THROUGHOUT John Irving’s most famous novels (“The World According to Garp,” “The Cider House Rules,” “A Prayer for Owen Meany”) has run a predominant theme: the absent parent and the subsequently damaged childhood. With his 11th and longest novel, “Until I Find You” (Random House; $27.95), he has essentially written the story of his life. Like Irving, his protagonist, Jack Burns, is a lonely boy raised by a mother who tells him his father has abandoned them both. And, like Irving, Jack is sexually abused as a child, grows up to become an artist, and is shocked to discover that his father never abandoned him at all. Irving, 63, talked to The Post about his bout with depression and his search for his own father, who died five years before Irving found him.
Was this the book you always wanted to write, or were afraid to write?
It’s a book I’ve been putting off writing. I’m never sure if most writers have a choice of what they want to write about. The subjects choose us.
You have said you went into a depression while writing this book.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. I hadn’t thought about my childhood sexual experiences for a long time, and what they had done to me. When I gave them to Jack Burns – that’s when your mind retrieves memories it has been kind to erase. I never told anyone about it. I felt like it was my fault. Until I had my boys. Then I felt obliged to. I had kids and I had to think about them, not myself. The cycle of depression is itself a plot – you can’t stop thinking about it. But on anti-depressants, you get one bad idea and your mind says, “Oh s—! That’s a bad idea,” and then you go on to think about a boiled egg or something. I can’t think that way. I went on an anti-depressant my doctor gave me – I didn’t take it long enough to feel its full effect. I told a psychiatrist who’s an old friend of mine that I was taking them, and he said, “Don’t be crazy! You’re a writer! You can’t take that stuff!”
You had written Jack’s absentee father as mentally ill, and you gave Jack a long-lost sibling – well before you discovered your own father had been mentally ill, and that you had long-lost siblings. How do you explain such eerie coincidences?
It was uncanny to hear that my father had suffered depression and was severely bipolar. It was an uncomfortable verisimilitude. But I don’t believe in coincidences. For me, why wouldn’t these things happen? I’ve read enough of my reviews to know how “bizarre,” “exaggerated,” “unlikely,” “contrived” and “wracked-with-coincidences” my novels are.
It seems as though the absence of a living parent – who chooses, for whatever reason, not to be there – is something a child never gets over.
How difficult would it have been for me to find my father? I knew what his name was. What prevented me from looking? I would say to people, “Well, it would’ve been a betrayal of my stepfather.” But it was easier to imagine the missing father than face the prospect of – what? Of him not being interested?
As a kid, what had you imagined him to be like?
My mother never demonized my father, never said a bad word about him – she just wouldn’t talk about him! I thought, “How bad must this guy be if no one will talk to me about him?” Every single thing I disliked about myself, I thought, well, that must be coming from him. I despised him. I don’t know that he knew I was a writer, or ever read one of my books.
How did you find out that your father never actually abandoned you?
When I am 39, divorcing my first wife, my mom puts a package of letters on the table, which tell a story I didn’t know: They weren’t married and divorced. My dad saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to be married to you, but maybe you’ll permit me to see Johnny.” And she didn’t. I didn’t judge her for it. It was the first I heard that allowed me to imagine him as a nice guy. It was unimaginable to me that my mom wouldn’t have allowed him to see me – but also, why wouldn’t he have done it himself? In my mind, it always happened at a public event. As a kid, wrestling. As a writer, doing a reading – it’s always at a public event. He approaches me and says, “I’m your father!” It was always easier to imagine that way because I was afraid – as long as I didn’t push the envelope, I could imagine that he was interested in me.
Did you ever think that you became a writer, in part, as a means of reaching your father? Or helping your father find you?
That’s an interesting speculation. It’s probably farther than I would go. My mother’s silence on the subject was probably a gift to my imagination.
Your mother hasn’t read it yet?
It’s not because of the subject. It’s because of her age, her health. Plus, we’re New Englanders.