 First edition | |
| Author | John Irving |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction |
| Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | December 1972 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 365 pp |
| ISBN | 0-394-47332-9 |
| OCLC | 247266 |
| 813/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.I714 Wat PS3559.R8 |
| Preceded by | Setting Free the Bears |
| Followed by | The 158-Pound Marriage |
The Water Method Man (1972) is the second published novel by American novelist John Irving.
The novel revolves around the mishaps of its narrator, Fred Trumper, a floundering late-twenty-something graduate student with serious commitment and honesty issues that earn him the nickname "Bogus." The novel shows Irving beginning to develop a blend of comedy and pathos, as well as a penchant for fashioning quirky characters. It follows a non-linear narrative in the form of a sort of "confession" authored by Trumper, who humorously recounts his various failures in life and love, from his New England childhood through his experiences on foreign study in Vienna, Austria, and as a graduate student in Iowa, leading up to the present-action setting, early-1970s New York, where Trumper is attempting to sever himself from his adolescent past. "I want to change", Trumper says at the end of Chapter One. The phrase seems to be the novel's central theme.
The title refers to a method prescribed to Trumper for the treatment of non-specific urological disorders relating to his abnormally narrow urinary tract. Trumper's urologist, Dr. Jean Claude Vigneron, offers him three options for the treatment of his disorder: abstinence from sex and alcohol, a painful operation to widen the urinary canal, or the Water Method, which consists simply of consuming abnormal quantities of water before and after sex to flush bacteria out of the urinary tract. Trumper opts for the Water Method, suggesting both his generally comical cowardice and lack of self-discipline.
Trumper's narration meanders through flashbacks revolving around his relationships with the novel's two primary female characters: Sue "Biggie" Kunft, a former championship downhill skier whom Trumper courts, impregnates, and marries in Vienna while still a student, and Tulpen, Trumper's present day live-in girlfriend, a documentary film editor in New York, where he lands after losing Biggie. Though the two relationships function chiefly as a means of demonstrating Bogus Trumper's tendency to repeat his mistakes, Irving is often noted for his strong, independent female characters, and Tulpen and Biggie can be seen as markers in the development of the strong women in his more popularly successful novels, particularly The World According to Garp (1979).
Other characters include Trumper's best childhood friend Couth, a still-photographer; Merrill Overturf, an alcoholic and diabetic loon Trumper befriends in Vienna; Ralph Packer, a pretentious documentary filmmaker who employs Trumper as a sound editor; and Colm, Trumper's young son from his first marriage to Biggie.
Trumper is a graduate student at the University of Iowa in comparative literature whose thesis is to be a translation of an ancient, "Old Low Norse" epic called "Akthelt and Gunnel". Irving employs the "Akthelt and Gunnel" poem as a means for allowing Trumper to poke merciless fun at himself through analogously inventing the story of the poem according to his own life's mishaps.
In a 1972 review, Kirkus acknowledged the book's "tremendous comic drive." [1]
Time greeted the novel with enthusiasm: "Brutal reality and hallucination, comedy and pathos. A rich, unified tapestry." [2]
Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish author who is best known for writing the 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the West End's Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned.
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John Winslow Irving is an American-Canadian novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.
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Normality is a behavior that can be normal for an individual when it is consistent with the most common behavior for that person. Normal is also used to describe individual behavior that conforms to the most common behavior in society. However, normal behavior is often only recognized in contrast to abnormality. In many cases normality is used to make moral judgements, such that normality is seen as good while abnormality is seen as bad, or conversely normality can be seen as boring and uninteresting. Someone being seen as normal or not normal can have social ramifications, such as being included, excluded or stigmatized by wider society.
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Setting Free the Bears is the first novel by American author John Irving, published in 1968 by Random House.
In biomedical contexts, a biomarker, or biological marker, is a measurable indicator of some biological state or condition. Biomarkers are often measured and evaluated using blood, urine, or soft tissues to examine normal biological processes, pathogenic processes, or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention. Biomarkers are used in many scientific fields.
J(arvis) Edwin Seegmiller, or Jay Seegmiller, was an American physician and biochemical geneticist best known for his role in discovering the biochemical basis of the Lesch–Nyhan syndrome. He was a rheumatologist and a pioneer in research on arthritic diseases and on aging.
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Dwarfism has been showcased across many types of media. As popular media has become more prevalent, a greater number of works depicting dwarfism have popularized the condition.
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Kara Kush, subtitled The Gold of Ahmad Shah, is an adventure novel by the Anglo–Afghan writer, thinker and teacher in the Sufi mystical tradition, Idries Shah.
The Lüneburg Variation is a novel by Paolo Maurensig, published in Italian in 1993 by Adelphi edizioni s.p.a. Milan and published in English translation in 1997. It is the author's first novel, published after he turned fifty. The New York Times Book Review describes it as “a story of evil and revenge centering on the game of chess—chess invested with an elevated and yet also sinister, cabalistic quality. It is an absorbing story, lushly draped in Middle European tragedy, one blending the themes of obsession, history and character.”
Remarkably, John Irving manages to weave the disparate fragmented elements of Trumper's calamities into a rich, unified tapestry. From the dreck of daily lives, he can make the improbable seem likely and retrieve something of beauty.
It is also exhausting, writ large in the blunt script of a Magic Marker, almost as if by a child whom you would like to consign to a corner for five quiet minutes. But then a very likable, imaginative child, with a tremendous comic drive.
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