, I somehow worked up the nerve to ask her if she had read The Fourth Hand (since, after all, the story line has a connection to her late brother John).  She had not; in fact, I got the impression that she had never heard of it (But now she has).  How amazing is this? -- the lady behind us in the book-signing line had been JFK Jr.'s first-grade schoolteacher in New York City.

Congratulations, by the way, to Brazil's soccer team for winning THE WORLD CUP.

26 June 2002.   As I am finishing Profiles in Courage in anticipation of seeing Caroline Kennedy on Friday (see 12 June), I am a bit intrigued by the particular copy of the book I have, which I think I bought at a garage sale a few months ago.  The book was first published in 1956, but the paperback edition that I am reading was published in January 1960 (To put that in context -- in 1956, JFK was a US Senator; in January 1960, he was still a Senator but also at the beginning of his run for the Presidency, the election being in November 1960).  This paperback has seen better days:  the pages are browned and brittle and musty-smelling, and I imagine that this book has been in and out of used-bookstores or thrift shops many times, in between sitting in boxes in various basements, for the last 42 years, and now it has filtered down to me.

But the most amazing thing about this little paperback is its original price -- 35 cents!

Like most first-wave baby-boomers, I don't think of 1960 being that long ago, but, let me ask you this, how did they make money on a book that they charged 35 cents for?  I'm sure somebody managed to squeeze a profit out of that 35 cents somehow.  Now fast-forward to 2002 -- when was the last time you saw a new paperback for less than, say, $5.95, or about 17 times as much?

And I tend to be a book-buyer instead of a library patron (because I worry that I don't read fast enough to get a book back to the library on time), so it gets spendy.  Another downside, of course, is that books are taking over the house -- Jerry and I have little piles of books all over the place, in addition to two tall overflowing bookcases.  We might have to start our own used-bookstore one day!

17 June 2002.   Our involvement in the Wellstone Senatorial campaign (see 04 March) is producing rewards even beyond knowing that we are working for the re-election of the best senator in the U.S. Senate.  Friday night, Jerry and I were invited to a private dinner for about 25 people, a group that included three U.S. Senators -- Paul Wellstone, our political conscience; Mark Dayton, the fine other senator from Minnesota; and Tom Daschle, the Senate Majority Leader and one of the most powerful political figures in America.  How gratifying it was to meet Senators Dayton and Daschle for the first time and discuss political issues with all three of them in such an intimate setting.  It is easy these days to get discouraged when reading or hearing about, for instance, the scary tactics of Attorney General Ashcroft or the environmentally destructive tendencies of the Bush administration and conclude that politically and socially our nation has stepped backward fifty years.  That isn't the case: we still have some good people in Congress who have a progressive agenda and will watch out for us (I hope!).

Oops.  A lapse into politics.  And, as we all know, this isn't a political website.

Sarah's wedding (see 05 June) Saturday was beautiful, and we wish Sarah and Matt well.  It was good to see some people that I hadn't seen in a while, including my good friend Aaron from Brainerd, Minnesota (the city famous for being the setting for that movie classic. Fargo), who is a faithful reader of this website.  I am looking forward to the day when he actually finishes A Prayer for Owen Meany, though.  Hang in there, Aaron -- it's worth it. 

12 June 2002.   If you have been reading my "Thoughts" for a while now, you might remember my telling you that the leaders of the city of St. Paul had decided to pick a book for the city residents to read all at the same time (see 05 February), as some other cities have done.  The book they have decided on is Profiles In Courage by John F. Kennedy, which was written when Mr. Kennedy was still a U.S. Senator.  The choice is somewhat predictable (although I thought they might be tempted by self-promotion to pick The Great Gatsby, since St. Paul was F. Scott Fitzgerald's hometown) but probably a good choice anyway.  So this is the month to read Profiles in Courage, and the reading culminates in a panel discussion about the book on 28 June.  My sister Joan and I have tickets to be in the audience for that panel discussion (at the Park Square Theater) -- because one of the members of that distinguished panel will be none other than President Kennedy's daughter, Caroline Kennedy, who has compiled her own recently-released book, Profiles in Courage for Our Time.  Joan is the ultimate fan of the Kennedy family (and truly an expert on the subject of the Kennedys), so the opportunity to meet Caroline and have autographed copies of her book was too much for us to pass up.

