In One Person
Authors: John Irving
Tags: #Fiction, #Gay, #Literary, #Psychological, #Political
“This tender exploration of nascent desire, of love and loss, manages to be sweeping, brilliant, political, provocative, tragic, and funny—it is precisely the kind of astonishing alchemy we associate with a John Irving novel. The unfolding of the AIDS epidemic in the United States in the ’80s was the defining moment for me as a physician. With my patients’ deaths, almost always occurring in the prime of life, I would find myself cataloging the other losses—namely, what these people might have offered society had they lived the full measure of their days: their art, their literature, the children they might have raised.
In One Person
is the novel that for me will define that era. A profound truth is arrived at in these pages. It is Irving at his most daring, at his most ambitious. It is America and American writing, both at their very best.”
— A
BRAHAM
V
ERGHESE
“
In One Person
is a novel that makes you proud to be human. It is a book that not only accepts but also loves our differences. From the beginning of his career, Irving has always cherished our peculiarities—in a fierce, not a saccharine, way. Now he has extended his sympathies—and ours—still further into areas that even the misfits eschew. Anthropologists say that the interstitial—whatever lies between two familiar opposites—is usually declared either taboo or sacred. John Irving in this magnificent novel—his best and most passionate since
The World According to Garp
—has sacralized what lies between polarizing genders and orientations. And have I mentioned it is also a gripping page-turner and a beautifully constructed work of art?”
— E
DMUND
W
HITE
A
compelling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity,
In One Person
is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of
In One Person
, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a “sexual suspect,” a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of “terminal cases,”
The World According to Garp
.
His most political novel since
The Cider House Rules
and
A Prayer for Owen Meany
, John Irving’s
In One Person
is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers—a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least,
In One Person
is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.”
ABOUT JOHN IRVING
The World According to Garp
, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving’s fourth novel and his first international bestseller; it also became a George Roy Hill film. Tony Richardson wrote and directed the adaptation for the screen of
The Hotel New Hampshire
(1984). Irving’s novels are now translated into thirty-five languages, and he has had nine international bestsellers. Worldwide, the Irving novel most often called “an American classic” is
A Prayer for Owen Meany
(1989), the portrayal of an enduring friendship at that time when the Vietnam War had its most divisive effect on the United States.
In 1992, John Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, until he was thirty-four, and coached the sport until he was forty-seven.) In 2000, Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for
The Cider House Rules
, a Lasse Hallström film that earned seven Academy Award nominations. Tod Williams wrote and directed
The Door in the Floor
, the 2004 film adapted from Irving’s ninth novel,
A Widow for One Year
.
In One Person
is John Irving’s thirteenth novel.
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ALSO BY JOHN IRVING
Setting Free the Bears
The Water-Method Man
The 158-Pound Marriage
The World According to Garp
The Hotel New Hampshire
The Cider House Rules
A Prayer for Owen Meany
A Son of the Circus
The Imaginary Girlfriend
Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
A Widow for One Year
My Movie Business
The Cider House Rules: A Screenplay
The Fourth Hand
A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound
Until I Find You
Last Night in Twisted River
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.