"Macleans" redirects here. For the toothpaste, see GlaxoSmithKline.

Maclean's

File:Maclean's cover 2008-09-22.jpg Cover of Maclean's, September 22, 2008 issue
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher	Kenneth Whyte
Categories	News magazine
Weekly
Total circulation (December 2011)	330,203[1]
First issue	1905[2] as The Business Magazine 1911[3] as Maclean's
Company	Rogers Communications
Country	Canada
Based in	Toronto, Ontario
Language	English
Website	www.macleans.ca
ISSN	0024-9262

Maclean's is a Canadian weekly news magazine, reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events.

History[link]

Founded in 1905 by Toronto journalist and entrepreneur Lt.-Col. John Bayne Maclean, a 43-year-old trade magazine publisher who purchased an advertising agency's in-house business journal, along with its 5,000-strong subscription base.^{[citation needed]} The Business Magazine, was launched in October of that year as a pocket-sized digest of articles gathered from Canadian, British, and American periodicals. It sold 6,000 copies. Inside its bright blue cover, the fledgling monthly anointed itself, "the Cream of the World's magazines reproduced for Busy People." Its aim, Maclean wrote a year later, was not "merely to entertain but also to inspire its readers."^{[citation needed]} It was renamed The Busy Man's Magazine in December 1905, and began soliciting original manuscripts on varied topics such as immigration, national defence, home life, women's suffrage, as well as fiction.^{[citation needed]} Maclean renamed the magazine after himself in 1911, dropping the previous title as too evocative of a business magazine for what had become a general interest publication.^{[citation needed]}

Maclean hired Thomas B. Costain as editor in 1917. Costain invigorated the magazine's coverage of the First World War, running first-person accounts of life on the Western Front and critiques of Canada's war effort that came into conflict with wartime censorship regulations. Costain was ordered to remove an article by Maclean himself as it was too critical of war policy.^{[citation needed]}

Costain encouraged literary pieces and artistic expressions and ran fiction by Robert W. Service, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and O. Henry; commentary by Stephen Leacock and illustrations by C. W. Jefferys, F.S. Coburn, and several Group of Seven members, including A. J. Casson, Arthur Lismer, and J. E. H. MacDonald.^[4]

In 1919, the magazine moved from monthly to fortnightly publication and ran a notable exposé of the drug trade by Emily Murphy. Costain left the magazine to become a novelist and was replaced by J. Vernon Mackenzie who remained at the helm until 1926. During his tenure, Maclean's achieved national stature.^{[citation needed]}

After Mackenzie, H. Napier Moore became the new editor. An Englishman, he saw the magazine as an expression of Canada's role in the British Empire. Moore ultimately became a figurehead with the day-to-day running of the magazine falling to managing editor W. Arthur Irwin, a Canadian nationalist, who saw the magazine as an exercise in nation-building, giving it a mandate to promote national pride. Under Irwin's influence, the magazine's covers promoted Canadian scenery and imagery. The magazine also sponsored an annual short story contest on Canadian themes and acquired a sports department. Irwin was also responsible for orienting the magazine towards both small and big "L" Liberalism.

During the Second World War, Maclean's ran an overseas edition for Canadian troops serving abroad. By the time of its final run in 1946, the "bantam" edition had a circulation of 800,000. Maclean's war coverage featured war photography by Yousuf Karsh, later an internationally acclaimed portrait photographer, and articles by war correspondents John Clare and Leonard Shapiro.

Irwin officially replaced Moore as editor in 1945, and reoriented the magazine by building it around news features written by a new stable of writers that included Pierre Berton, W.O. Mitchell, Scott Young, Ralph Allen, and Blair Fraser.

Allen became editor upon Irwin's acceptance of a diplomatic posting in 1950. This era of the magazine was noted for its articles on the Canadian landscape and profiles of town and city life. The feature article, "Canada's North," by Pierre Berton, promoted a new national interest in the Arctic. Prominent writers during this period included Robert Fulford, Peter Gzowski, Peter C. Newman, Trent Frayne, June Callwood, McKenzie Porter, and Christina McCall. Exposés in the 1950s challenged the criminal justice system, explored LSD, and artificial insemination.

