Last Night In Twisted River
Encyclopedia
Last Night in Twisted River is a 2009 novel
by American writer John Irving
, his twelfth. It was first published in Canada by Knopf Canada
on October 20, 2009, and in the United States by Random House
on October 27, 2009. The novel spans five decades and is about a boy and his father who flee the logging community of Twisted River on the Androscoggin River
in northern New Hampshire
after a tragic accident. While on the run, the boy grows up to become a famous writer, writing eight semi-autobiographical novels
. The book was included in Time
s 2009 list of "the fall's most anticipated movies, books, TV shows, albums and exhibits".
Last Night in Twisted River took 20 years to conceive and write, and is a story within a story
that shows the development of a novelist and the writing process. It uses many of the themes and plot devices that have already seen treatment in other works by the author. The career of the novelist in the book closely tracks the career of Irving himself, making it Irving's most overtly autobiographical novel.
The book received mixed reviews in the press. The Independent
called it Irving's most powerful work to date, while The Dallas Morning News
admired Irving's modern version of the traditional flight and revenge theme. The New York Times
was not as impressed and felt that with better editing it could have equalled some of Irving's more powerful works. The St. Petersburg Times
described the novel as a "loose and baggy tale in search of a center".
in northern New Hampshire
. A log driving
accident on the river has just claimed the life of a young logger, Angel, who slipped and fell under the logs. Dominic Baciagalupo is the camp's Italian-American cook who lives above the kitchen with his 12-year old son, Daniel. Dominic lost his wife, Rosie, ten years previously when a drunk Dominic, Rosie and a logger and mutual friend, Ketchum, were dancing on the frozen river, and the ice broke and Rosie went under. Later another accident happens that changes the lives of Dominic, Daniel and Ketchum. "Injun Jane", the kitchen's dishwasher and girlfriend of the local law officer, Constable Carl, is having an affair with Dominic. One night, mistaking her for a bear attacking his father, Daniel kills her with an eight-inch cast-iron skillet
. Dominic takes Jane's body and deposits it on the kitchen floor of Carl's house, knowing that Carl will be passed out drunk and will probably believe he killed her, as he often beat her up. Early the next morning Dominic and Daniel tell Ketchum what happened and flee Twisted River in case the bad-tempered Carl finds out what really happened.
Dominic and Daniel head for a restaurant in the Italian North End of Boston
to tell Angel's mother of her son's death. Dominic gets a job as a cook in the restaurant and changes his surname to Del Popolo (Angel's mother's surname) to hide from Carl. During this time Daniel attends Exeter
, a private school in southern New Hampshire, followed by the University of New Hampshire
. While at university Daniel starts writing his first novel. He also meets Katie Callahan, a radical art student, whom he agrees to marry. Katie has one mission in life: to make potential Vietnam War
draftees fathers, thus enabling them to apply for paternity deferment. Daniel and Katie have a son Joe, but when Joe is two, Katie leaves Daniel to find another young man to rescue from the war. Daniel moves to Iowa
with Joe, where he enrolls in the Iowa Writers' Workshop
. He also changes his name to Danny Angel to hide from Carl, and uses this nom de plume
to publish his novels. After graduating from the Writers' Workshop in 1967, Danny and Joe move to Putney, Vermont
.
Ketchum keeps in touch with both Dominic and Danny via telephone and letters, and warns them that Carl is looking for them. On Ketchum's advice, Dominic leaves Boston to join Danny in Vermont. He changes his name to Tony Angel, father of the writer Danny Angel. While Danny teaches writing at Windham College
, Tony opens and runs his own restaurant. After the publication of his fourth and most successful novel, Kennedy Fathers (based on Katie), Danny stops teaching and focuses on writing. Then in 1983, two of the sawmill
's wives in Twisted River are passing through Vermont and stop for a meal at Tony's restaurant. They recognize Tony and later tell Carl where "Cookie" is. Again, on Ketchum's advice, the father and son are forced to flee, this time to Toronto
.
With their cover blown, Tony and Danny revert back to their original names. Dominic finds another restaurant to work in, while Danny continues writing, still under his pseudonym
. Joe remains in the United States while at the University of Colorado
in Boulder
. Danny meets a Canadian screenwriter named Charlotte Turner, who is writing the screenplay of Danny's abortion novel East of Bangor. They decide to marry, but only after Joe graduates. When Joe dies in a car accident in 1987, Danny decides he cannot face the possibility of ever losing another child, and he and Charlotte part ways.
In 2001, Ketchum gets careless and unwittingly leads Carl to Dominic and Danny's house in Toronto. Carl shoots and kills Dominic and Danny retaliates by shooting and killing Carl. Ketchum is devastated at having failed to protect his friends and takes his own life at Twisted River. Danny, who has now lost his mother, father, son and their friend, tries to focus on writing his next book, a follow-up to his previous eight semi-autobiographical novels
. Then his last hope, Amy ("Lady Sky"), arrives on his doorstep. When Joe was two, Amy had parachuted naked onto a pig farm Danny and Joe were visiting. Danny rescued Amy from the pig pen and Joe, awe-struck by this event, called her "Lady Sky". Amy in turn offered to help Danny whenever he needed it. Having read all about the famous writer and his misfortunes, Amy tracks Danny down and moves in with him. Happy now, Danny finds the opening sentence of his new book: "The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long."
in October 2009: "For the longest time the last sentence eluded me, but 20 years ago I imagined a novel about a cook and his young son who become fugitives; who have to run from some violent act that will follow them. And it was always in a kind of frontier town — a place where there was one law, and it was one man, who was single-minded and bad." Irving did not start writing the novel until 2005. Speaking to the BBC World Service
in October 2009, Irving explained that he found that last sentence on his way to a doctor's appointment. He said an old Bob Dylan
CD was playing "Tangled Up in Blue
" in his car, and when he heard the lyrics:
the last sentence suddenly came to him. That was in January 2005, and by August 2005 he had worked his way back to the first sentence and was able to start writing the novel.
