John Irving, THE LAST CHAIRLIFT

[1:38]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books. This thirty minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, three hundred and sixty five days a year for about thirty minutes. I am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. Our books are already out now. You can check it out on zippybooks.com. And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle features. That's at zippymag.com. We have classes at zippyclasses.com. And I recently opened a bookstore in LA called Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in Santa Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings. But this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018. And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy. I am so excited to introduce my episode with John Irving. Yes. The John Irving. This was like the highlight of my career. I was sitting here alone in my office and on Zoom, and all of a sudden it says, John Irving is in your waiting room. And I was like, oh my gosh. So anyway, I screenshotted it and posted it. So you all pretty much who follow me on Instagram know that this is coming. But anyway, John Irving, the reason he came on is to help promote his appearance, which is coming up at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, which is May '21 at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. You should be part of this unforgettable long weekend dedicated to celebrating a shared love of language and ideas. There will be more than 30 events with literary legends, a free community stage and more. So you should definitely check that out at sfinternationallitfest.org. And John's appearance will be on the big stage at 06:30PM until 07:45 on Saturday, May 20. He is a lifelong voice for social justice, feminism and tolerance of sexual minorities, and the author of 17 books, including The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, and The Last Chairlift. Here is John Irving's official bio after all that about the festival. John Irving has written 15 novels over the course of his prolific career, including The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meaney, A Widow for One Year, and his most recent The Last Chairlift. Five of his books have been adapted for film. Irving's longtime commitment to social justice, feminism and tolerance for sexual minorities has made him a bard of alternative families and a strong voice on the subject of sexual freedom. Among his many honors are the O. Henry Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Richard C. Holbrook Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Medal of Honor for Literature from the National Arts Club. He also won the National Book Award. I mean, he was amazing. This episode was like the highlight of my whole life. And I hope you enjoy our conversation. PS, At the end after we recorded, we chitchatted about, you know, getting together in LA and this, that and the other thing. And now we are emailing. We're emailing. It's like insane. My life is so insane. Anyway, enjoy the episode. Welcome, John. Thank you so much for coming on moms don't have time to read books to discuss the last chairlift, your latest book. Thank you. Nice to be here. It's nice to have you, and I am so grateful to the Santa Fe International Literary Festival for putting this together. I understand you'll be speaking there on Saturday, May 20 at 06:30.

[5:24]John Irving: You probably know the details better than I do. But yes,

[5:29]Zibby Owens: that sounds about right. I'll just put a little reminder in your phone for you. So make sure you show up. How did you get involved with that festival, by the way?

[5:38]John Irving: My speakers agency, the Lyceum Agency is always looking for me. And I'm more inclined to accept invitations that are in the vicinity of somewhere else I'm also going or going to be, so that I can to the extent that you can arrange anything ahead of time, I try and I also try to, I try when I can to accept invitations to events that are within easy striking distance of where my two children who live in The United States live. And so I can often connect to going to see them, because there's an event that's easy to get to them from. So I look for those. Where do they live? My oldest son lives in Los Angeles. My younger son lives in Colorado. So it's, they're both out there in the West. And, and I try to see them equally when I can get out there, you know. Well, next time you're in LA, I opened a bookstore recently

[6:56]Zibby Owens: in Santa Monica, so you can go by and check out my store.

[7:00]John Irving: I'll be in LA, in fact, shortly before I'm in Santa Fe. So which bookstore is it in Santa Monica? I know Santa Monica pretty well. Well, we just opened last month. It's called Zibby's Bookshop.

[7:15]Zibby Owens: And it's Oh, it's you. Norman. Yeah, it's really cute. You're welcome to do an event there if you want. See, you can just have your speakers be out. Just you don't have to do anything. I'm kidding. You can just go look around and enjoy yourself. I certainly will come look around because

[7:29]John Irving: I know Santa Monica pretty well.

[7:32]Zibby Owens: Oh, it's on it's on Montana and 11th, if that means anything.

[7:36]John Irving: I know where Montana is.

[7:38]Zibby Owens: I have a vague idea where 11th is. Yeah. Okay. Well, anyway, and you're wandering. So that's how you got to the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, which should be amazing. And now I feel like I have to go. But I've never actually been to Santa Fe. So there you go. Oh, wow. Okay. Anyway. Okay. The last chairlift. This is called moms don't have time to read books this podcast. And this is not helping matters with the length of this book, have to tell you. Tell listeners about why you wrote this book and why now?