Maclean's published a memorable editorial the day after the 1957 federal election announcing the predictable re-election of the St. Laurent Liberal Party. Written before the election results were known, Allen failed to anticipate the upset election of John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative Party.

The magazine struggled to compete with television in the 1960s by increasing its international coverage and attempting to keep up with the sexual revolution through a succession of editors including Gzowski and Charles Templeton. Templeton quit after a short time at the helm due to his frustration with interference by the publishing company, Maclean-Hunter.

In 1961, Maclean's began publishing a French-language edition, Le Magazine Maclean, which survived until 1976, when the edition was absorbed by L'actualité.

Peter C. Newman became editor in 1971, and attempted to revive the magazine by publishing feature articles by writers such as Barbara Frum and Michael Enright, and poetry by Irving Layton. Walter Stewart, correspondent and eventually managing editor during this period, often clashed with Newman. In 1975 Newman brought in columnist Allan Fotheringham. Fotheringham made famous The Back Page, where he wrote for 27 years. Readers would go to read the Back Page first and then proceed to read the magazine from back to front.

Under Newman, the magazine switched from being a monthly general interest publication to a bi-weekly news magazine in 1975, and to a weekly newsmagazine three years later. The magazine opened news bureaus across the country and in international bureaus in London, England, and Washington, D.C..^{[citation needed]}

Current[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

In 2001, Anthony Wilson-Smith became the fifteenth editor in the magazine's history. He left the post at the end of February 2005 and was replaced by Kenneth Whyte, who also serves as the magazine's publisher. The magazine has been owned by the Rogers Communications conglomerate since Rogers acquired Maclean-Hunter, the former publisher, in 1994.

Whyte, who previously edited Saturday Night and the National Post, brought a new, arguably conservative, focus to the magazine, bringing in conservative columnist Mark Steyn, hiring Andrew Coyne away from the Post, and rehiring Barbara Amiel. He also added a comedy feature by former Liberal Party strategist Scott Feschuk, and a column by Andrew Potter, who previously wrote for left leaning periodicals.

University Ranking Guide[link]

The Maclean's Guide to Canadian Universities is published annually in March. It is also known as Maclean's University Guide. It includes information from the Maclean's University Rankings, an issue of the magazine proper that is published annually in November, primarily for students in their last year of high school and entering their first year in Canadian universities. Both the Guide and the rankings issue feature articles discussing Canadian universities and ranking them by order of quality. The rankings focus on taking a measure of the "undergraduate experience," comparing universities in three peer groupings: Primarily Undergraduate, Comprehensive, and Medical Doctoral.

Schools in the Primarily Undergraduate category are largely focused on undergraduate education, with relatively few graduate programs. Comprehensives have a significant amount of research activity and a wide range of graduate and undergraduate programs, including professional degrees. Medical Doctoral institutions have a broad range of PhD programs and research, as well as medical schools.

In early 2006, Maclean's announced that in June 2006, it would be introducing a new annual issue called the University Student Issue. The issue would feature the results of a survey of recent university graduates from each Canadian university. However, many universities, such as the University of Calgary, McMaster University, and the University of Toronto, refused to take part in this exercise. The three institutions stated that they questioned the "magazine's ability to conduct a survey that would be rigorous and provide accurate and useful information to students and their parents."^[5] In response, Maclean's sought the results of two university-commissioned student surveys: the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium (CUSC) and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE).^[6] Results from these surveys, along with Maclean's own graduate survey, were published in the June 26, 2006, edition of Maclean's.

