"Ah, well ..." Grandpa Harry said; he was reconsidering the part, either Nora or Hedda (his age notwithstanding).
"No, Harry--not you again," Nils said, his old dictatorial self emerging. "Young Mr. Abbott is right. There must be a certain lawlessness--both an uncontainable freedom and a sexual strength. We need a younger, more sexual activity woman than you."
Richard Abbott was regarding my grandfather with growing respect; Richard saw how Grandpa Harry had established himself as a woman to be reckoned with among the First Sister Players--if not as a sexual activity woman.
"Won't you consider it, Muriel?" Borkman asked my superior-sounding aunt.
"Yes, will you?" Richard Abbott, who was more than a decade younger than Muriel, asked. "You have an unquestionable sexual presence--" he started to say.
Alas, that was as far as young Mr. Abbott got--the presence word, modified by sexual--before Muriel fainted again.
"I think that's a 'no,' if I had to guess," my mom told the dazzling young newcomer.
I already had a bit of a crush on Richard Abbott, but I hadn't yet met Miss Frost.
IN TWO YEARS' TIME, when I sat as a fifteen-year-old freshman in my first morning meeting at Favorite River Academy, I would hear the school physician, Dr. Harlow, invite us boys to treat the most common afflictions of our tender age aggressively. (I am certain that he used the word afflictions; I'm not making this up.) As for what these "most common" afflictions were, Dr. Harlow explained that he meant acne and "an unwelcome sexual attraction to other boys or men." For our pimples, Dr. Harlow assured us there was a variety of remedies. In regard to those early indications of homosexual yearnings--well, either Dr. Harlow or the school psychiatrist, Dr. Grau, would be happy to talk to us.
"There is a cure for these afflictions," Dr. Harlow told us boys; there was a doctor's customary authority in his voice, which was at once scientific and cajoling--even the cajoling part was delivered in a confident, man-to-man way. And the gist of Dr. Harlow's morning-meeting speech was perfectly clear, even to the greenest freshmen--namely, we had only to present ourselves and ask to be treated. (What was also painfully apparent was that we had only ourselves to blame if we didn't ask to be cured.)
I would wonder, later, if it might have made a difference--that is, if I'd been exposed to Dr. Harlow's (or Dr. Grau's) buffoonery at the time I first met Richard Abbott, instead of two years after meeting him. Given what I know now, I sincerely doubt that my crush on Richard Abbott was curable, though the likes of Dr. Harlow and Dr. Grau--the available authorities in the medical sciences of that time--emphatically believed that my crush on Richard was in the category of a treatable affliction.
Two years after that life-changing casting call, it would be too late for a cure; on the road ahead, a world of crushes would open before me. That Friday night casting call was my introduction to Richard Abbott; to everyone present--not least to Aunt Muriel, who fainted twice--it was obvious that Richard had taken charge of us all.
"It seems that we need a Nora, or a Hedda, if we're going to do Ibsen at all," Richard said to Nils.
"But the leafs! They are already color-changing; they will keep falling," Borkman said. "It is the dying time of the year!"
He was not the easiest man to understand, except that Borkman's beloved Ibsen and fjord-jumping were somehow connected to the serious drama, which was always our fall play--and to, no less, the so-called dying time of the year, when the leafs were unstoppably falling.
Looking back, of course, it seems such an innocent time--both the dying time of the year and that relatively uncomplicated time in my life.
About the Author
John Irving published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968. He has been nominated for a National Book Award three times - winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. He also received an O. Henry Award, in 1981, for the short story 'Interior Space'. In 1992, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules - a film with seven Academy Award nominations. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
THE NOVELS
Setting Free the Bears (1968) 'The most nourishing, satisfying novel I have read for years. I admire the hell out of it'
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Water-Method Man (1972) 'Three or four times as funny as most novels'
The New Yorker
The 158-Pound Marriage (1973) 'Deft and hard-hitting'
New York Times
The World According to Garp (1978) 'Absolutely extraordinary...A rollercoaster ride that leaves one breathless'
Los Angeles Times
The Hotel New Hampshire (1981) 'A startlingly original family saga that combines macabre humour with Dickensian sentiment'
Time
The Cider House Rules (1985) 'Difficult to define, impossible not to admire'
Daily Telegraph
A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) 'A work of genius'
Independent
A Son of the Circus (1994) 'A wide-ranging fiction of massive design that encapsulates our world'
Mail on Sunday
A Widow for One Year (1998) 'Grand farce, comic gusto and a deeply poetic sense of human vulnerability'
Time Out
The Fourth Hand (2001)
'A rich and deeply moving tale...Vintage Irving'
Washington Post
Until I Find You (2006)
'Superbly original...To be read and remembered'
The Times
Last Night in Twisted River (2009) 'A stately, sophisticated rumination on the nature of storytelling - and love'
Marie Claire
In One Person (2012)
'Irving is the wisest, most anguished and funniest novelist of his generation'
Chicago Sun-Times
THE SHORT STORIES
Trying to Save Piggy Snead (1993) 'Supple and energetic'
New York Times Book Review
THE NON-FICTION
The Imaginary Girlfriend (1996) 'Rich, wonderful and diverse'
Denver Post
My Movie Business (1999)
'Instructive, delightful and riveting'
Boston Globe
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THE WATER-METHOD MAN
A BLACK SWAN BOOK: 9780552992077
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448111930
First published in Great Britain
Corgi edition published 1980
Black Swan edition published 1986
Black Swan edition reissued 2010
Copyright (c) John Irving 1972
John Irving has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
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John Irving, The Water-Method Man
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