The career of the character Daniel Baciagalupo/Danny Angel in the novel bears numerous similarities to that of John Irving. In an October 2009 interview with the New York
magazine, Irving stated: "I tried to have fun with the self-referential stuff. I felt the need to be a little playful, because there were autobiographical parts of the last novel that were difficult for me." In his last novel, Until I Find You
(2005) Irving had alluded to his sexual initiation when he was eleven, by a woman in her twenties.
Irving is well known to have been influenced by Victorian authors
such as Dickens
and Hardy
, and American novelists of the same period, including Melville
. For Last Night in Twisted River, Irving acknowledges two other sources: The Theban Plays of Sophocles
, and the Western movie genre
. To make the novel as authentic as possible, Irving used a cousin in the logging business to help locate "an old-time log-driver
alive, alert and literate enough in English to read [his] manuscript" (many loggers in New Hampshire
were French-speaking Québécois
). Irving also researched the restaurant business and its menus and ingredients, calling on the help of friends in the industry. The Toronto
restaurant where part of the novel is set, whose address is given as 1158 Yonge Street, was based on the real-life restaurant at that address, Pastis Express.
Last Night in Twisted River was included in Time magazine
s 2009 list of "the fall's most anticipated movies, books, TV shows, albums and exhibits".
in Canada. It is about the relationship between three men: Dominic Baciagalupo, an Italian-American cook with "the look of a man long resigned to his fate", his son Daniel (Danny), who grows up to be a famous novelist, and Ketchum, a "foul-mouthed logger with a heart of gold". The novel is built around its characters and their idiosyncrasies. The father-son relationship between Dominic and Danny is "the heart of the book", and is a departure from Irving's previous novels which generally feature mother-son relationships in the absence of a father.
Last Night in Twisted River is a story within a story
that shows, through Danny Angel, the development of a novelist and the writing process. Irving modelled Danny's career loosely on his own: both are the same age; both get a scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy
; both are taught by Kurt Vonnegut
at the University of Iowa
and go on to become famous novelists; both are "Kennedy fathers" enabling them to claim paternity deferment during the Vietnam war; both have their first success with their fourth novel (Kennedy Fathers and The World According to Garp
). Danny and Irving's sixth books, East of Bangor and The Cider House Rules
are both abortion novels set in a Maine
orphanage which both later win an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Danny and Irving's fiction are "both autobiographical and not autobiographical at the same time", but Last Night in Twisted River is Irving's most overtly autobiographical novel.
Irving has explored what motivates novelists to write in many of his previous novels, but here, "[a]s he moves into what might be termed his late period", Irving examines these issues far more closely, and bares his soul more than ever before. Rene Rodriguez wrote in the Los Angeles Times
that this is Irving's "most personal and revealing exploration of the writing process". In The Times
Helen Rumbelow said Irving "almost rivals Paul Auster
for the mischievous way he inserts a thinly fictionalised version of himself into the tale".
Many themes present in Irving's earlier works are recycled in this book: the story begins in New England
, it features a fractured family, a main character is a writer, sudden tragedy, a young boy is sexually initiated by an older women, and bears. It contains Irving's usual fare of "melancholic humor and comic absurdity", "grotesque deaths and grisly accidents", plus "lots and lots of coincidences". As in Irving's writings, Danny's novels are full of "fairy-tale exaggerations" and "melodramatic worst-case scenarios". Daniel Mallory in the Los Angeles Times
said that while Irving "loots his own canon", so do other writers, for example Philip Roth
, Richard Ford
and Don DeLillo
. Lucy Daniel wrote in The Daily Telegraph
that while such "predictable eccentricities" might disadvantage a writer, they are "part of the charm" of Irving's works. As in The Hotel New Hampshire
, incestuous relationships take place in this book: here Danny has sex with some of his cousins and an aunt. But while Irving presents it in a naughty-but-nice manner, it has serious undertones: it was revealed after Irving's eleventh novel, Until I Find You
(2005) that he was sexually abused as a child.
English author Giles Foden
in The Guardian
called Last Night in Twisted River "a very playful novel": it toyed with character and the "fluidity of identity", suggesting that someone may "perform [their] identity rather than be defined by it". Foden said that the whole novel could be seen as a performance of Irving's own literary identity. More of Irving's "playfulness" manifests itself at the end of the book when the first sentence of Danny's new book is the same as the first sentence of Last Night in Twisted River — Danny is writing the very book we have been reading. And the book cover of a wind-bent pine tree (photographed by Irving's son, Everett) is the same tree Danny and Irving see from the window of their writing shacks in Pointe au Baril Station
in Ontario
.
