Interviews
John Irving talks to Lynn Neary about the origins of Avenue of Mysteries—from visiting child performers at Indian and Mexican circuses two decades ago, to a screenplay and eventually, a novel. Read the accompanying piece here.
Read MoreIn this video John discusses his thirteenth novel, In One Person, and his bisexual narrator and main character, Billy Abbott. As Billy says: “We are formed by what we desire.”
Read More“While I say to everyone that I became a writer because I read a certain novel by Charles Dickens at the formative age of fifteen, the truth is I was younger than that when I first met Miss Frost and imagined having sex with her…”
Read More“If you were, like me, at an all-boys’ boarding school in the fall of 1960, you felt utterly alone—you trusted no one, least of all another boy your age—and you loathed yourself. I’d always been lonely, but self-hatred is worse than loneliness.” — Billy Abbott, from In One Person.
Read MoreSexual Outsiders: Three Questions with John Irving. PW caught up with John Irving to discover more about his forthcoming novel, In One Person (S&S, May). The book explores the nature of unfulfilled love through the voice of Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character, who tells the tragicomic story of his life. Your publisher, Jonathan Karp, said that…
Read MoreYou can download this Q & A in a print/mobile friendly PDF here. The protagonist and first person narrator of In One Person, Billy Abbott, is bisexual. Why do you think bisexuals are rarely represented in literature? The bisexual men I have known were not shy, nor were they “conflicted.” (This is also true of…
Read MoreJohn Irving on In One Person, sexual identity, and autobiography. John Irving, who turns 70 this year, will publish his latest novel on May 8. In One Person tells the story of Billy Abbott, a bisexual man who struggles with his identity and attraction to men, women, and transgendered individuals as the world changes around him. EW…
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