[8:08]John Irving: Well, I've often likened my unwritten novels, the ones I'm waiting to write, the ones I've gathered notes for and know quite a bit about, but I'm not quite ready to begin them. I often think of those unwritten novels as boxcars in a train station. And I try very hard not to, when I'm writing a novel, I try not to think of what the next novel is going to be. I'm certainly aware of the notes that have been accumulating for this story or that story. And it's common for me that a novel will gather notes before it's written for a longer time than it will take me to write it. So that the notes for those trains in the station have been accumulating for at least five or six or more years before I say, Okay, I'll take that one next. Well, used to, I used to choose which one it was, the that one next, on solely on the basis of how much I knew about the ending. Not just the last line, which everyone has heard too many times and makes too much of, but I mean much more than a last line. I mean, like, the last eight or 10 pages. I mean, like the whole ending. So the more solidly I feel committed to the ending of the book is likely to make me choose that one. Even if there are novels that have been gathering notes for twice as long. Last Night in Twisted River was the longest. It existed in a pile of notes with a story outline with character descriptions for twenty years before I said, Okay, you're next. That's unusual. But what's more usual is five to eight years. A novel almost always has been waiting that long before I say, Okay, you're the next one. Well, as I've gotten older, there's another factor that's come into the decision of which one is next. I've been consciously over the last eight or ten years, trying to choose what looks like the hardest one, or the longest one. Hardest and longest doesn't, they don't always go together. By hardest, I also include not just the number of characters, the passage of time, all of which contribute to how long the story will be. But hard can also mean how much do I have to learn outside my own experience before I can even start. So that the Cider House rules, for example, is considerably shorter than The Last Chairlift, shorter than prayer for Owen Beanie. But it was one of the hardest for me and took the longest amount of time to write or about the longest amount of time. Because there was so much I had to learn about obstetrical and gynecological surgeries before the time I was even born, that I couldn't, It was easy to see those OB GYN procedures that were being performed the same way they always were performed. But it was not so easy to see things that had been before World War Two perform very differently. And so I could only see those on microphone, I could only see them in the company of sort of older retired OBGYN doctors. There was just an awful lot of and science is hard for me, never a strong subject. So the medical detail, being able to put myself in the point of view of two doctors, that took a lot of learning. And similarly, a novel like Until I Find You, which is so much about the history of maritime tattooing in the Baltic in the North Sea. Well, I had to spend a lot of time in The Netherlands, in Northern Germany, in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, to go live there and spend a lot of time with tattoo artists. And that was hard to calculate in terms of what it would add to the writing time of the novel. The last chairlift is on the page, by the word count, my longest. But it took only, I say only six years to write because six years is average or a little under average for me, because there was nothing in it. That was outside of my personal experience. So there's nothing in it that I had to go and learn about. There are a lot of skiers in my family. I grew up in ski towns, I've lived in ski towns, in The US, in Europe. So I didn't have to go anywhere. What about the ghosts? Well, there have been ghosts in my novels before. And the ghosts, like everything in my books, the ending drives where the story begins. What I know about the ending, which I know first, contributes to my later decision of where I start. And it's so important in this story, it always was to me, that Adam will get to see his mother's ghosts, that that can't come out of nowhere. In other words, there has to be a whole thread of ghost stories that lead you up to that moment in the end when Adam will see his mother again. And without the ghost that doesn't happen. So once again, it's because of where I wanted Adam and his mother, Little Ray to end, that the ending was what drove all those ghosts at the beginning. And the ghosts not only accumulate as the novel goes ahead, but there are more of them in the third act than there were in the second act, more of them in the second act than there were in the first act. So you're, you're kind of set up for that last ghost by all the ghosts that go before her. That's all. But it's, it's also, I suppose the short answer to that question, where the ghosts come from is, as a, as a non religious person, I think ghosts are about as far as I can credibly imagine a spiritual world. I get ghosts. As the old ski patroller says near the end of the novel, loved ones leave us and we go on. Ghosts or no ghosts, we still see them. Well, I'm certainly aware as I get older, and as more of my childhood friends have died than are still alive. I'm certainly aware that that we still see them. Whether you call them ghosts or not, they're, they still exist very strongly.