The narrative moves back and forth in time, with each new section leaping forward ten to 30 years, and then backtracking, in "fits and starts" to fill in the missing details. Michael Berry said in the San Francisco Chronicle
that this "hopscotching strategy allows for multiple layers of suspense and irony". Rodriguez said these "sudden shifts in points of view that give new meaning to the passage you have just read and leaps in chronology that keep crucial incidents offstage" makes it an "agile, sometimes tricky novel", and the closest Irving has come to writing metafiction
.
that it is "the most poetic and powerful of Irving's work to date", and called Irving "the only modern American writer able to seamlessly merge the small detail with the significant event, while writing books that balance literary authority with mass-market appeal". Lucy Daniel in The Daily Telegraph
called the book "Moralistic, perverse, funny and uplifting", but added that it was debatable if it was "clever metafiction
", or a "thinly disguised memoir
". Colette Bancroft in the St. Petersburg Times
described the novel as a "loose and baggy tale in search of a center".
Several reviewers of the book were impressed by Irving's characters. English author Giles Foden
wrote in The Guardian
that Ketchum is "[a] magnificent creation, he's like something out of The Last of the Mohicans
", while Ron Charles said in The Washington Post
that he is "one of Irving's most endearing and memorable characters", a cross between Shakespeare
's Falstaff
and Louise Erdrich
's Nanapush. Literary critic Michiko Kakutani
in The New York Times
described Constable Carl, the policeman who pursues Dominic and Danny, as not unlike Victor Hugo
’s obsessive Inspector Javert
in Les Misérables
. Foden said Irving's manipulation of the character's identities was "nothing less than show-stopping".
Bancroft felt that the central character of Danny is not as interesting as those that surround him. He is often a passive observer rather than a participant; many of the important events happen "offstage", only to be recalled later by Danny, resulting in a "leaching of emotion and immediacy". Bancroft complained that "digressions multiply and go nowhere", and that even the restaurant menus, though interesting, are historically dubious". Kakutani was also critical of the novel, saying that with some "diligent editing" it could have equalled some of Irving's more powerful works, in particular The World According to Garp
(1978) and A Widow for One Year
(1998). She said while it was at times a "deeply felt and often moving story", it was tarnished by a "gimmicky plot; cartoony characters; absurd contrivances; cheesy sentimentality; and a thoroughly preposterous ending". She complained about the same "odd little leitmotifs" that appear in many of Irving's works, and the inflated plot with its "gothic tinsel" and "pointless digressions". She called it an "entertaining" but "messy and long-winded, commentary on the fiction-making process itself".
English novelist and critic Stephanie Merritt
wrote in The Observer
that once Carl finds Dominic and Danny, the novel "loses momentum and becomes more didactic", and that the "sheer exuberance of detail [...] at times threatens to overwhelm the story". But overall she was impressed with the book, saying that it is "a big, old-fashioned novel in the best sense". Joanna Scott wrote in The New York Times that she liked the sensory sensations Irving evoked in the book, in particular those brought on by Dominic's cooking. She also found some of the book's comical scenes, including the naked female skydiver landing in a pigpen, "among the most memorable that Irving has written". Writer and critic Alan Cheuse
in The Dallas Morning News
enjoyed the book. He found the flight of the father and son a "brilliant plot device", and was fascinated by the details of the restaurant business and the process of writing novels. "As a writer, I had nothing but admiration for Irving's modern version of the old flight and revenge motif."
Michael Berry in the San Francisco Chronicle
called it Irving's "most controlled novel since A Widow for One Year". Despite covering five decades and numerous settings, it still "cohere[s] into a satisfying tale of loss and redemption". He said "It's an impressive feat of sustained narrative craftsmanship". Robert Wiersema wrote in the National Post
that this is one of Irving's "most rewarding and satisfying novels". He said he performs "the most death-defying of literary feats: negotiat[ing] the delicate line between familiarity and novelty in such impressive style as to create a work that is at once comfortable, vintage Irving yet wholly new and unique". Ron Charles in The Washington Post
praised the opening section of the book and its "vibrant" Twisted River community, but was critical of the rest of the novel saying it is "scrambled across many blurry cities and restaurants and different times in a way that deadens the novel's momentum". He said that as soon as Dominic and his son flee Twisted River, the story "disintegrates in what must be the most disappointing wipeout of Irving's career". Charles was particularly critical of the fact that the book dwelt excessively on Danny's writing career, which mirrored Irving's, saying that it was "shorthand for real storytelling, for creating colorful places full of well-developed characters".
William Kowalski in The Globe and Mail
questioned why the book was not released as a memoir as there are times when Irving appears to have modelled Danny "literally after himself". He complained that it was these passages that tended to "bog down" the story. Kowalski called the novel "a flawed but mature work by one of our most accomplished writers". For Rene Rodriguez in the Los Angeles Times
, the highlight of the book was the attention it gave to the bond between Dominic and his son, but she did feel that the details of the creative process should have been relegated to an essay.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by American writer John Irving
John Irving
John Winslow Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978...
, his twelfth. It was first published in Canada by Knopf Canada
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is a New York publishing house, founded by Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. in 1915. It was acquired by Random House in 1960 and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group at Random House. The publishing house is known for its borzoi trademark , which was designed by co-founder...
on October 20, 2009, and in the United States by Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
on October 27, 2009. The novel spans five decades and is about a boy and his father who flee the logging community of Twisted River on the Androscoggin River
Androscoggin River
The Androscoggin River is a river in the U.S. states of Maine and New Hampshire, in northern New England. It is long and joins the Kennebec River at Merrymeeting Bay in Maine before its water empties into the Gulf of Maine on the Atlantic Ocean. Its drainage basin is in area...
in northern New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
after a tragic accident. While on the run, the boy grows up to become a famous writer, writing eight semi-autobiographical novels
Autobiographical novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...