For the November 2006 University Rankings issue, 22 Canadian universities refused to provide information directly to Maclean's. To rank those universities, the magazine relied on data it collected itself, as well as data drawn from third party sources such as Statistics Canada.^{[citation needed]} Among the universities that refused to provide information directly to Maclean's in the fall of 2006 were: University of British Columbia, University of Toronto, Dalhousie University, McMaster University, University of New Brunswick, University of Manitoba, Université du Québec network, Simon Fraser University, University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge, Ryerson University, Université de Montréal, University of Ottawa, York University, Concordia University, University of Western Ontario, Lakehead University, Queen's University, Carleton University, and University of Windsor. The withholding of data served as a means of voicing the universities' displeasure with the methodology used to determine the Maclean's ranking.^[7] Indira Samarasekera, president of The University of Alberta, further discussed this in the article, "Rising Up Against Rankings," published in the April 2, 2007, issue of Inside Higher Ed.^[8]

The University Rankings Issue contains a compilation of different charts and lists judging the different aspects of universities in different categories. The three main areas listed in chart form in the University Rankings Issue as at November 3, 2006, are: the overall rankings themselves, the university student surveys, and the magazine's "national reputational rankings" of the schools.

The National Reputational Rankings, like the main university rankings, are broken into three subcategories: medical doctoral, comprehensive, and primarily undergraduate and are based on opinions of the quality of the universities. The quality opinions gathered were contributed by secondary school principals, guidance counselors, organization and company heads, and recruiters. The results of the reputational rankings are included in the main university rankings, and account for 16% of a university's total ranking score.

Canada's Top 100 Employers[link]

Maclean's is also well known for announcing the annual list of Canada's Top 100 Employers, which is featured in a special issue each October.^[9] First published by Maclean's in 2002, this issue profiles the winners of an annual competition to determine Canada's best places to work. The competition is open to employers of all sizes, both private- and public-sector. Winners are selected using a variety of criteria, which range from forward-thinking human resource policies to progressive community involvement projects that make use of employees' talents.^[10] Detailed reasons for each employer's selection are published in an annual paperback by an outside firm, which manages the Canada's Top 100 Employers competition and provides the research to Maclean's.^[11] A distinguished panel of academic advisors, drawn from universities across Canada, oversees the selection criteria for the annual competition.^[12]

Controversy[link]

This article or section may be slanted towards recent events. Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective. (March 2011)

Canadian Islamic Congress complaint[link]

In December 2007, the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) launched complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, British Columbia Human Rights Commission, and the Ontario Human Rights Commission against Maclean's accusing it of publishing 18 articles between January 2005 and July 2007 that they considered Islamophobic in nature including a column by Mark Steyn titled "The future belongs to Islam."^[13][14][15] According to the CIC complaint (as discussed in a National Post article by Ezra Levant): Maclean's is "flagrantly Islamophobic" and "subjects Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt."^[16] In contrast, Levant says of the complainants that they are "illiberal censors who have found a quirk in our legal system, and are using it to undermine our Western traditions of freedom."^[16] On October 10, 2008, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal dismissed the allegations of "hate speech" made by the Canadian Islamic Congress.^{[citation needed]} Maclean's consistently took the position that Steyn's article, an excerpt from his best-selling book, America Alone, is a worthy contribution to an important debate on geopolitical and demographic issues, and that complaintant's demands for equal space for a rebuttal was unreasonable and untenable.^[17]

Quebec controversy[link]

The October 4, 2010, edition of the magazine — web-published September 24, 2010 — had a cover article with the headline: "Quebec: The Most Corrupt Province," with the subheading inside the magazine, "Why does Quebec claim so many of the nation’s political scandals?". The cover illustration featured the Quebec Winter Carnival mascot, Bonhomme, carrying a suitcase overflowing with cash.^[18][19] This depiction angered some Quebec politicians and organizers of the Carnival.^[20]

On September 26, 2010, Quebec Premier, Jean Charest, wrote a letter to the editor of Maclean's condemning the magazine’s "twisted form of journalism and ignorance," calling it "sensationalist," "far from serious," "simplistic" and "offensive,", saying the editor "discredited" the magazine.^[19][21][22] In an example of the law of unintended consequences, the controversy has had an unexpected benefit for the Quebec Liberal Government: The Opposition in the Quebec National Assembly had been demanding that Premier Charest create "a public inquiry into allegations of corruption and collusion in Quebec's construction industry."^[19] However, seeing the Maclean's article as an attack from outside the province, an attack from English Canada, and "with their [Quebec's] acute sensitivity to criticism coming from outside the province, many in the province's media and political classes have shifted their attention from the Premier to the mischievous Toronto-based magazine."^[19] Thus, his letter to the editor of Maclean's posits Mr. Charest as "the defender of Quebecers in their 400-year struggle to preserve their culture and language. His letter demands that Maclean's apologize for publishing ‘a simplistic and offensive thesis that Quebecers are genetically incapable of acting with integrity.’"^[19]