[16:03]Zibby Owens: What does that feel like to have most more

[16:06]John Irving: friends passed away than still alive? How does that feel to you? Well, in my case, weirdly, it feels like a lot of my novels. Because I guess it's fair to say I'm not known for happy endings. And so I'm familiar with the way endings feel from having written so many endings. But that's still not the same as recognizing that, you know, you, you have more close, close friends and acquaintances who are dead than you have who are alive. And that, you know, anyone who lives long enough gets there. That's hardly unique to me.

[16:51]Zibby Owens: My grandmother would joke about it. She lived to be 97. She's like, well, all my friends are dead. So I'm gonna go play bridge with the 70 year old young kids, you know. Okay.

[17:02]John Irving: Well, as you may have read before, or already know, my grandmother died one day short of her hundredth birthday. And I always speculated that the hoopla that was in her mind, it was hoopla. The hoopla that would be made had she lived to 100 was something she probably just didn't want to go through. And she thought, No, I'm not going to give them that. I'm getting out of here before that stuff. You know, You didn't listen to me about the party. Goodbye. She wasn't keen about that idea of she wasn't keen about the idea that everyone would know she was 100 years old. It was bad enough that she was 100 years old that, that but that everyone knew it, she could do without that.

[17:56]Zibby Owens: I'm fascinated by this idea of your untold stories just sort of keeping you company and sitting on a shelf waiting for you. How many do you have in the queue now that you haven't written? I have three now.

[18:09]John Irving: And I've already started a new novel. I'm eight chapters into a new novel. I'm a little ahead to where I usually am at this time, having published a book last October. But I haven't done any book touring. I've barely left my home in Toronto. I went one night to The United States to do Seth Meyer. That was it. One night. I've only been outside of Toronto twice in Canada. That is for an overnight. And most unusual, I haven't been to The UK at all, so that I did no traveling virtually for the English language editions. Well, the translations have now begun. They're a little slower than usual because of the length of the novel. But I usually look forward to many of the European translations, and I usually go there. That's just more interesting to me than traveling in Canada or in The US and The UK. But this time, I'm, because of Zoom, because of how easy it is to do everything virtually, because there are many journalists who are willing to come interview me in my workspace in Toronto, even from Europe. I either see people that way, people who come to see me, or more often, like this on a Zoom. And I've actually had more interviews this way than I used to have when I went everywhere.

[19:50]Zibby Owens: It's pretty efficient.

[19:52]John Irving: It's efficient. And I'm sure my publishers are at least grateful that it doesn't cost them as much. They're not paying the airfare, they're not paying hotel expenses. So it seems like a good, you know, it's, it is like this, it's a little more artificial than being in presence. But I wouldn't be eight chapters into a new novel, usually, only this many months after I published a new one, I'd still be traveling in Europe now, I wouldn't be here. So I like that aspect of it. I because I'm always I always feel more natural, myself when I am writing, as opposed to when I'm talking about writing. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[23:27]Zibby Owens: So when did you when in your career did you start realizing, oh, okay, this is how I do things versus I wish I wrote novels faster, or why is it taking me five years to write this book? Like, when did you realize, oh, this is how long it takes to write a novel? This is what my process is? Like, when did you accept that it's just it is what it is?

