As I continue reading John Irving, zinging back to earlier
works, along with his newest ones (though his first three remain unread, though
I have copies of them and have full intentions of reading them as 2013
continues from spring into summer), I’m getting used to his reoccurring themes: New England, sex workers, wrestling, Vienna,
bears, deadly accidents, a main character and/or supporting characters who are
writers of some sort, a main character dealing with an absent or unknown
parent, a main character who is involved in film making, and unusual sexual
relationships (and often what Irving as referred to as "sexual
outsiders") such as incest, bestiality, or between young men and older
women. Females who are both brash and ostentatious, while simultaneously
fragile recur throughout most of Irving's novels. Irving's novels tend to
involve characters that are often considered outsiders (particularly in terms
of sexuality), and their attempts to find their way in life.
In One Person, which is strikingly better than his last two
previous books, Until I Find You and Last Night in Twisted River, Irving
introduces us to William Abbot in 2010 as he begins to tell the tale of his
life starting in 1957 when he was 15. He lives with his single mother, and is
surrounded by an odd assortment of supporting characters including his Grandpa
Harry, a cross-dresser who plays female characters in the local theater, his
domineering grandmother and spiteful Aunt. But when a new teacher arrives in First
Sister, Vermont to teach Shakespeare at the all-boys Favorite River Academy, Billy
is introduced to Miss Frost, who is the town librarian. It is here, he has his
first crush –well, he also crushes on the teacher who would eventually become
his stepfather.
Here we are given a tome on desire, how we have tendency –no
matter what society says- to fall in love with the wrong people at the wrong
time and how we deal with those desires. William considers himself a bisexual
with an attraction to men, women and transsexuals (which is an archaic word, we
use transgendered today, but there is an explanation as to why he uses the old
form of the word). Irving does discuss throughout the novel about how people
view bisexuals –that old argument of them being fence sitters; that they’re gay
men who like to keep “one foot in the closet.” There is no moralizing here, and
that’s because Irving does not write that way. He does, however, give the
reader the idea that there is something wrong with trying to fit in, as an old
friend of Billy lies dying of AIDS in the mid-1980s who hid his sexuality,
getting married and having kids. Tom, of course, infected his wife and that
destroys the life of his two children.
Then there is Kittredge, the impossibly handsome bully who
is mysterious as he is impossible to resist. He is desired by all, but he seems
to desire no one in return (even though he has a relationship with Billy’s best
friend Elaine).
It’s not hard to think this book resembles Irving’s most
notable novel, The World According to Garp. In some way, it could be seen as a
parallel novel as Billy seems to be a shadow of T.S. Garp. There are problems,
as Irving’s women are painted as sometimes hateful and often bigoted fools. Plus,
as always with Irving’s work, some people are curious how much of his fiction
is, in fact, not fiction; as one character puts it: "Bill is a fiction writer,
but he writes in the first-person voice in a style that is tell-all
confessional; in fact, his fiction sounds as much like a memoir as can make it
sound.” The subject matter of bisexuality was familiar to him, having had
fleeting crushes on boys while growing up, he has said.
It’s funny, as you would expect from John Irving, and like
all his other works, risky. His desire, it seems, is a simple plea for
understanding of sexual differences. You take what you want from that. But the
coda at the end, where decades later Bill is confronted by the son of Kittredge
who seems completely at a loss to understand what Bill is, or the fate of
several students that Abbot went to school with (there seems to be a surprisingly
number of gender-fluidity here. I mean, there are a lot of gay boys in one
school –even if it’s an all-boys one).”You create these characters who are so
sexually ‘different, ’as you might call them-and then you expect us to
sympathize with them, or feel sorry for them, or something.”
Abbot responds –as some might say even now- “…don’t put a
label on me –don’t make me a category before you get to know me.”
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