Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

Reading Trying to Save Piggy Sneed is like examining a blueprint for a great writer's greater works. If you want to know what it's like to be John Irving (hey, I smell a movie concept: Being John Irving), with a complete "behind the scenes" glance at his writing habits and literary influences, then go to market for Piggy.

If, however, you're looking for a superb, evocative reading experience, save your money and buy A Prayer for Owen Meany or A Widow for One Year instead. Not since A Son of the Circus have I been as unimpressed with Irving as I was with this collection of autobiographical sketches, short fiction and reverent homages to his favorite writers.

Using the words "John Irving" and "disappointment" in the same sentence is painful show more for me since I'm such an unabashed fan of the man I consider our modern-day Dickens. [Note: That explosive sound you heard on Oscar night was me leaping off my sofa, jumping five feet into the air, pumping my fist and yelling "Yea! All right!" when Mr. Irving won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay].

Swallowing my pain, however, I must admit that this Irving hodgepodge, published in 1996, is for die-hard fans only.

Piggy is divided into three sections: Memoir, Homage and Fiction (which includes the complete and uninterrupted version of "The Pension Grillparzer," the story-within-a-story from The World According to Garp). Each piece is followed by an “Author’s Note,â€? which provides the details behind Irving’s composition. In some cases, the Author’s Note is longer than the story itself. Here, then, is where we really see the intricate (and, admittedly, interesting) blueprint sketches. In one (for the short story “Other People’s Dreamsâ€?), Irving writes: Here is another short story that spent a number of years in my bottommost drawer; every few months, I would take it out and revise it—then I would put it away again.

With all due respect, I would suggest to Mr. Irving that he should have done the same with Piggy in toto. Most of the short stories feel like second drafts at best. They should have lingered longer in that desk drawer.

So, you ask, is there anything worth the cover price of this book? Well, of course there is. We are talking about John Irving, after all.

The Memoirs section seems to hold up best. The longest piece, "The Imaginary Girlfriend," describes Irving's amateur career in wrestling, a sport for which he's long held a passion (and if you've read Garp, you know the strength of that passion). That selection also includes a scrapbook of photos showing Irving on the mat. As he says, wrestling was the first thing he was good at (even before he was "good at" writing) and that's why it was his first love. It's also interesting to note that his first cameo in a motion picture was as a wrestling referee in The World According to Garp.

Another memoir in Piggy is the best-forgotten "My Dinner at the White House," a name-dropping exercise in ho-hum writing.

His talents are on better display in the title piece, where he tells the true story of a garbage collector named Piggy Sneed whose life intersected with the author’s when he was a volunteer firefighter. It’s tragic and moving—just like anything you’d normally find in the pages of his magnificent novels.

Did I say “trueâ€?? Well, okay, mostly true. I doubt Irving can leave anything unembellished when he sits down to the keyboard. In the opening paragraphs of “Trying to Save Piggy Sneed,â€? he explains: A fiction writer's memory is an especially imperfect provider of detail; we can always imagine a better detail than the one we can remember.

Since Irving's novels are so richly cluttered with details, I can only imagine that his imagination is like an overheated furnace, burning up nouns and adverbs and semi-colons like they were thick logs. When I read his novels, I inhabit his fictional worlds so completely that I growl and grumble when the spell is broken by the phone ringing or my wife calling me to dinner.

And this, I think, is the core problem with Piggy: Irving's forte is with longer works, not short fiction where we're offered half-finished sketches (at least in this collection). It's like the difference between six bars of music and an entire symphony. Given the choice, I'll take the adagios of his novels any day.

Speaking of symphonic, Irving ends Piggy on a trio of grace notes: two critical appreciations of Charles Dickens and one of last year's Nobel Prize winner, Gunter Grass. In the case of Dickens, it would be just as well to say that Irving was writing a tribute to his literary forefather. If any modern writer comes within spitting distance of the Victorian author, it is Irving.

In the essay, "The King of the Novel," he writes:
Dickens' gift is how spontaneously he can render a situation both sympathetic and hilarious...What he is most unafraid of is sentimentality: of anger, of passion, of emotionally and psychologically revealing himself...Dickens took sentimental risks with abandon.
Ahem. Mr. Irving, were you looking in the mirror when you wrote that?

But Dickens and wrestling aside, the whole of Trying to Save Piggy Sneed lacks the usual Irving touch. It feels, instead, like sweepings from the dustbin. The only thing more unexciting would have been reading last month's grocery list.

Well, I suppose it could be worse. Maybe, after he shuffles off this mortal coil, some enterprising, dollar-signs-for-eyeballs young publisher will come out with a new volume: The Complete Collected Jots and Tittles of John Irving. show less

The most interesting aspect of this collection of memoirs, short stories, and essays is reading Irving's discussion on writing, and his overall career. The memoir portion is funny and poignant, and is a must-read for any Irving fan.

However, John Irving is a novelist, and his short fiction is somewhere between decent and forgettable, with the exception of one or two.

BOOK #11
REVIEW: This was the only Iriving book I had yet to read. It had been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years now, at least three. So, after I finished my last book, I grabbed this one- which I'm glad I did! I really enjoyed this one! I loved learning about his life- and realizing how much of his life is woven into his stories. I liked the short stories- especially "Weary Kingdom" and "Brennbar's Rant." The only part I didn't like was the last section, which was a collection of different introductions he wrote for other books. I found this boring! I normally skip intros. to books anyways, so I just skipped these! I was actually shocked with how fast I read this book, as I normally find his novels take me sometime to get show more through. If you're a Iriving fan and have yet to read it, I reccomend you pick it up! FAVORITE QUOTES: "Talent is overrated," Ted told me. "That you're not very talented needn't be the end of it." // Most self-destructive behavior is simply ridiculous- never mind how complexly compelled by personal demons. // There are many unintentionally cruel talents that the world, indiscriminately, hands out to us. Whether we can use these gifts we never asked for is not the world's concern. // Early-morning goals are among the illusions we must indulge if we're going to get anywhere at all. show less

I really liked learning more about John Irving's life through the non fiction parts of this book.

A nice little book. Illuminating as to Irving's life and influences, teachers (Vonnegut) and general opinions and ways of thinking. A must read for any serious fan of Irving's works.

DNF, couldn't get interested, even though the rioting is good.

Autobiographical centerpiece, The Imaginary Girlfriend, lapses into raw wrestling statistics on occasion.