[23:48]John Irving: Well, as your life or your development as a writer is evolving, at least in my case, I was unaware of its trajectory in the sense of what I understood about it or what I didn't understand about it. For the writing of my first three novels, I thought it was odd or curious that I knew the endings before the beginnings because I didn't know any other writers who wrote that way or had that experience. Even my first and foremost idol, Charles Dickens, didn't write that way. Dickens was known for serializing many of his novels. Dickers didn't need to know the end of a novel before he began it. Melville did. But I was older when I first read Melville. I was 17 when I read Moby Dick. Only 15 when I read Great Expectations. That was the novel that made me want to be a novelist. Moby Dick, though, was the novel that showed me, oh, this is why you know everything about the ending before you begin, because your ending will be better if you do. When I read that novel, it was unmistakable to me that, everybody reading the novel knows the ship's a disaster. They know it's going to go down. The captain is a lunatic. The whale is undefeatable. You know that, you know, you're not even halfway into the novel. Unless Ahab dies, they're all doomed. Unless the captain washes overboard, they're all dead, these guys. The only thing you don't know is it's a first person narrator. And how's he gonna survive? Well, the means by how Ishmael will survive is in the earliest chapters. It's all set up. You don't know it when you read it. But when you get there, you think, Oh, that's why one of the harpooners is a cannibal from the South Seas. That's why there's a non Christian on board. That's why there's this superstitious guy who's a pagan, who is superstitious enough to one day believe he's going to die and ask for a coffin. And several days later, change his mind and say, now use this coffin for something else, I'm not going to die. And that coffin is a lifebuoy. Well, that was a lesson to me. So by the time I was 17, I was still in high school, I not only knew I wanted to be a novelist, I knew that it would be best if I knew how everything ended before I began. Dickens was a genius, maybe he didn't have to know. Maybe geniuses don't have to know how a novel ends, but I do. And so even so knowing that, my first novel was historical. Of course, I knew how it ended. It was history. It was about the Anschluss. It was about the Nazi occupation of Germany and the Soviet occupation of Vienna. It was all history. My fictional story coincided with actual history, and I knew how the actual history ended. And my own story, I dovetailed to it. Well, the next two novels weren't historical. But they still turned out to be novels for which the ending had been written first. I thought with The World According to that all that might have changed because one of the first sentences I wrote down among my notes was, In The World According to Garp, are all terminal cases. And I remember putting it on a postcard and sending it to my then editor, saying, I think I have a good first sentence here. And he sent me back a postcard which said, sounds like a last sentence to me. Once again, he was right. The last sentence. I kind of resisted it for a while. I tried it as a first sentence, had no place there. I tried it as a last sentence of the first chapter. And then I thought, it's the same as always. It's the end of the novel. And by the time Garp was behind me, the fourth novel, I had accepted that I see endings first. And therefore, knowing that and accepting it, I should choose the next novel I write on the basis of how well I know that ending. Because the one I have the ending more firmly rooted up here, the better it'll be. And wait for those other novels, wait for those endings to develop, which they do, which they always do. Well, at least I know now, after this last long one, longest one, At least I know now that the trains in the station are all shorter trains. So I don't think there's any more long novels. I think I accomplished that mission of trying to write the hard ones or the long ones first. The last chairlift is long, but it wasn't appreciably

[29:29]Zibby Owens: hard in the way some of my earlier novels have been hard. It would be funny if your next book was just a poem. You'd show them. That's highly unlikely.

[29:41]John Irving: I'm just kidding. It wouldn't be funny at all. I don't think I'm a haiku kind of guy. I've never, you know, I've never written very many short stories. And even my short stories are too long. So I think, but I have, I have very scrupulously saved among my notes, I've, the novels that look short to me, I've said, Oh, save that one. That'll be easy. And so, and I think now that I'm over 80, it's a good thing that they're shorter, because I'm not writing any faster than I ever did. You can see the slant board over my shoulder here. Well, I still write first drafts by hand and, and I do it because it does slow me down. And slowing me down is good. When I'm on the keyboard. First, I make lots of mistakes on the first draft. Learned that. I used to, on an old mechanical fighter, typewriter, I used to write novels on a typewriter. Well, I learned very quickly, second or third book. You know, I was doing a lot of rewriting because my mom taught me to type when I was 12 or 13. So by the time I went to high school, it was a big advantage. I used to type my friends papers for them, because I was the one who could type. But I found it, I just, it goes too quickly. When I'm writing, writing, when it's a screenplay, it's a novel, especially because it isn't just that writing longhand is slower than a keyboard, it is. But what also slows the process down is that I'm writing to be clear enough for someone else who will transcribe it. Even before I had an assistant, I usually gave my handwritten or first typed drafts to a typist. Well, if you have to make yourself clear enough for somebody else, my handwriting is really good. My handwriting is very clear. Even my grocery lists are. My wife complains, she says, you didn't write so big. I mean, if the letters weren't so large, that you wouldn't have to give me three pages. I said, Yeah, that's part of it. Mean, it's like, it's got to be, you know, make it easy to read, right? And not surprisingly, of my three children, guess what? The only one whose handwriting is legible is the writer. I mean, right? If you're a writer, you write legibly, even if no one but you is going to type it. You still got to be able to read it.

[32:42]Zibby Owens: So when you write by hand, do the sentences do you just do you almost have them sort of held in your head and then you just transcribe them? Because I feel like sometimes when I'm typing, I'm I mean, not to ever compare myself to you. But if I'm writing, I'm thinking as I go, like, I don't have it here, and then it dumps down into the page. So how what is the what does that act like for you?