In an editorial dated September 29, 2010, the magazine refused to back away from its position vis-à-vis corruption in Quebec.^[19] In the English-language magazine's bilingual editorial, the editorial board says that Charest's response to the Maclean's article was an attempt to "implicate ordinary citizens in a scandal created by [its] politicians. ‘It is bad enough that the people of Quebec have to put up with corruption in public office — they shouldn't be smeared by it as well,’"^[19][23] Notwithstanding this assertion, Maclean's acknowledged "that neither its cover story nor an accompanying column provided empirical evidence that Quebec is more corrupt than other provinces."^[19] This is not, however, a retreat from its contention that Quebec is the most corrupt province, given that the editorial board goes further, saying

It's true that we lack a statistical database to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Quebec is an outlier among the provinces. But that does not mean we are required to suspend all judgment in the face of a preponderance of evidence—scandal after scandal at every level of government in the province, all of them involving not just one or two bad actors but systemic corruption.^[23]

Maclean's editors also note that "none of our critics has mounted a credible case that any other province better deserves the title of worst in class."^[23] Moreover, not all opinion in Quebec runs contrary to Maclean's position. The French-language "La Presse, the province's leading broadsheet, wrote that … [Maclean's] claim that Quebec has a higher number of scandals is ‘undeniable.’"^[23] Rhéal Séguin, writing in The Globe & Mail, notes that the English-language Montreal Gazette, however, is of the opposite opinion, editorializing that "Maclean's is wrong. It didn't come close to making its case."^[22]

Despite the steadfast position of Maclean's editorial board, the magazine's publisher has issued a qualified apology. On September 30, 2010, referring to the controversy, Brian Segal, the president of Rogers Publishing, apologized for "any offence that the cover may have caused," saying the province "is an important market for the company and we look forward to participating in the dynamic growth of the province and its citizens."^[24]

Finally, regarding Bonhomme Carnaval, organizers of Carnaval de Québec sued Maclean's over the controversial cover showing the iconic figure, settling out of court in November 2010.^[25]

[edit] Too Asian? article

The university ranking issue courted controversy when in November 2010, under the editorship of Kenneth Whyte and Mark Stevenson, reporter Stephanie Findlay and senior writer Nicholas Köhler wrote a controversial article entitled "Too Asian?",^[26] which led to allegations that Maclean's intentionally perpetuated racial stereotypes to court controversy for the sake of publicity.^{[27][28][29][30][31]} Amidst criticism from a number of student unions and politicians, on December 16, 2010, Toronto’s city council voted to request an apology from Maclean’s magazine as the third Canadian city to do so after Victoria and Vancouver.^[32][33] In a letter to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Senator Vivienne Poy suggested that public outrage over the Maclean's article, "defined as material that is denigrating to an identifiable group," should deem it ineligible for government funding.^[28][29]

See also[link]

• Media in Canada

References[link]

Source[link]

• Macleans: the First 100 Years

External links[link]

• Maclean's website
• macleans.ca: Universities

v t e University ranking systems Global Academic Ranking of World Universities · Global University Ranking · High Impact Universities · Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities · QS World University Rankings · Times Higher Education World University Rankings · Webometrics Ranking of World Universities Regional European Union · Latin America National Brazil · Canada (Maclean's) · China (Chinese Academy of Management Science · Netbig · Ranking of billionaire alumni) · Germany · Japan (Going broke universities - Disappearing universities · Truly Strong Universities) · Mexico · Russia · South Africa · United Kingdom · United States (Center for Measuring University Performance · Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index · The Princeton Review · U.S. News & World Report · The Washington Monthly) Category

John Irving
Irving in Cologne, Germany, September 14, 2010
Born	John Wallace Blunt, Jr. (1942-03-02) March 2, 1942 (age 70) Exeter, New Hampshire
Occupation	Novelist, screenwriter
Notable work(s)	The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Notable award(s)	Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Influences Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Günter Grass, Thomas Hardy, Robertson Davies, Kurt Vonnegut
john-irving.com

John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt, Jr.; March 2, 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.

Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978. Some of Irving's novels, such as The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, have been bestsellers. Five of his novels have been adapted to film. Several of Irving's books (Garp, Meany, A Widow for One Year) and short stories have been set in and around Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1999 for his script The Cider House Rules.

Early life[link]

Irving was born John Wallace Blunt, Jr. in Exeter, New Hampshire, the son of Helen Frances (née Winslow) and John Wallace Blunt, Sr., a writer and executive recruiter.^[1][2][3] Irving grew up in Exeter, as the stepson of an Exeter faculty member, Colin F.N. Irving (1941), and nephew of another, H. Hamilton "Hammy" Bissell (1929). Irving was in the Exeter wrestling program both as a student athlete and as an assistant coach, and wrestling features prominently in his books, stories and life. Irving's biological father, whom he never met, had been a pilot in the Army Air Forces and during World War II was shot down over Burma in July 1943,^[4] but survived (an incident incorporated into the novel The Cider House Rules). Irving did not find out about his father's heroism until 1981.^[5]

Career[link]

Irving's career began at the age of 26 with the publication of his first novel, Setting Free the Bears. The novel was reasonably well reviewed, but failed to gain a large readership. In the late 1960s, he studied with Kurt Vonnegut at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. His second and third novels, The Water-Method Man and The 158-Pound Marriage, were similarly received. At around this time, in 1975, Irving accepted a position as Assistant Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College.^[6]

Frustrated at the lack of promotion his novels were receiving from his first publisher, Random House, Irving offered his fourth novel, The World According to Garp (1978), to Dutton, which promised him stronger commitment to marketing. The novel became an international bestseller and cultural phenomenon. It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979 (received by Tim O'Brien for Going After Cacciato)^[7] and its first paperback edition won the Award next year.^[8][a] Garp was later made into a film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Robin Williams in the title role and Glenn Close as his mother; it garnered several Academy Award nominations, including nominations for Close and John Lithgow. Irving makes a brief cameo in the film as an official in one of Garp's high school wrestling matches.

Though it is not a widely known fact, The World According to Garp was among three books recommended to the Pulitzer Advisory Board for consideration for the 1979 Award in Fiction in the Pulitzer Jury Committee report, along with The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever. The award was given to The Stories of John Cheever.^[9]

Garp transformed Irving from an obscure, academic literary writer to a household name, and his subsequent books were bestsellers. The next was The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), which sold well despite mixed reviews from critics. Like Garp, the novel was quickly made into a film, this time directed by Tony Richardson and starring Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, and Beau Bridges. "Interior Space," a short story published in "Fiction" magazine in 1980, was given an O. Henry Award (and thus collected in its eponymous anthology from 1981).

In 1985, Irving published The Cider House Rules. An epic set in a Maine orphanage, the novel's central topic is abortion. Many drew parallels between the novel and Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. Irving's next novel was A Prayer for Owen Meany, another New England family epic about religion set in a New England boarding school. The novel was influenced by The Tin Drum by Günter Grass,^[10] and the plot contains further allusions to The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the works of Dickens. In Owen Meany, Irving for the first time examined the consequences of the Vietnam War—particularly mandatory conscription, which Irving avoided because he was a married father when of age for the draft.^[11] Owen Meany became Irving's best selling book since Garp, and is now a frequent feature on high school English reading lists.