. The book was included in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
s 2009 list of "the fall's most anticipated movies, books, TV shows, albums and exhibits".
Last Night in Twisted River took 20 years to conceive and write, and is a story within a story
Story within a story
A story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device in which one narrative is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
that shows the development of a novelist and the writing process. It uses many of the themes and plot devices that have already seen treatment in other works by the author. The career of the novelist in the book closely tracks the career of Irving himself, making it Irving's most overtly autobiographical novel.
The book received mixed reviews in the press. The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
called it Irving's most powerful work to date, while The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas area, with a circulation of 264,459 subscribers, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in September 2010...
admired Irving's modern version of the traditional flight and revenge theme. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
was not as impressed and felt that with better editing it could have equalled some of Irving's more powerful works. The St. Petersburg Times
St. Petersburg Times
The St. Petersburg Times is a United States newspaper. It is one of two major publications serving the Tampa Bay Area, the other being The Tampa Tribune, which the Times tops in both circulation and readership. Based in St...
described the novel as a "loose and baggy tale in search of a center".
Plot
The novel opens in 1954 in the small logging settlement of Twisted River on the Androscoggin RiverAndroscoggin River
The Androscoggin River is a river in the U.S. states of Maine and New Hampshire, in northern New England. It is long and joins the Kennebec River at Merrymeeting Bay in Maine before its water empties into the Gulf of Maine on the Atlantic Ocean. Its drainage basin is in area...
in northern New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
. A log driving
Log driving
Log driving is a means of log transport which makes use of a river's current to move floating tree trunks downstream to sawmills and pulp mills.It was the main transportation method of the early logging industry in Europe and North America...
accident on the river has just claimed the life of a young logger, Angel, who slipped and fell under the logs. Dominic Baciagalupo is the camp's Italian-American cook who lives above the kitchen with his 12-year old son, Daniel. Dominic lost his wife, Rosie, ten years previously when a drunk Dominic, Rosie and a logger and mutual friend, Ketchum, were dancing on the frozen river, and the ice broke and Rosie went under. Later another accident happens that changes the lives of Dominic, Daniel and Ketchum. "Injun Jane", the kitchen's dishwasher and girlfriend of the local law officer, Constable Carl, is having an affair with Dominic. One night, mistaking her for a bear attacking his father, Daniel kills her with an eight-inch cast-iron skillet
Frying pan
A frying pan, frypan, or skillet is a flat-bottomed pan used for frying, searing, and browning foods. It is typically in diameter with relatively low sides that flare outwards, a long handle, and no lid. Larger pans may have a small grab handle opposite the main handle...
. Dominic takes Jane's body and deposits it on the kitchen floor of Carl's house, knowing that Carl will be passed out drunk and will probably believe he killed her, as he often beat her up. Early the next morning Dominic and Daniel tell Ketchum what happened and flee Twisted River in case the bad-tempered Carl finds out what really happened.
Dominic and Daniel head for a restaurant in the Italian North End of Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
to tell Angel's mother of her son's death. Dominic gets a job as a cook in the restaurant and changes his surname to Del Popolo (Angel's mother's surname) to hide from Carl. During this time Daniel attends Exeter
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...
, a private school in southern New Hampshire, followed by the University of New Hampshire
University of New Hampshire
The University of New Hampshire is a public university in the University System of New Hampshire , United States. The main campus is in Durham, New Hampshire. An additional campus is located in Manchester. With over 15,000 students, UNH is the largest university in New Hampshire. The university is...
. While at university Daniel starts writing his first novel. He also meets Katie Callahan, a radical art student, whom he agrees to marry. Katie has one mission in life: to make potential Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
draftees fathers, thus enabling them to apply for paternity deferment. Daniel and Katie have a son Joe, but when Joe is two, Katie leaves Daniel to find another young man to rescue from the war. Daniel moves to Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
with Joe, where he enrolls in the Iowa Writers' Workshop
Iowa Writers' Workshop
The Program in Creative Writing, more commonly known as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, is a highly regarded graduate-level creative writing program in the United States...
. He also changes his name to Danny Angel to hide from Carl, and uses this nom de plume
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
to publish his novels. After graduating from the Writers' Workshop in 1967, Danny and Joe move to Putney, Vermont
Putney, Vermont
Putney is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States. The population was 2,634 at the 2000 census.On December 26, 1753 Col.Josiah Willard led a proprietors' petition for a Putney charter which was issued by Governor Benning Wentworth of the New Hampshire Grants under King George II of England...
.
Ketchum keeps in touch with both Dominic and Danny via telephone and letters, and warns them that Carl is looking for them. On Ketchum's advice, Dominic leaves Boston to join Danny in Vermont. He changes his name to Tony Angel, father of the writer Danny Angel. While Danny teaches writing at Windham College
Windham College
Windham College was a liberal arts college located in Putney, Vermont on the campus of what is now Landmark College.-History:Windham was founded in 1951 by Walter F. Hendricks as the Vermont Institute of Special Studies. The school's initial aim was to help foreign students improve their English...
, Tony opens and runs his own restaurant. After the publication of his fourth and most successful novel, Kennedy Fathers (based on Katie), Danny stops teaching and focuses on writing. Then in 1983, two of the sawmill
Sawmill
A sawmill is a facility where logs are cut into boards.-Sawmill process:A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of hundreds of years ago; a log enters on one end and dimensional lumber exits on the other end....
's wives in Twisted River are passing through Vermont and stop for a meal at Tony's restaurant. They recognize Tony and later tell Carl where "Cookie" is. Again, on Ketchum's advice, the father and son are forced to flee, this time to Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
.