[33:08]John Irving: I usually say, I usually say a sentence to myself a couple of times before I write it. And another thing that's awfully easy with handwriting, if you have different kinds of pens, different colors of ink and stuff, highlighters around, well, you can write something one way, and then write the same sentence under it. And write another sentence under it. And the first time you read through it, you pick up a highlighter and run a line through what strikes you as the best way to do it the next time so that I or my assistant can say, Oh, he likes this version better. And he or she, my assistant can, they know, you know, they, my assistants all know that I'm encouraging them to give me their feedback as they feel it. If some sentence that I've written strikes them as an ungainly duck, Well, show me what you do. So when I get drafts back, I often, depending on how adventuresome my assistant is, I often get somebody who's variant alongside my assistant saying, I would do it this way, or something. So it's good to have first readers. It's good to, I think I, I was also lucky as a young writer that my first experience with readers for my earliest attempts at fiction, those first experiences were really positive. The father of one of my best friends was an English teacher, was someone who, when he knew I wanted to be a writer, recommended books for me to read. And he was the first person I showed a manuscript to. And he was very constructive. He was very kind. And I was lucky with a couple of English teachers in high school who were also close and sensitive readers. And so I learned to trust good readers. And my first novel, Setting Free the Bears, the historical novel, well, it was a really good break for me that Bert Vonnegut was my first reader of that novel. Because I couldn't have had a better one. I couldn't have had a more sort of frank and, but also kindly responder to this first novel. It helped, of course, that it was a historical novel. It was set in a German speaking company, country in World War Two, and shortly after. And because Vonnegut's own German background, because of his years as a POW in Dresden. I had a first reader who knew that history better than I did. And that was, and my dad was, my stepfather a historian and having him as a first reader, an early reader, not the first, but maybe the second reader of that first novel was a big help to me. And as a consequence, I think it's made me very receptive to the editors in my life. And when, because of a death, because of a change in publishers, when I've lost an editor and had to find another one. I also know who the good ones. I've had good ones. But that also tells me when I don't have a good one. When I think, okay, I got to change, I got to change something. If not publishers, I got to have another editor, because I know how much good a good editor can do for you. And, you know, I think when you're, when you're starting anything, and when you're just beginning, if, your first exposure with criticism is really negative, well, you're not going to then you're not going to listen to anybody. You know, just say screw that. I don't need to listen to this. This isn't helpful. If you have some positive experiences, then you not only know when someone isn't good, and you can ignore them, because you have someone to compare them to. But you also know that good people exist and can be found. And when you find them, you should listen. Right? So it's a two way street. I mean, if you get exposed to a good first response, by good, I mean, something that benefits you, something that is going to help you. An older writer, for example, who can say, you know, you're really good at this, and you should do more of this. But because you're good at it, you know, you're good at it. So don't do too much of it. Worse to that effect. That's essentially what Vonnegut said to me. What did he think you were really good at? Taking a small detail and building out it until it's not so small anymore. He knew I was good at developing a narrative thread. He knew I was not so good at trusting the reader. He knew I reminded the reader of things that a halfway decent reader didn't really need to be reminded of, or they didn't need to be reminded of it maybe as many times as I said, well, I suppose the dumb reader got lost now. So I better say this again. Better say it a fourth time or a fifth time. So every editor I've ever had, has found a way gently or not so gently in the margins to say my copy editor, who has been my copy editor now, she's been my copy editor since the Cider House rules, we've been working together. So she knows me, I can't get away with anything with her. So she can also give me notes in a kind of shorthand that I know very well. And such as writing in the margin, duh, the reader knows.

[39:32]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. Well, it's all about all about the team. Oh my gosh. This has been so fun. Thank you so much. I know our time is up, and this has been just such a treat. You were on my wish list when I started this podcast five years ago. I was like, oh my gosh. Wouldn't that be, like, the most amazing thing? So, anyway, thanks for spending half an hour with me and exciting about the Santa Fe International Literary Festival on May 20 at 06:30. I hope many people will come out and see you as I'm sure they will. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Alright. Have a Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you. Okay. Bye. You too. Bye.

[40:06]John Irving: Bye.

[40:08]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.