Irving returned to Random House for his next book, A Son of the Circus (1995). Arguably his most complicated and difficult book, and a departure from many of the themes and location settings in his previous novels, it was dismissed by critics^{[citation needed]} but became a national bestseller on the strength of Irving's reputation for fashioning literate, engrossing page-turners. Irving returned in 1998 with A Widow for One Year, which was named a New York Times Notable Book.

Irving has had four novels reach number one on the bestseller list of The New York Times: The Hotel New Hampshire (September 27, 1981), which stayed number one for seven weeks, and was in the top 15 for over 27 weeks, The Cider House Rules (June 16, 1985), A Widow for One Year (June 14, 1998), and The Fourth Hand (July 29, 2001).

In 1999, after nearly ten years in development, Irving's screenplay for The Cider House Rules was made into a film directed by Lasse Hallström, starring Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, and Delroy Lindo. Irving also has a cameo appearance as the disapproving stationmaster. The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and earned Irving an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Soon after, Irving wrote My Movie Business, a memoir about his involvement in creating the film version of The Cider House Rules. After its publication, Irving appeared on the CBC Television program Hot Type to promote the book. During the interview, Irving criticized bestselling American author Tom Wolfe, saying Wolfe “can’t write,” and that his writing makes Irving gag. Wolfe appeared on Hot Type later that year, calling Irving, Norman Mailer and John Updike his “three stooges” who were panicked by his newest novel, A Man in Full.

When The Fourth Hand was published in 2001 it became a bestseller. A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound, a children's story originally included in A Widow for One Year, was published as a book with illustrations by Tatjana Hauptmann in 2004. Irving's novel, Until I Find You, was released on July 12, 2005.

On June 28, 2005, The New York Times published an article^[12] revealing that Until I Find You contains two specifically personal elements about his life that he has never before discussed publicly: his sexual abuse at age 11 by an older woman, and the recent entrance in his life of his biological father's family.

In his twelfth novel, Last Night in Twisted River, published in 2009, Irving's central character is a novelist with "a career that teasingly follows Irving's own," as one journalist put it^[11] (e.g., including the aforementioned reference to Irving's own mandatory conscription).

Other projects[link]

Since the publication of Garp made him independently wealthy, Irving has been able to concentrate solely on fiction writing as a vocation, sporadically accepting short-term teaching positions (including one at his alma mater, the Iowa Writers' Workshop) and serving as an assistant coach on his sons' high school wrestling teams. (Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as an “Outstanding American” in 1992.^[13][14]) In addition to his novels, he has also published Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, a collection of his writings including a brief memoir and unpublished short fiction, My Movie Business, an account of the protracted process of bringing The Cider House Rules to the big screen, and The Imaginary Girlfriend, a short memoir focusing on writing and wrestling. In 2010, Irving revealed that he and Tod "Kip" Williams, director and writer of The Door in the Floor, are co-writing a screenplay for an adaptation of The Fourth Hand.

Recent[link]

In recent years, his four most highly regarded novels, The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Widow for One Year, have been published in Modern Library editions. Owen Meany was adapted into the film Simon Birch (Irving required that the title and character names be changed because the screenplay's story was "markedly different" from that of the novel; Irving is on record as having enjoyed the film, however^[15]). In 2004, a portion of A Widow for One Year was adapted into The Door in the Floor, starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger.

In a New York Magazine interview in 2009, Irving stated that he has begun work on a new novel, which will be his thirteenth. It is based, in part, on a speech from a play by Shakespeare, "Richard II." The novel is titled, "In One Person." In Fall 2010, in "The Vermont Quarterly," "The Daily Free Press," "The Republican" and "The Harvard Crimson," transcripts of Irving's Q&As while making appearances at several New England colleges revealed the following: "In One Person" will have a first-person view point, Irving's first such narrative since A Prayer For Owen Meany (Irving decided to change the first-person narrative of Until I Find You to third person less than a year before publication); "In One Person" will feature a 60 year-old, bisexual protagonist named William, looking back on his life in the 1950s and '60s; William falls in love with a transgender, a female librarian, and spends time studying in Vienna, where he falls in love with an American girl trying to become a professional opera singer. The novel will share a similar theme (and concern) with The World According to Garp, which was, in part, says Irving, about, "People who hate you for your sexual differences."