With their cover blown, Tony and Danny revert back to their original names. Dominic finds another restaurant to work in, while Danny continues writing, still under his pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
. Joe remains in the United States while at the University of Colorado
University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado...
in Boulder
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
. Danny meets a Canadian screenwriter named Charlotte Turner, who is writing the screenplay of Danny's abortion novel East of Bangor. They decide to marry, but only after Joe graduates. When Joe dies in a car accident in 1987, Danny decides he cannot face the possibility of ever losing another child, and he and Charlotte part ways.
In 2001, Ketchum gets careless and unwittingly leads Carl to Dominic and Danny's house in Toronto. Carl shoots and kills Dominic and Danny retaliates by shooting and killing Carl. Ketchum is devastated at having failed to protect his friends and takes his own life at Twisted River. Danny, who has now lost his mother, father, son and their friend, tries to focus on writing his next book, a follow-up to his previous eight semi-autobiographical novels
Autobiographical novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...
. Then his last hope, Amy ("Lady Sky"), arrives on his doorstep. When Joe was two, Amy had parachuted naked onto a pig farm Danny and Joe were visiting. Danny rescued Amy from the pig pen and Joe, awe-struck by this event, called her "Lady Sky". Amy in turn offered to help Danny whenever he needed it. Having read all about the famous writer and his misfortunes, Amy tracks Danny down and moves in with him. Happy now, Danny finds the opening sentence of his new book: "The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long."
Main characters
- Dominic Baciagalupo ("Cookie") / Dominic Del Popolo / Tony Angel – An Italian-American logging company cook in Twisted River in northern New HampshireNew HampshireNew Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
. His father, who had absconded before he was born, had the name "Capodilupo" ("Head of the Wolf"), but his mother named him "Baciacalupo" ("Kiss of the Wolf"), which later became "Baciagalupo" due to a clerical error. He damaged his ankle in a logging accident at the age of 12, giving him a permanent limp, after which his mother taught him how to cook to keep him away from the logs. He changes his name to "Del Popolo" in BostonBostonBoston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, and to "Tony Angel" (father of the famous writer) in VermontVermontVermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
, to escape the attentions of Constable Carl from whom he and his son are fleeing. He is overprotective of his son, Daniel, and later his grandson, Joe.
- Daniel Baciagalupo / Danny Angel – Dominic's son and kitchen assistant in Twisted River. He is a "Kennedy father" and a famous writer of eight semi-autobiographical novelsAutobiographical novelAn autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...
. He writes under the pseudonymPseudonymA pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
of Danny Angel (after Angel, the young logger who died in Twisted River), a name he also assumed in real life to foil Constable Carl. He is attracted to large older women and is overprotective of his father, Dominic, and his son, Joe.
- Ketchum – A logger in Twisted River who lives permanently in the northern New Hampshire logging camps. His first name is never revealed. He was once married, but is estranged from his children, and had no education beyond the age of 12. He is Dominic's best friend, and is overprotective of Dominic and Daniel; he is their self appointed "advisor" at Twisted River, and when they are abroad, via telephone, letters, and later, fax (he never discovered email).
- Rosina Calogero ("Rosie") – Dominic's mother's cousin's daughter and his "not-really-a-cousin" wife. She was exiled to Berlin, New HampshireBerlin, New HampshireBerlin is a city along the Androscoggin River in Coos County in northern New Hampshire, United States. The population was 10,051 at the 2010 census. It includes the village of Cascade. Located on the edge of the White Mountains, the city's boundaries extend into the White Mountain National Forest...
by her family because she was pregnant, and taken in by Dominic's mother. After his mother died, Dominic (aged 17, he lied about his age to be married while still a minor) and Rosie (aged 24) married and moved to Twisted River. She was a teacher college graduate, and taught at the school in nearby Paris, MaineParis, MaineParis is a town in and the county seat of Oxford County, Maine, United States. The population was 4,793 at the 2000 census. The census-designated place of South Paris is located within the town. Because the U.S. Post Office refers to the entire town as South Paris, the town as a whole is commonly...
.
- "Injun Jane" – A 300-pound American Indian dishwasher in the Twisted River cookhouse and Daniel's part-time "babysitter". Her real name is not known. She lost her own son years previously and is fond of Daniel. She is Constable Carl's girlfriend and he regularly beats her up when he is drunk.
- Constable Carl ("Cowboy") – The local law officer in Twisted River who spends his time breaking up bar-fights and sending French Canadians looking for work back to QuebecQuebecQuebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
. He is often drunk and foul-mouthed, and he regularly beats up his girlfriends. He acquired the nickname "Cowboy" because of his erratic and unpredictable behaviour.
- Katie Callahan – Daniel's wife while at the University of New HampshireUniversity of New HampshireThe University of New Hampshire is a public university in the University System of New Hampshire , United States. The main campus is in Durham, New Hampshire. An additional campus is located in Manchester. With over 15,000 students, UNH is the largest university in New Hampshire. The university is...
. They met while posing nude as models in life-drawingFigure drawingIn art, a figure drawing is a study of the human form in its various shapes and body postures - sitting, standing or even sleeping. It is a study or stylized depiction of the human form, with the line and form of the human figure as the primary objective, rather than the subject person. It is a...
classes when Daniel was a junior undergraduate and Katie a senior. She is an anti-war activist and a sexual anarchist. She "rescues" young men from the Vietnam WarVietnam WarThe Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
by marrying and fathering a child with them. She sleeps around and is not a dedicated mother.
