John Irving is having trouble starting his next novel. Maybe we can help. For sure, starting can be bedeviling. The spring issue of Publishers Weekly ($4.95 in most bookstores) not only offers tips to aspiring novelists from Irving, author of ”The World According to Garp” and ”The Hotel New Hampshire,” but also a look at how he`s grappling with his next opening.
”Know the story-the whole story, if possible-before you fall in love with your first sentence, not to mention your first chapter,” advises Irving in ”Getting Started,” one of several strong efforts in this 440-page primer on books due out this spring.
”If you don`t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind-making it up as you go along, like a common liar,” he writes.
He contends that a sense of anticipation must be created by the opening sentence, but that it must also be a bit misleading and set up later surprises. He recounts the openings of four of his novels, including ”Garp”: ”Garp`s mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.”
That sentence, Irving informs, was ”a shameless tease.” The word
”wounded” was picked for being deliberately unclear. He adds, ”We want to know how the man was `wounded`-and that the person `arrested` was somebody`s mother surely suggests a lurid tale.”
He concludes by disclosing that he has narrowed the start of his latest novel, about a successful novelist, to three possibilities. One is
straightforward and traditional (”A widow for one year, Ruth Cole was 46; a novelist for 20 years …). The second is a quote from the beginning of one of Cole`s novels. The third is a blend of the first two.
He explains his theory for using each and the potential pitfalls. But he then concedes that he`s mulling a fourth: perhaps a former lover reading Cole`s new novel. And by the time you`ve gotten to this article, Irving says, he may be considering a fifth. Maybe he should establish a toll-free phone number and let his fans decide.
”With any luck, you will hear from me (and Mrs. Cole) in about four years.”
February Institutional Investor has a revealing interview with John Gutfreund, boss man at Salomon Brothers who once was crowned ”The King of Wall Street” by Business Week.
This symbol of Wall Street`s 1980s financial excesses claims to be a personally stodgy sort, saying he dislikes owning property and the party scene (of which he and his much-younger second wife are fixtures). Gutfreund, whose firm last year paid one young bond arbitrageur $23 million, asserts that Wall Street compensation needs to be cut as much as 50 percent to bring costs into line. And he denies as ”total nonsense” the claim in a best-seller
(”Liar`s Poker”) that he proposed playing liar`s poker with a colleague for $1 million, only to have the chum call the bluff by raising the ante to $10 million.
On the Right: Winter Policy Review declares heatedly that George Bush must decide whether he`ll become William Howard Taft (i.e., a pro-tariff sellout to right-wing diehards) or ”rebuild the victorious Ronald Reagan coalition.” . . . In the middle or on the Left: March Washington Monthly has Mark Fischetti criticizing the trend toward corporate stock buybacks, saying they do not aid consumers, shareholders or efficiency but rather the wallets of executives; in March 11 New Republic, Author C.D.B. Bryan, who focused on H. Norman Schwarzkopf`s heroism during the Vietnam War in ”Friendly Fire,”
looks at him 20 years later and finds the Desert Storm commander still to be a deeply sensitive warrior; and actress Margot Kidder, labeled ”Baghdad Betty” by tabloids for war comments, attacks the attackers in March 4 Nation, wondering if the press feels ”the need to be an accomplice in this plot to make it appear as if every sane person is lined up behind the President in support of the war?”
The January-February issue of revived Ms. has a terrific if somber look at women and AIDS. Women are the fastest-growing group of AIDS victims, and this article bashes doctors for not heeding gynecological complications that can surface before most other AIDS symptoms in HIV-infected women. It also derides the federal government for not allowing disability benefits for HIV-induced gynecological diseases, and many abortion clinics for spurning women identified as HIV positive.