Simon and Schuster recently confirmed that they will publish Irving's next two novels, and that "In One Person" will be published by summer, 2012. In a recent press release, Irving's new publisher—taking over from Random House—stated that another book is tentatively scheduled for 2015. And in an interview found the Simon & Schuster website—where the first, approximately, 20 pages of "In One Person", as well as a short video of Irving doing a reading, can be found—when asked about his not-yet-written fourteenth novel, Irving states, "As for right now, I am thinking of four ideas, but I haven’t chosen one: a ghost story, a miracle story, a love story, an adoption story."

Irving, who has already begun writing his next novel, revealed the last line of that forthcoming work of fiction: "Not every collison course comes as a surprise."^[16]

Recurring subjects[link]

Recurring subjects, symbols or character types in Irving's work include New England, Sex workers, wrestling, Vienna, bears, deadly accidents, a main character and/or supporting characters who are writers of some sort (novelists, journalists, children's book authors, diarists, family historians, etc.), a main character dealing with an absent or unknown parent, a main character who is involved in film making, and unusual sexual relationships such as incest, bestiality, or between young men and older women. Females who are both brash and ostentatious, while simultaneously fragile—from "Susie the Bear" and Franny Berry, to "Hester the Molester" and Emma Oastler—recur thoroughout most of Irving's novels. Severing of body parts (tongue, finger, other) appears in several novels. Oddly, although they only play a significant part (symbolically and narratively) in three of Irving's novels ("Bears, "Garp" and "Hotel"), and matter-of-fact part in two others, most interviewers and readers seem to think that bears are a commonly recurring metaphor in his novels. In fact, the role of the writer (novelist, essayist, journalist, diarist, historian, etc.) is the most oft-used symbol and/or character-type in John Irving's oeuvre. Broadly-speaking, Irving's novels tend to involve characters in the recent past (particularly, the twentieth-century), often outsiders (particularly in terms of sexuality or politics), and their attempts to find their way in life.

Title	New England	Sex workers	Wrestling	Vienna	Bears	Deadly accident	Absent Parent	Film-making / Screen Writing	Writers	Sexual variations
Setting Free the Bears				Y	Y	Y	Y		Y
The Water-Method Man	Y	Y	Y	Y				Y	Y	adultery
The 158-Pound Marriage	Y		Y	Y					Y	swinging, ménage à trois, adultery
The World According to Garp	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y		Y	asexuality, rape, pedophilia, transsexualism, swinging, adultery
The Hotel New Hampshire	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	rape, gang rape, older woman/younger man, incest, homosexuality, lesbianism, bestiality
The Cider House Rules	Y	Y	Y		Y	Y	Y		Y	buggery, lesbianism, adultery, rape, incest, bestiality
A Prayer for Owen Meany	Y	Y				Y	Y	Y	Y	asexuality, incestuous desires
A Son of the Circus		Y		Y		Y	Y	Y	Y	transsexualism, homosexuality
A Widow for One Year	Y	Y				Y	Y		Y	older woman/younger man, rape, lesbianism
The Fourth Hand	Y					Y	Y		Y	older woman/younger man
Until I Find You	Y	Y	Y	Y		Y	Y	Y	Y	older woman/younger man, lesbianism, pedophilia, cross-dressing
Last Night in Twisted River	Y	Y	Y		Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	older woman/younger man, ménage à trois
In One Person	Y		Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	bisexuality, transsexualism, older woman/younger man, incest, lesbianism, cross-dressing, homosexuality, bears/gay males

Irving has often used the literary technique of a story within a story.

