ジョン・アーヴィングの記事／IRVING NEWS


■ IRVING NEWS ■

MARCH

◆アーヴィングのインタビュー◆ (2000.3.22)
映画『サイダーハウス・ルール』の脚本を書き、アカデミー賞７部門にノミネートされた、ジョン・アーヴィング。授賞式の会場に現れるので、「５８歳で髪の毛がふさふさした」男性を探してくださいとのこと。日本では３月２６日にＴＶ放映されます。

アカデミー賞脚色賞受賞のスピーチ
CLICK HERE!
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I received hundreds of questions from readers for the John Irving interview.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to email me. The author answered 25questions, 13 of which are below. Look for the remaining 12 in the April2000 issue. Enjoy!

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1. When you write the beginning of a novel, do you already have the endingin your head or does it only become clear after journeying with the characters?
>Yes, I need to know what the end of the story is before I begin a novel. By>the time I start to write the novel I don't want to still be inventing the story; I want to be thinking only about the language or the next sentence,>and the sentence after that. The process of imagining a whole story takes a year or eighteen months. I always begin with who the characters are and how and when their paths cross and recross.
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2. What is your obsession with short people or dwarves (Lilly in THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, Owen Meany, and the circus dwarves in A SON OF THE CIRCUS)?
>I have no obsession with short people, at least not that I'm aware of. Often my characters are physically marked in some way---that is more of a literary device (very Dickensian) than it in a serious interpretation of human existence. Characters in my novels often have their specialness signaled in a physical form. Owen's voice (in addition to his size), Larch's sexual abstinence (and Jenny's, in GARP), Melony's physical strength and unattractiveness. Lilly and Fuzzy Stone are both early terminal cases (to use a term from GARP); like 0wen Meany, Fuzzy is described as being born too soon, the light actually passing through his thin ears.
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3. What are the most common problems that translators have with your works in bringing them to other countries?
>Certain Americanisms, expressions, slang, vulgarisms, expressions like the Under Toad, which rely on strictly English misunderstandings---naturally these give translators trouble. But the success of my novels in translations suggests that these problems are essentially small and surmountable. I sell more books in Germany than I do in the U.S. and Canada combined; I sell almost as many copies in France as I do in the U.S. And A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR sold as many copies in the Netherlands as it did in the United States. More than half my writing income is from translations. I work pretty closely withmany of my translators. Because translators have to read a work so closely they often catch errors that I and my American editor and copy-editor have missed.
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4. Do your characters ever inspire or shock you? Which of your characters have surprised you most by their outcome?
>No, my characters never surprise me or shock me. I have created them; I know them better than I know my own immediate family members or closest friends. As for "inspiration," I think readers are the inspired ones. I calculate everything, revise constantly, move a novel ahead about three or four pages a day. The process of writing a novel is such a slow one, for me, that there are no shocks or surprises---except (I hope) for my readers. I plan the surprises. I am not surprised.
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5. An issue of CREATIVE SCREENWRITING discussed an early draft of THE CIDER HOUSE RULES where Homer and Rose have the relationship that occurs between Angel and Rose in the finished book. Is this in fact true and if so why did you decide against it?
>There were 40 or 50 drafts of the screenplay of THE CIDER HOUSE RULES. In an early version, I decided to eliminate Candy and Homer's love affair and have Homer fall in love with Rose Rose instead. In the novel, Homer's son falls in love with Rose Rose, but Homer doesn't have a son in the movie---the film takes place in two years, not fifteen. But that version was too bleak. Homer returns to St. Cloud's without ever having known a love relationship. (Rose Rose doesn't love him.)
Lasse Hallstrom reinstated the Homer-Candy relationship in proper relationship to the whole. He returned the film closer to the book. I had earlier resisted that love affair because I felt it would dominate the story---it would take away from the more important relationships, Homer with Dr. Larch, Rose Rose with her father.
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6. When you're done writing for the day, are you able to put your characters down, or do they generally live with you?
>I write about seven or eight hours a day. I daydream about the characters the rest of the time, certainly, and when I wake up in the night, I think about them then. I think about them all the time.
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7. Some authors say they do a lot of research. Others infer the details from a loose knowledge of a subject, coupled with instinct. Do you tend toward one or the other, or both?
>Both. I do research when there's something I need to know. Medicine in orphanage hospitals, abortion medicine, orthopedic medicine in India, police work in Holland, prostitution in Amsterdam, granite quarrying, American exiles living in Canada during and after the Vietnam War. I don't feel a novel has to have research in it, but I never shy away from it, either.
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8. How do you think Garp would feel about the century just passed?
>Garp is a character in a novel. He exists in and of the moment. He has no thoughts on the century just passed. Frankly, neither do I. The end of a century is an arbitrary demarcation. As for literature, the century I most admire is the 19th---long past. I suspect that the next ten years will resemble the last ten. I'm not interested in the attention given to the end of the century, or to the passing of the last thousand years.
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9. Has your approach to writing women changed or evolved through the years?
>My approach to writing women is no different than my approach to writing men or children: all characters have to be vivid, realistic, make an emotional and psychological connection with the reader. Characterization is a duty of the novelist. I see nothing about it that is gender-related. If women writers cannot create believable male characters, they are not good writers; if men can't create believable women, they aren't good writers, either. Who is the beat adulteress ever created? Emma Bovary. A guy created her. Who is the best vengeful lover (male) in all literature? Heathcliff---created by a woman.
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10. Do you think Garp is a feminist?
>A feminist is a changeable term, too broad to mean anything anymore. No, Garp was not a feminist---he knew and liked women. He had a strong mother and a strong wife. I am not political about characters.
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11. Do you plan to bring your own adaptation of A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY to the screen?
>I have no interest in a film of OWEN MEANY. I believe that the nature of a religious miracle cannot be captured in the two-dimensional world of film. I can write about Owen as a miracle through the eyes of a deranged "witness"---Johnny Wheelwright. Johnny is flawed. He believes in Owen. The reader may choose to believe in the religious nature of what happens to Owen, or not. In a film, you have no choice: what you see is what you're told to believe. That is why I had no interest in writing a screenplay of OWEN MEANY myself, and why I saw no reason to prevent Mark Steven Johnson from writing and directing "Simon Birch," which was suggested by A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY. I asked Mark not to call his film "Owen Meany" because it was so different from the novel; and he was and is an honorable gentleman---he agreed.
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12. What kind of music do you listen to?
>I don't listen to music very much, unless it's something my kids put on and then I am basically appalled. I like Bob Dylan, I like Bach. in the car, I play country-westernmusic, which is sort of like reading the newspapers. I do pay attention to the musical scores of certain movies that I like. I think Rachael Portman's original score for THE CIDER HOUSE RULES is brilliant. I play the CD when I'm working out in the gym. It's like seeing the movie without a screen. I love doing that. But that's pretty rare, and I think it is well-deserved that Rachel got an Academy Award nomination for that score.
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13. You write women so brilliantly. Who have your greatest female influences been in terms of influencing your work?
>Writing women...that question again! The women I have known---a strong grandmother, a strong mother, two strong wives, good women friends---have contributed nothing I can see reflected in the characters I write about. I am a fiction writer, which to my thinking means that my primary responsibility is making up a character who is more complete and motivated and understandable than any so-called real person I know. I don't rely on realpeople for my novels. If I ever had, I would have been sued. More importantly, the people I know aren't interesting enough to put in my novels. This is no insult to the people I know; I mean simply that people in novels, in my novels, anyway, have to have more interesting and complex and troubled lives than most of the people I know.
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