John Irving's Reading List

"The two novels I’ve reread this year are Michael Ondaatje’s “The Cat’s Table” and Edmund White’s “Jack Holmes and His Friend” — a seamless use of time (most notably, the flash-forwards within the memory of the past) in the former... They are two terrific novels."

"The two novels I’ve reread this year are Michael Ondaatje’s “The Cat’s Table” and Edmund White’s “Jack Holmes and His Friend” ... a clarifying delineation of different sexual points of view in the latter. They are two terrific novels."

"“Great Expectations.” … I was 15. It made me want to be able to write a novel like that. It was very visual — I saw everything, exactly — and the characters were more vivid than any I had heretofore met on the page."

"I’m sure the president has read James Baldwin, but he may have missed “Giovanni’s Room” — a short novel of immeasurable sadness. That is the novel he should read — or reread, as the case may be — because it will strengthen his resolve to do everything in his power for gay rights."

"“My Father’s Dragon,” by Ruth Stiles Gannett."

"Two novels I taught a lot were “Cat and Mouse” (Grass) and “The Power and the Glory” or “The Heart of the Matter” (Greene). They were excellent examples of novels about moral dilemmas."

"Two novels I taught a lot were “Cat and Mouse” (Grass) and “The Power and the Glory” or “The Heart of the Matter” (Greene). They were excellent examples of novels about moral dilemmas."

"Two novels I taught a lot were “Cat and Mouse” (Grass) and “The Power and the Glory” or “The Heart of the Matter” (Greene)."

"The first-person narrator of “A Prayer for Owen Meany” is called (behind his back) a “non-practicing homosexual”; he doesn’t just love Owen Meany, he’s probably in love with Owen, but he’ll never come out of the closet and say so."

"Dr. Larch, the saintly abortionist in “The Cider House Rules,” and Jenny Fields, Garp’s mother in “The World According to Garp,” have sex only once and stop for life."

"Dr. Larch, the saintly abortionist in “The Cider House Rules,” and Jenny Fields, Garp’s mother in “The World According to Garp,” have sex only once and stop for life."

"The narrator of “The Hotel New Hampshire” is in love with his sister."

"I also think Tod Williams’s “The Door in the Floor” is an excellent adaptation of “A Widow for One Year”; he smartly adapted just the first third of that novel."

"That Pip imagines the cruel Miss Havisham is his benefactor, when all the while it is the good-hearted escaped convict Magwitch, is absolutely convincing, yet stunning. A salient point of the novel is how disappointing Pip is. He does not live up to his own expectations or ours."

"The most daunting opening of any novel: ‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.'"

"The best first chapter in any novel, ever. You think, how can this man ever atone for what he’s done? The answer is, he can’t — the abiding theme of the novel is that he will never atone for what he has done."

"The greatness is in the ending, which manages to be both inevitable and surprising. And the power of the ending relies on the foreshadowing. Why does Ishmael meet a “cannibal” harpooner at the Spouter-Inn before the Pequod sets sail? Why is Queequeg from the South Seas? Why is he not a Christian but an “abominable savage”? You’ll see — when Queequeg’s coffin is all that will keep Ishmael afloat. For me, Moby-Dick is the greatest of novels."