I have added two pages to this site that can be accessed from the Home Page that list What Howard Has Been Reading this year so far and What Joan Has Been Reading.  My reason for adding them is that I think it is good to keep track of where we as readers have been (Joan has a list of every book she has read for the last eight years, because she read somewhere that Hillary Clinton always keeps a list of books she has read) and also perhaps to stimulate some conversation with you as readers.  Joan tends to finish more books than I do, but we both like variety and our lists vary in trends from year to year.  Some years I read mostly non-fiction, a lot of biographies, and other years mostly fiction.  This year is definitely a fiction year for me and mostly non-fiction (and what a variety!) for Joan.  And we do overlap sometimes (such as our painful Ulysses experience two years ago).  I see that she is currently reading Profiles in Courage.  As soon as I finish one of the books I'm reading, I'll join the people of St. Paul in reading it too -- definitely before 28 June.

05 June 2002.   Some of the most regular viewers of this site are not John Irving readers, and that's cool, of course.  They are people that just know me and, I think, are looking to find out where my next vacation will be!  They include, for instance, my sister Joan's friend and co-worker, Cindy; and my longtime co-worker, Theresa, and her sister, Emily.

And then there's Sarah, another co-worker of mine, who, for better or for worse, is getting married next week.  And it should be a wedding to remember.  It will be held in "out-state" Minnesota, meaning way out of the Twin Cities, in a small country church, with the reception to be held in a barn and featuring some entertainment known as "Cow Bingo".  As weddings go, since I strongly dislike formal wedding celebrations, this should be a fun one.  If you would like to wish all the best to Sarah, a colorful and lovable person, as she begins married life, you can e-mail her at sarahk@ddncpas.com.

A regular visitor to this website who does read John Irving is Ralf in Luxembourg, and I see that he has started a personal website that you might want to check out one of these days, www.ralfferner.com.  Ralf is, among other things, a photographer, music-lover, sports fan, philosopher, and, I think, an all-round good guy, so I think his website will be entertaining.

Sports stuff (why not?):

Soccer:  The World Cup.  Wow!  The U.S. actually won a game??

Tennis:   The French Open.  Joan (a Grand Slam fanatic) is pulling for Jennifer Capriati,

Basketball:   The NBA championship finals -- the New Jersey Nets vs. the Los Angeles Lakers.  My fingers are crossed, against all odds, for my home state team, the Nets!

Baseball:   Last night our Minnesota Twins (threatened with extinction but in first place nonetheless) beat the highly-paid Cleveland Indians, 23-2 -- the most lopsided victory in Twins history!

01 June 2002.    Bon voyage, "German Mama"....

23 May 2002.   Sometime last week, The Fourth Hand came out in trade paperback here in the U.S.  On our way to Florida last Saturday, we had a layover at the Cleveland airport, and I noticed the new release on the bookstand in one of the gift shops there.  I watched a woman as she was browsing the books, and she picked up Fourth Hand and paged through it a little bit, and I of course wanted to say "Buy it!  Buy it!" or "Check out the website that is first mentioned on page 26!"  But no, I'm way too shy for that, and she put it down and didn't buy anything (Did you know I was shy?).

I was finishing the last page of my re-reading of The Hotel New Hampshire last night as we were landing for a layover in Detroit (nice new Northwest terminal there, by the way!), was sorry to see the book end, and will have more to say about it after I ponder it for a while longer.  My impressions of that book are entirely different than when I read it the first time twenty years ago and mostly was comparing it then to Garp and not being able to see it in the context of the full body of John Irving's writings, especially the two books that would follow.   As I am pondering Hotel, I am starting to design a Hotel New Hampshire page that will be linked from the "Library and Links" page, and I plan on eventually having a separate page for each of the John Irving books, with synopses, critiques, character descriptions, etc., as part of each:  please let me know if you have some ideas on developing that information.

16 May 2002.   My brother Ron, who lives back in our home town in New Jersey and is, of all things, a Baptist preacher (and eBay addict), this week finished A Prayer For Owen Meany, his first John Irving book, and liked it very much.  He says it is "one of the best novels I've ever read, certainly in the top five.  Maybe I'll send something to your web site after I think it through a bit.  And you can be sure Owen will show up in a sermon one of these weeks!"  My cool sister, Joan (who lives here in Minnesota), this week finished The Cider House Rules, which led her right into reading John Irving's memoir, My Movie Business, so that she could  figure out, among other things, how the character Melanie and certain events disappeared somewhere in between the book and the movie versions of Cider House Rules.  Good reading, siblings!

