Word: dogs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Russian novelists, Irving is equally at ease and in control," says Sheppard. "He's a man of great energy, humor and discipline-all held together by a Doric grace." On arriving for his second visit to the Irving home in Vermont, Sheppard was challenged by the growling family dog, Stranger, while Irving unhelpfully remained inside. Says Sheppard: "I don't know if he was testing my perseverance, but if the dog had bitten me I would have bitten it back...
Stretching toward sunset from the Missouri, South Dakota's West River country is an unrelieved expanse of rough-hewn plains and arid badlands. Under the tough sod lie prairie-dog towns and nuclear missile silos. Above ground, a handful of ranchers raise sheep and cattle on the stingy rangeland. Mostly, natives say, there are miles and miles of miles and miles...
Certainly not Putney's most famous literary resident. The mailbox at the foot of the road leading to John and Shyla Irving's house is flat black and conspicuously free of lettering. But the sign on the garage at the top of t he road reads THE DOG BITES. He does, too, under the name of Stranger, part shepherd, part Husky, part senile. One whiff of the garage where Stranger lies dreaming is enough to realize who probably inspired Sorrow, the old Labrador...
...snappish dog was unnecessary in the days before Garp. But after his smashing success, Irving's 19th century converted red barn became a target for autograph seekers and scraggly youths offering to do odd jobs for a chance to receive Garpian wisdom at the feet of their reluctant guru. In fact, before Irving's rugged head was known to the nation, the author was a Putney person who did advertise...
...psychiatrist looking at his watch well before the end of each 50-minute hour. The only breaks come in equally long and profitless flashbacks to the boyhood of Maurice Halleck. The writing here is of the "It was a dark and stormy night" variety that Snoopy, the Peanuts dog, concocts whenever he tries to write his own novel. Halleck and his friend take a canoe trip, and he is nearly drowned in "the deafening roar" of the wild Loughrea. This is a Celtic place name, used for a Canadian river. But it sounds almost exactly like logorrhea, and in this...