Post #3

I began reading The Fourth Hand by John Irving. I started on page 0 and now I'm on page 120. The book focuses mainly on Patrick Wallingford, a journalist reporter who's quite proud of his title as a journalist, and how he lost his left hand when he places it too close to a lion's cage in India. Then the focuses shift to Dr. Zajac, a hand surgeon, and his determination to give Wallingford a hand replacement. Then it describes the Doris and Otto Clausen, a married couple who vary on their sympathy for Wallingford's missing hand. Doris immediately begins talking about giving up Otto's left hand for the poor man, saying that she would. Otto has nightmares because of this, dreaming of Patrick (who has his left hand attached to himself) making love to his wife. Unfortunately, a drunken Otto dies when his own gun fires while it's pointed towards him. Doris immediately has his left hand preserved so it can be given to Wallingford.

Doris is obviously insane. It's very obvious, after only a few pages after she's introduced. The theme of craziness is abundant in Irving's books. Zajac, for example, has many oddities, including but not limited to scooping up dog shit with a lacrosse stick and disposing of it, or flinging it at people/things. But mostly people. A thesis of their craziness and how they do seem like people one could meet on the street is a very disturbing factor which merits some exploring.

Post #2

"When Ruth Cole entered her parents' bedroom, she saw the naked young man who had mounted her mother from behind; he was holding her mother's breast in his hands and humping her on all fours, like a dog, but it was neither the violence nor the repugnance of the sexual act that caused Ruth to scream. The four-year-old didn't know that she was witnessing a sexual act- nor did the young man and her mother's activity strike Ruth as entirely unpleasant. In fact, Ruth was relieved to see that her mother was not throwing up.

And it wasn't the young man's nakedness that caused Ruth to scream;she had seen her father and her mother naked- nakedness was not hidden among the Coles. It was the young man himself who made Ruth scream, because she was certain he was one of her dead brothers; he looked so much like Thomas, the confident one, that Ruth Cole believed she had seen a ghost" (4, A Widow for One Year).

Despite the slight uneasiness I have typing that passage, it captures an aspect of John Irving's writing. His style is purely blunt, despite the sexual or violent content, and thoroughly describes the characters motives, giving all of his characters depth. I thought of this passage because it was near the beginning and stuck out to me. I've already finished A Widow for One Year so I haven't read anything more. I have other books, but I haven't started them yet. And I haven't given any thought to a thesis.

American Author Proposal

I chose the author John Irving for my American Author project because I very much like the execution of his stories. In The World According to Garp, which I read last summer, he draws the reader in with a shocking characters, fills us in of their past on the next few pages, and flawlessly brings the reader back to the present. He writes a small background on almost all of the characters, the detail and thought going into each one is astounding. The characters themselves are usually flawed, but powerful in their own right, and Irving gives convincing logic for each character. Shortly, I find his literary skills, style and characters very appealing.

John Irving was born in America, and in my eyes, counts as an American due to that. The 'about the author' section of his novels states he lives in Toronto, Canada now, but as his stories usually take place in the United states, I still consider him American. (Extremely dramatic and leaning towards unfortunate American lives, but American lives nonetheless.) John Irving has published many novels, of which I believe there are twelve, so he definitely has many works for me to choose from for this project. I don't really know how he has impacted American society, but I know I'm impressed with the frankness of the sexual and violent themes, and the psychology of the survivors of the violent acts. With the inclusion of all of the things I described in the first paragraph, Irving's execution of his novels is brilliant.

Irving's books include many controversial themes, so I don't think I will have any trouble at all picking a good thesis for a research paper. Human psychology, human interaction, sexual interaction, absent parents, the conflicts of the sees, the use of stories within stories in Irving's book, and the accidents which appear in at least A World According to Garp and A Widow for ONe Year. (Both books have children dying car accidents.) i find the sexual themes interesting due to their frankness, and how taboo most of the relationships are in the book. In the book I'm currently reading, A Widow for One Year, the first scene includes a four year old girl walking in on her thirty-nine year old mother having sex with a sixteen year old boy. The girl's father is introduced as a ladies' man, and he has affairs usually with unhappy young mothers (resulting in absolutely ruining their lives). In Garp, the young man having sex with an older woman also occurs, as well as the first main character, Jenny Fields, having intercourse with a terminal hospital patients in order to have a baby. (Despite the sound of that last sentence, the patient was mentally damaged due to an injury, and for some reason, was always sexually aroused. Although I read the book, which spelled out Jenny Field's logic and sympathy for me, so summarizing it doesn't do it justice.) Perhaps my thesis could be on how the sexual encounters of the characters affected them, as Irving did say in an end note of Garp that the characters that had succumbed to lust had paid dearly for it. Or perhaps my thesis could be along the lines of how the outlandishness of Irving's characters, combined with his ability to persuade the reader of the character's particular logic, is meant to convince the reader of the humanity of all of them, raising the reader's tolerance.

I have already read A World According to Garp and I do not plan on including it as one of my three books, but I will use examples from it. I am in the process of reading A Widow for One Year and I began reading A Prayer for Owen Meany Years ago, but never finished it, and I would like to. I'm also interested in The Cider House Rules simply because the warnings are interesting topics (and I am a morbid person), and it does not include bears or wrestling, which are two themes I don't particularly care for.