Two years ago, Ronnie, Joan and I decided to have our own little book group and read a book all at the same time (it's easy to see what a fun family we are), and we chose Ulysses, by James Joyce, which, as I have moaned about before, was named the Top (English Language, presumably) Fiction of the 20th Century.  We figured that if it was "the best", we should all read it.  Nobody was there, of course, to warn us that the book is 1000+ pages of impressive mental gymnastics and, for all practical purposes, unreadable.  We even each bought the Cliffs Notes for Ulysses to help us understand what we were reading (Totally useless -- it was like reading Cliffs Notes for a different book).  So what, we wonder, were the criteria that made enough people vote for Ulysses as the best of the 20th Century?  My answer is that it's one of those "Emperor's New Clothes" things -- the literary elite doing the voting probably don't understand Ulysses either but no one wanted to be the one to say the obvious -- reading Ulysses is enough to drive a reader to drink (Or maybe getting stoned is how our literary superiors got through it in the first place).

So, I finished about a third of Ulysses (and it's sitting on my nightstand unopened in two years) and Joan read about half, and the one to make it to the end of the book was Ronnie.  He was even able to fit it into a sermon -- not about the book itself but about the painful process of reading it!  He should have a much easier time finding some relevance and depth in Owen Meany!

That, in muted form, was my Ulysses tirade.  And I'd bet that somewhere James Joyce, the Emperor's designer, is having a good laugh.

Non-book stuff:  Jerry and I are heading off for a long weekend in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, visiting friends Steven and Tim.  Back before you know it.

09 May 2002.   Some random, disconnected thoughts:

I happened upon a mention of and a link to this Web site that appeared on 27 March on the Austrian Internet news site, DerStandard.net.  If you would like to view the link and article, go to http://www.derstandard.net/standard.asp?id=900997 (It will help if you can read German, of course).  

Before I started re-reading The Hotel New Hampshire, I read a short novel by Gloria Emerson called Loving Graham Greene, which is about an eccentric woman who is sort of a Graham Greene groupie, majorly obsessed with that great writer (although she never had a Graham Greene Web site, I'd bet), and how she reacted to his death in 1991. It's kind of a funny story for a while, then develops into a Graham Greene-like political-crisis-in-a-Third-World-country story, in this case Algeria in the early 1990s.  It's an entertaining book, but it helps to know something about the novels of Graham Greene, which I do, thanks to John Irving's admiration of Mr. Greene's works.

Another reason to visit Minneapolis (as if anybody needed another reason to visit Minneapolis):  in downtown Minneapolis yesterday, a new statue of actress Mary Tyler Moore was unveiled to honor her role as a Minneapolis career woman in the 1970s TV program, The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  The unveiling (by Mary herself) was covered live on CNN and also was shown on the major commercial networks.  Tom and Joan and I met Mary four or five years ago at the Mall of America (very cool lady), and Mary Tyler Moore Show is one of my favorite TV shows ever, but it still amuses me that for all eternity (or at least until the next urban renewal) Mary will be frozen in bronze throwing her hat in the air.

01 May 2002.  Since becoming a stagehand on this John Irving platform, I have felt some responsibility to know more than I first knew about the works of John Irving, and I have learned a lot since last August -- by finishing the several Irving books that I hadn't read, by researching Irving resources on the Internet and in print, and by communicating with the readers of this site.  My hope is to expand the John Irving information available here (As soon as I have enough time!).

I've found, though, that too many of the details of the early Irving novels that I read many years ago have slipped from my memory, so I am going to re-visit some of them.  Even though I have to date never read a book twice in my life, I am going to change that, starting with The Hotel New Hampshire, that book being picked thanks in part to a lady that I met the other day in my morning coffee shop.  She was introduced to me by a friend who told her about my Irving Web site, which started this lady reminiscing about how much she loved The Hotel New Hampshire.  As she was going on and on about such things as "Keep Passing Open Windows", I realized that I missed the comfort and safety of a John Irving novel.  And I think it will be a while before we see his next one, Until I Find You.

Speaking of re-visiting, Jerry and I watched the film version of The World According to Garp Saturday night (while it was snowing outside!), the first time I've seen that movie since it was in the theaters (1982?).  I was surprised how much more I liked it this time than when I first saw it, a change of heart which I think is for two reasons:  (1) my memory of the book version has unfortunately faded to the point where I've forgotten too many details that I thought were crucial and yet omitted from the film; and (2) I've had twenty years to get used to the idea of Robin Williams as a serious actor.  Despite the fact that I still think there could have been a better choice than Williams for Garp, he wasn't bad, and I am amazed at how perfect some of the other actors are for their roles, particularly Glenn Close as Jenny, John Lithgow as Roberta, and Mary Beth Hurt as Helen.

Anyway -- feel free to re-visit Hotel New Hampshire with me, if you wish.  Or read it for the first time.

Click here for LEISURELY THOUGHTS, April 2002 backwards to January 2002

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