It’s the birthday of novelist John Irving (originally John Wallace Blunt, Jr.), probably best known for his novels The World According to Garp (1978) and A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989); the former won the National Book Award in 1980 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and the latter is Irving’s all-time best-selling book.

(Fun but confusing fact: Garp was first nominated for the National Book Award in 1979 but didn’t win; the award went to Going after Cacciato by Tim O’Brien. But the next year, the paperback version of Garp won in the fiction *paperback* category. What’s that, you say? A category for *paperback* fiction? Wha—? Evidently the organization was trying to “broaden the audience for American literature” by giving more awards, which were renamed The American Book Awards. But confusion and mayhem ensued, and the prestige of the awards deteriorated. By 1984 the hardcover/paperback nonsense was discontinued, and the award’s original name was restored in 1986.)

Irving was born in 1942 in Exeter, New Hampshire, and educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, where his step-father was a faculty member and where Irving was on the wrestling team. (Just about any bio you can find of Irving, including those on his book jackets, will mention his wrestling.) The lessons Irving learned as an underdog in wrestling he also applied to his academic struggles: Irving had dyslexia, and had to learn to take control of his pacing. Both absent fathers and wrestling show up a great deal in his writing.

Irving never met his biological father, but in 1981, his mother showed him letters from his father for the first time. His father was a WWII pilot who was shot down over Burma and survived; in spite of asking Irving’s mother for a divorce, he had wanted to meet his son. Irving was torn, wanting to find his father but not wanting to hurt his step-father, whom he loved. In 2001, Irving finally met a half-brother, Christopher Blunt; his father had died five years earlier.

Irving got his bachelor’s from the University of New Hampshire and his master’s from the University of Iowa. His first several novels did moderately well but Garp was his breakout novel. Among his other works are The Hotel New Hampshire (1981); The Cider House Rules (1985), in which Irving wove in his father’s wartime adventure; A Widow for One Year (1998); The Fourth Hand (2001); In One Person (2012); and Avenue of Mysteries (2015). His forthcoming novel is titled Darkness as a Bride. Irving’s works have been called Dickensian for their multi-layered, sweeping nature, embracing both comedy and tragedy, and Irving does claim Dickens as a strong influence.

Have an excellent, no-school, snowbound sort of Friday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.