Bibliography[link]

• Setting Free the Bears (1968)
• The Water-Method Man (1972)
• The 158-Pound Marriage (1974)
• The World According to Garp (1978)
• The Hotel New Hampshire (1981)
• The Cider House Rules (1985)
• A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)
• A Son of the Circus (1994)
• The Imaginary Girlfriend (non-fiction, 1995)
• Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (collection, 1996)
• A Widow for One Year (1998)
• My Movie Business (non-fiction, 1999)
• The Cider House Rules: A Screenplay (1999)
• The Fourth Hand (2001)
• A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound (2004)
• Until I Find You (2005)
• Last Night in Twisted River (2009)
• In One Person (2012)

Personal life[link]

In 1964 Irving married Shyla Leary,^[17] whom he had met at Harvard in 1963 while taking a summer course in German, before traveling to Vienna, Austria with IES Abroad.^[18] They had two sons, Colin and Brendan,^[19] and divorced in the early 1980s.^[20] In 1987, he married Janet Turnbull, who had been his publisher at Bantam-Seal Books^[20][21] and is now one of his literary agents.^[22] They have a teenage son, Everett.^[20] Irving has homes in Vermont, Toronto, and Pointe au Baril.^[20][21]

Irving was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2007, and subsequently had a radical prostatectomy.^[20]

In 2010 Irving confirmed that he is a second cousin of Amy Bishop, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who is facing murder charges after allegedly shooting six colleagues, killing three, during a department meeting on February 12.^[23]

Quotes[link]

• "The building of the architecture of a novel—the craft of it—is something I never tire of."

• "In this way, in increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us—not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss."

• "I spend about two to three months planning the path of the book in my head before I write the last sentence of the novel. From there I work back to the beginning. From the day I think of the last sentence to the book's publication date, not more than a semicolon has changed."

• [on his process for writing novels:] "I can't imagine what the first sentence is, I can't imagine where I want the reader to enter the story, if I don't know where the reader is going to leave the story. So once I know what the last thing the reader hears is, I can work my way backward, like following a roadmap in reverse."^[24]

• "A reader told me recently, in London, said that ‘well, I read that you write the last sentence first, so I always read your last sentence first.’ And I said, ‘oh, no, you're not supposed to do that.’"^[25]

• "Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my limited abilities, but his decidedly philosophical stance about how to conduct your life, what you should do to compensate for your limitations. This was essential to me, both as a student—and not a good one—and as a wrestler who was not a natural athlete but who had found something he loved."^[26]

• "When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened."

• "I feel more a part of the wrestling community than I feel I belong to the community of arts and letters. Why? Because wrestling requires even more dedication than writing because wrestling represents the most difficult and rewarding objective that I have ever dedicated myself to; because wrestling and wrestling coaches are among the most disciplined and self-sacrificing people I have ever known."

• "As a child, when something is denied you—when there is a subject that is never spoken of—you pretend it's for the best. But when I was denied information about someone as important as my actual father, I compensated for this loss by inventing him."

• "The characters in my novels, from the very first one, are always on some quixotic effort of attempting to control something that is uncontrollable—some element of the world that is essentially random and out of control."

• "When I feel like being a director, I write a novel."

• "Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel."

• (What he calls his incredibly popular novel "The World According to Garp"): "An artfully-disguised soap opera."

• (In reference to Vermont's Act 60): "This is Marxism. It's leveling everything by decimating what works ... It's that vindictive 'We've suffered, and now we're going to take money from your kid and watch you squirm'... There's a minority which is an open target in this country which no one protects, and that's rich people" ^[27]

• "I don't go out of my way to find or invent things that are bizarre. It just seems to me that I notice more and more how commonplace the bizarre is."

• "I write repeatedly—against my will—of those things I fear most happening. Losing a loved one, losing a parent, losing a child. I'm in terror of losing a child. It's never happened to me, but I am clearly compelled to write about it over and over again, and in a way I think, psychologically at least, this says more about me autobiographically as a novelist than the fact that Danny Angel goes to the Iowa Writers Workshop and has Kurt Vonnegut as a teacher, which I also did."^[28]

Further reading[link]

• Book Magazine, July/August 2001 ("John Irving Wrestles Fate" by Dorman T. Shindler)
• Pages Magazine, July/August 2005 ("The Creative Crucible" by Dorman T. Shindler)
• Portland Magazine, May 2012 ("Singular First Person," interview by Colin W. Sargent)

Notes[link]

References[link]