- Joe Baciagalupo – Daniel and Katie's son, named after Joe Polcari, the maître d'Maître d'hôtelThe maître d’hôtel in the original French language is literally the "master of the hotel". In a suitably staffed restaurant or hotel, it is the person in charge of assigning customers to tables and dividing the dining area into areas of responsibility for the various servers on duty. The plural...
at the Vicinodi Napoli restaurant in Boston where Dominic worked as a cook. He retained the Baciagalupo name, despite his father and grandfather changing theirs. He inherited his mother's "wild side" and is known to be careless and take risks.
- Charlotte Turner – Daniel's intended wife in TorontoTorontoToronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
. She is a Canadian screenwriter Danny meets while she is writing the screenplay for his abortion novel, East of Bangor. After they split up she goes on to win an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay of Danny's novel.
- Amy Martin ("Lady Sky") – Daniel's last love in Toronto. She is given the name "Lady Sky" by Daniel's two-year old son Joe after she parachuted naked into a pig pen in IowaIowaIowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
. "Martin" is her maiden name she reverted back to after a failed marriage and the death of her son.
Background
Although this was his twelfth published novel, Irving said that Last Night in Twisted River was "20 years in the making". The idea for a novel about a cook and his son on the run had been in the back of his mind for as long ago as 1986. Irving, who likes to start his novels with the last sentence, said in an interview with The IndependentThe Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
in October 2009: "For the longest time the last sentence eluded me, but 20 years ago I imagined a novel about a cook and his young son who become fugitives; who have to run from some violent act that will follow them. And it was always in a kind of frontier town — a place where there was one law, and it was one man, who was single-minded and bad." Irving did not start writing the novel until 2005. Speaking to the BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
in October 2009, Irving explained that he found that last sentence on his way to a doctor's appointment. He said an old Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
CD was playing "Tangled Up in Blue
Tangled Up in Blue
"Tangled Up in Blue" is a song by Bob Dylan. It appeared on his album Blood on the Tracks in 1975. Released as a single, it reached #31 on the Billboard Hot 100...
" in his car, and when he heard the lyrics:
- I had a job in the great north woods
the last sentence suddenly came to him. That was in January 2005, and by August 2005 he had worked his way back to the first sentence and was able to start writing the novel.
The career of the character Daniel Baciagalupo/Danny Angel in the novel bears numerous similarities to that of John Irving. In an October 2009 interview with the New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine, Irving stated: "I tried to have fun with the self-referential stuff. I felt the need to be a little playful, because there were autobiographical parts of the last novel that were difficult for me." In his last novel, Until I Find You
Until I Find You
Until I Find You is the eleventh published novel by John Irving. Up until ten months before publication, this novel was originally written in first person...
(2005) Irving had alluded to his sexual initiation when he was eleven, by a woman in her twenties.
Irving is well known to have been influenced by Victorian authors
Victorian literature
Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria . It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century....
such as Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
and Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
, and American novelists of the same period, including Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
. For Last Night in Twisted River, Irving acknowledges two other sources: The Theban Plays of Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
, and the Western movie genre
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
. To make the novel as authentic as possible, Irving used a cousin in the logging business to help locate "an old-time log-driver
Log driving
Log driving is a means of log transport which makes use of a river's current to move floating tree trunks downstream to sawmills and pulp mills.It was the main transportation method of the early logging industry in Europe and North America...
alive, alert and literate enough in English to read [his] manuscript" (many loggers in New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
were French-speaking Québécois
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
). Irving also researched the restaurant business and its menus and ingredients, calling on the help of friends in the industry. The Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
restaurant where part of the novel is set, whose address is given as 1158 Yonge Street, was based on the real-life restaurant at that address, Pastis Express.
Last Night in Twisted River was included in Time magazine
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
s 2009 list of "the fall's most anticipated movies, books, TV shows, albums and exhibits".
Analysis
Last Night in Twisted River is John Irving's twelfth novel and his "most ambitious", spanning five decades from 1954 to 2005 and taking place mostly in the northeastern United States and southern OntarioSouthern Ontario
Southern Ontario is a region of the province of Ontario, Canada that lies south of the French River and Algonquin Park. Depending on the inclusion of the Parry Sound and Muskoka districts, its surface area would cover between 14 to 15% of the province. It is the southernmost region of...
in Canada. It is about the relationship between three men: Dominic Baciagalupo, an Italian-American cook with "the look of a man long resigned to his fate", his son Daniel (Danny), who grows up to be a famous novelist, and Ketchum, a "foul-mouthed logger with a heart of gold". The novel is built around its characters and their idiosyncrasies. The father-son relationship between Dominic and Danny is "the heart of the book", and is a departure from Irving's previous novels which generally feature mother-son relationships in the absence of a father.
Last Night in Twisted River is a story within a story
Story within a story
A story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device in which one narrative is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
that shows, through Danny Angel, the development of a novelist and the writing process. Irving modelled Danny's career loosely on his own: both are the same age; both get a scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...
; both are taught by Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
and go on to become famous novelists; both are "Kennedy fathers" enabling them to claim paternity deferment during the Vietnam war; both have their first success with their fourth novel (Kennedy Fathers and The World According to Garp
The World According to Garp
The World According to Garp is John Irving's fourth novel. Published in 1978, the book was a bestseller for several years.A movie adaptation of the novel starring Robin Williams was released in 1982, with a screenplay written by Steve Tesich....
