And He Has an Old Dog, Too

Okay, I’m going to dig out my John Irving collection after all, because this interview was so lovely.

“I wouldn’t make the case that there wasn’t anything particularly special about my pre-sexual desires. In the Fifties sexual desire was more far-ranging because sexual activity didn’t exist. It wasn’t allowed. Your sexual experience was entirely what you imagined. I don’t think there’s anything very unusual. I had crushes on certain older boys that I hoped would pass; and they did. They were strong enough to give me sympathy for boys for whom those feelings would not pass. I had crushes on girls my own age and their mothers. Thinking about this age — 14, 15 — it’s an age when you fantasise about everything because you’ve had nothing. I would say it was not unusual.

“If someone would say ‘oh no, I only desired unmarried girls my own age’, I say, well lucky you — I don’t know how much I’d believe them or maybe they grew up differently than I did, and any unwanted desire was not acknowledged or strictly denied.

“I’m not writing non-fiction. I don’t feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination.”

I like interviews with older writers (he’s 70 now!), because I generally feel that they’re more interested in being truthful than in creating a persona, at that point. Me, I thought Freedom was absolutely a monumental work of fiction, but I hate watching Franzen attempt to become A Grumpy Voice Yelling Halt! to Our Modern Discourse. This is also why I often prefer interviews with exceptionally popular writers who aren’t necessarily in the canon (Irving, Stephen King, Anne Tyler), too, because there’s sort of a warm confidence that comes with that sort of security (Only if they’re older, though! I bet that Jennifer Weiner will have a completely different outlook by sixty.) This Anne Tyler interview was equally great.

On a side note, the books coverage provided by The Daily Telegraph is uniformly superb. As is that of The Guardian, obviously, but no one ever expresses surprise about that one.