Ask a doctor to be a doctor two hours a day. I resented having to teach and coach, not because I disliked teaching or coaching or wrestling but because I had no time to write. One luxury of making enough money to support myself as a writer is that I can afford to have those eight-, nine-, and twelve-hour days. I can work eight, nine, twelve hours then, seven days a week-if my children let me they usually don’t. I don’t know more than two or three hours a day about a new novel. A novel is such a long involvement when I’m beginning a book, I can’t work more than two or three hours a day. I am compulsive about writing, I need to do it the way I need sleep and exercise and food and sex I can go without it for a while, but then I need it. I don’t give myself time off or make myself work I have no work routine.

You’re only forty-four and yet you’ve already published six big and important novels as well as a great many uncollected essays, stories, and reviews. He’s a storyteller and a generous teacher when asked a question, Irving pauses for so long a time it nearly seems his inner works have stopped, but once his reply has been fully considered, he replies at length in a gentlemanly, New England voice. His height is probably five-feet-eight and he weighs only twenty-five pounds more than the 136 1/2 pounds he wrestled at years ago.

Irving is a vigorous, brawny man with brown hair that is increasingly gray. On the day of this interview, he wore a tweed coat, a green plaid flannel shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes. Among a great many books in the high bookcases are foreign editions of his novels in fifteen languages. He writes at a blue IBM typewriter beneath color photographs of his sons wrestling in prep-school competitions and black-and-white photographs of himself in prep-school and college matches. A jump rope hangs on the door, a heavy set of weights “is always in the way” on the floor, and by one window is a stationary bike that Irving uses on days he doesn’t go to his private athletic club or jog in Central Park. John Irving was interviewed in the cramped back room of his otherwise large and luxurious apartment in Manhattan. Interviewed by Ron Hansen Issue 100, Summer-Fall 1986

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