). Danny and Irving's sixth books, East of Bangor and The Cider House Rules
The Cider House Rules
The Cider House Rules is a 1985 novel by John Irving. It is Irving's sixth published novel, and has been adapted into a film of the same name and a stage play by Peter Parnell.-Plot:...
are both abortion novels set in a Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
orphanage which both later win an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Danny and Irving's fiction are "both autobiographical and not autobiographical at the same time", but Last Night in Twisted River is Irving's most overtly autobiographical novel.
Irving has explored what motivates novelists to write in many of his previous novels, but here, "[a]s he moves into what might be termed his late period", Irving examines these issues far more closely, and bares his soul more than ever before. Rene Rodriguez wrote in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
that this is Irving's "most personal and revealing exploration of the writing process". In The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
Helen Rumbelow said Irving "almost rivals Paul Auster
Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...
for the mischievous way he inserts a thinly fictionalised version of himself into the tale".
Many themes present in Irving's earlier works are recycled in this book: the story begins in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
, it features a fractured family, a main character is a writer, sudden tragedy, a young boy is sexually initiated by an older women, and bears. It contains Irving's usual fare of "melancholic humor and comic absurdity", "grotesque deaths and grisly accidents", plus "lots and lots of coincidences". As in Irving's writings, Danny's novels are full of "fairy-tale exaggerations" and "melodramatic worst-case scenarios". Daniel Mallory in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
said that while Irving "loots his own canon", so do other writers, for example Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
, Richard Ford
Richard Ford
Richard Ford is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories.-Early...
and Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo is an American author, playwright, and occasional essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries...
. Lucy Daniel wrote in The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
that while such "predictable eccentricities" might disadvantage a writer, they are "part of the charm" of Irving's works. As in The Hotel New Hampshire
The Hotel New Hampshire
The Hotel New Hampshire is a 1981 coming of age novel by John Irving and his fifth published novel.-Plot summary:This novel is the story of the Berrys, a quirky New Hampshire family composed of a married couple, Win and Mary, and their five children...
, incestuous relationships take place in this book: here Danny has sex with some of his cousins and an aunt. But while Irving presents it in a naughty-but-nice manner, it has serious undertones: it was revealed after Irving's eleventh novel, Until I Find You
Until I Find You
Until I Find You is the eleventh published novel by John Irving. Up until ten months before publication, this novel was originally written in first person...
(2005) that he was sexually abused as a child.
English author Giles Foden
Giles Foden
Giles Foden is an English author best known for his award-winning novel The Last King of Scotland .-Biography:Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967. His family moved to Malawi in 1971 where he was raised...
in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
called Last Night in Twisted River "a very playful novel": it toyed with character and the "fluidity of identity", suggesting that someone may "perform [their] identity rather than be defined by it". Foden said that the whole novel could be seen as a performance of Irving's own literary identity. More of Irving's "playfulness" manifests itself at the end of the book when the first sentence of Danny's new book is the same as the first sentence of Last Night in Twisted River — Danny is writing the very book we have been reading. And the book cover of a wind-bent pine tree (photographed by Irving's son, Everett) is the same tree Danny and Irving see from the window of their writing shacks in Pointe au Baril Station
Pointe au Baril, Ontario
Pointe au Baril is a community in the Canadian province of Ontario, located on the east coast of Georgian Bay.The community is located in the township of The Archipelago in the Parry Sound District.-History of the name:...
in Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
.
The narrative moves back and forth in time, with each new section leaping forward ten to 30 years, and then backtracking, in "fits and starts" to fill in the missing details. Michael Berry said in the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
that this "hopscotching strategy allows for multiple layers of suspense and irony". Rodriguez said these "sudden shifts in points of view that give new meaning to the passage you have just read and leaps in chronology that keep crucial incidents offstage" makes it an "agile, sometimes tricky novel", and the closest Irving has come to writing metafiction
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
.
Reception
Last Night in Twisted River received mixed reviews from a number of critics. Simmy Richman wrote in The IndependentThe Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
that it is "the most poetic and powerful of Irving's work to date", and called Irving "the only modern American writer able to seamlessly merge the small detail with the significant event, while writing books that balance literary authority with mass-market appeal". Lucy Daniel in The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
called the book "Moralistic, perverse, funny and uplifting", but added that it was debatable if it was "clever metafiction
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
", or a "thinly disguised memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
". Colette Bancroft in the St. Petersburg Times
St. Petersburg Times
The St. Petersburg Times is a United States newspaper. It is one of two major publications serving the Tampa Bay Area, the other being The Tampa Tribune, which the Times tops in both circulation and readership. Based in St...
described the novel as a "loose and baggy tale in search of a center".
Several reviewers of the book were impressed by Irving's characters. English author Giles Foden
Giles Foden
Giles Foden is an English author best known for his award-winning novel The Last King of Scotland .-Biography:Giles Foden was born in Warwickshire in 1967. His family moved to Malawi in 1971 where he was raised...
wrote in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
that Ketchum is "[a] magnificent creation, he's like something out of The Last of the Mohicans
The Last of the Mohicans
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper, first published in February 1826. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known...
", while Ron Charles said in The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
that he is "one of Irving's most endearing and memorable characters", a cross between Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's Falstaff
Falstaff
Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In the two Henry IV plays, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is...
and Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich
Karen Louise Erdrich, known as Louise Erdrich, is an author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American heritage. She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance...
