Free Thinking – John Irving
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2017
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Philip Dodd interviews John Irving - author of novels including The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany. His new book is called Avenue of Mysteries and imagines the life of a crippled street-child from Mexico, Juan Diego, and his sister Lupe, who can read minds. The action cuts between Diego's present as a globe trotting, best selling writer visiting the Philippines, and his memories of his childhood in Mexico and working at a circus. The Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving is out now. Producer: Robyn Read. Original broadcast Wed 3 Feb 2016.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's |
| 0:27.5 | out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | Hello and welcome to the arts and ideas download from the free thinking team at the BBC. |
| 0:38.1 | A successful wrestler and a celebrated novelist, a writer whose influences are Charles Dickens |
| 0:44.7 | and Federico Fellini, a US citizen who may have lived in Canada for 30 years, but whose |
| 0:51.4 | voice still angers when talking about Richard Nixon. My guest this |
| 0:56.7 | evening in extended conversation is John Irving, author of the celebrated The World According |
| 1:02.3 | to Garp and the Cider House Rules, amongst many other fictions, which now include his new novel, |
| 1:08.6 | Avenue of Mysteries. Several have been made into movies, as he calls them. |
| 1:13.8 | John Irving was born in 1942 into Protestant New Hampshire, |
| 1:18.3 | was mentored by Kurt Vonnegut, |
| 1:20.2 | and came to fame in the 70s with Garp and other novels |
| 1:23.6 | whose landscapes are often populated by orphaned or abandoned children, by circuses, sexual |
| 1:30.1 | outsiders, by concern with abortion and AIDS, by a promiscuous sense of place and a complex |
| 1:36.9 | response to Catholicism. In the world according to Garp, the child is the illegitimate son of a |
| 1:43.8 | feminist who founds a centre for transsexuals. Garp, the child is the illegitimate son of a feminist who founds a centre for |
| 1:46.3 | transsexuals. Garp himself grows up to be a novelist, fascinated by wrestling, scared for the safety |
| 1:52.6 | of his own children. As I said, Dickens meets Fellini. |
| 1:57.4 | He's a writer. This novel was just published, procrastination by T.S. Garp? |
| 2:03.2 | T.S. Garp. Not the bastard son of Jenny Fields. Oh, I loved your mother's book. Loved it. I keep buying them and my husband keeps burning them. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.