's Nanapush. Literary critic Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani
is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times and is considered by many to be a leading literary critic in the United States.-Life and career:...
in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
described Constable Carl, the policeman who pursues Dominic and Danny, as not unlike Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
’s obsessive Inspector Javert
Javert
Javert is a fictional character from the novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. He is a prison guard, and later policeman, who devotes his life to the law. He is always referred to just simply as "Javert" or "Inspector Javert" by the narrator and other characters throughout the novel; his first name...
in Les Misérables
Les Misérables
Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...
. Foden said Irving's manipulation of the character's identities was "nothing less than show-stopping".
Bancroft felt that the central character of Danny is not as interesting as those that surround him. He is often a passive observer rather than a participant; many of the important events happen "offstage", only to be recalled later by Danny, resulting in a "leaching of emotion and immediacy". Bancroft complained that "digressions multiply and go nowhere", and that even the restaurant menus, though interesting, are historically dubious". Kakutani was also critical of the novel, saying that with some "diligent editing" it could have equalled some of Irving's more powerful works, in particular The World According to Garp
The World According to Garp
The World According to Garp is John Irving's fourth novel. Published in 1978, the book was a bestseller for several years.A movie adaptation of the novel starring Robin Williams was released in 1982, with a screenplay written by Steve Tesich....
(1978) and A Widow for One Year
A Widow for One Year
A Widow for One Year is a 1998 bestselling work of fiction by John Irving, the ninth of his novels to be published.The first section of the novel was made into the movie The Door in the Floor in 2004.-First section:...
(1998). She said while it was at times a "deeply felt and often moving story", it was tarnished by a "gimmicky plot; cartoony characters; absurd contrivances; cheesy sentimentality; and a thoroughly preposterous ending". She complained about the same "odd little leitmotifs" that appear in many of Irving's works, and the inflated plot with its "gothic tinsel" and "pointless digressions". She called it an "entertaining" but "messy and long-winded, commentary on the fiction-making process itself".
English novelist and critic Stephanie Merritt
Stephanie Merritt
Stephanie Merritt is an English critic and feature writer who has contributed to various publications including The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the New Statesman, New Humanist and Die Welt...
wrote in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
that once Carl finds Dominic and Danny, the novel "loses momentum and becomes more didactic", and that the "sheer exuberance of detail [...] at times threatens to overwhelm the story". But overall she was impressed with the book, saying that it is "a big, old-fashioned novel in the best sense". Joanna Scott wrote in The New York Times that she liked the sensory sensations Irving evoked in the book, in particular those brought on by Dominic's cooking. She also found some of the book's comical scenes, including the naked female skydiver landing in a pigpen, "among the most memorable that Irving has written". Writer and critic Alan Cheuse
Alan Cheuse
Alan Cheuse is an American writer and critic, the son of a Russian immigrant father and a mother of Romanian descent. He graduated from Perth Amboy High School in 1957 and Rutgers University in 1961. After traveling abroad and working for several years at various writing and editing jobs, he...
in The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas area, with a circulation of 264,459 subscribers, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in September 2010...
enjoyed the book. He found the flight of the father and son a "brilliant plot device", and was fascinated by the details of the restaurant business and the process of writing novels. "As a writer, I had nothing but admiration for Irving's modern version of the old flight and revenge motif."
Michael Berry in the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
called it Irving's "most controlled novel since A Widow for One Year". Despite covering five decades and numerous settings, it still "cohere[s] into a satisfying tale of loss and redemption". He said "It's an impressive feat of sustained narrative craftsmanship". Robert Wiersema wrote in the National Post
National Post
The National Post is a Canadian English-language national newspaper based in Don Mills, a district of Toronto. The paper is owned by Postmedia Network Inc. and is published Mondays through Saturdays...
that this is one of Irving's "most rewarding and satisfying novels". He said he performs "the most death-defying of literary feats: negotiat[ing] the delicate line between familiarity and novelty in such impressive style as to create a work that is at once comfortable, vintage Irving yet wholly new and unique". Ron Charles in The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
praised the opening section of the book and its "vibrant" Twisted River community, but was critical of the rest of the novel saying it is "scrambled across many blurry cities and restaurants and different times in a way that deadens the novel's momentum". He said that as soon as Dominic and his son flee Twisted River, the story "disintegrates in what must be the most disappointing wipeout of Irving's career". Charles was particularly critical of the fact that the book dwelt excessively on Danny's writing career, which mirrored Irving's, saying that it was "shorthand for real storytelling, for creating colorful places full of well-developed characters".
William Kowalski in The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
questioned why the book was not released as a memoir as there are times when Irving appears to have modelled Danny "literally after himself". He complained that it was these passages that tended to "bog down" the story. Kowalski called the novel "a flawed but mature work by one of our most accomplished writers". For Rene Rodriguez in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, the highlight of the book was the attention it gave to the bond between Dominic and his son, but she did feel that the details of the creative process should have been relegated to an essay.
External links
Author's web site. Canadian publisher's web site. US publisher's web site. UK publisher's web site.- Last Night in Twisted River editions. Fantastic Fiction.
- John Irving interviewed on CBC RadioCBC RadioCBC Radio generally refers to the English-language radio operations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC operates a number of radio networks serving different audiences and programming niches, all of which are outlined below.-English:CBC Radio operates three English language...
's As It HappensAs It HappensAs It Happens is a long-running interview show on CBC Radio One in Canada. Its 40th anniversary was celebrated on-air on 18 November 2008. It has been one of the most popular and acclaimed shows on CBC Radio; it is also distributed in the United States by Public Radio International.The bulk of the...
about Last Night in Twisted River.