John Irving in Jerusalem: I’m pro-Israel, I’m pro-Jewish, and here for you

“I don’t just wish you all the best,” said the legendary novelist John Irving at the close of his event at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem on Wednesday night.

His warmly received talk was the fulfillment of a promise he made in late May, when the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter, known for such modern classics as The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire, was unable to attend the Jerusalem Writers Festival because he had contracted COVID, and said during an event on Zoom that he would visit Israel as soon as he was able.

“I sincerely believe you’re the bravest people I know. Keep doing this,” he said. A moment earlier, he had proclaimed, “I’m pro-Israel, I’m pro-Jewish, and I’m for you. That may not necessarily mean that I’m in favor of your present leader,” a comment which drew thunderous applause from the audience.

“Let me put it another way to you. I never stopped loving the United States, but I hated Ronald Reagan. In the Reagan years, I didn’t stop loving my country, I just knew they’d made a wrong decision.”

Irving recalled living in Austria during the time of protests against the Vietnam War. “It really pissed me off when the Austrians expressed themselves on the minutiae of the war, because they didn’t know enough. I was happy when they were opposed to the war – so was I – but when they spoke in detail, they didn’t know what they were talking about. Well, neither would I, speaking about your country.

“I listen to my Israeli friends and I listen to my many Jewish friends,” he said. “But I’m not qualified to talk about the small details here – it’s your country, it’s not my business. But I do think it’s my business to say I support you. I know who started the trouble,” he said, and his next words were drowned out by more applause. “But don’t expect me to know a third, a fourth, or a fifth of the small details that you know.”

 POLITICS WERE just a small part of a magical evening in which one of the world’s most popular authors spoke in a wide-ranging conversation about his inspiration, his process, his life, his tattoos (the first of which features a sperm whale and the last line of Moby Dick) – and, in perhaps the most newsworthy moment of the evening, about the details of the novel he is currently writing, the final chapter of which is set in Jerusalem. The impetus to make the visit now was not only the invitation from Mishkenot but also to allow him to do research here.

Irving, who was last in Israel in 1981, said that his new book brings back some of the characters and the setting of his beloved novel, The Cider House Rules.

“In the book that I’m writing, the book that I’m here to finish, Dr. Larch and his nurses make an early appearance, in the opening chapters..,” he said. “But Dr. Larch, Nurse Edna, and Nurse Angela are all much younger than you may remember them from the novel or the film of The Cider House Rules...

“It’s a different time, it’s an earlier time,” Irving explained. “And so the cast of orphans is a different cast of characters altogether. During that time, everyone’s favorite unadopted orphan is a girl, and she’s Jewish, which is only one of the reasons no one takes her.

“That girl, who we meet as an orphan, is here, in Jerusalem, in the last chapter... her name is the title character of the novel, of the last chapter: Queen Esther. And you know which Esther I mean. I don’t have to tell you that. So this time, the best one is not Homer [the hero of Cider House] – the best one is Jewish.” Looking uncertain for a moment, he asked, “Did I say too much?”

Irving's previous visit

WHEN HE last visited Israel, the celebrated author said, he was not planning to write a book but was here for the Jerusalem Book Fair. Back then, he was busy enjoying himself at the event, and while he remembered something of his time in Israel, “What you lose in 43 years is the visual detail. I knew everywhere I went, but I couldn’t see it. So I always knew that when I wrote the last novel, I had to leave the landscape detail, which is very important to me – the visual – for when I came back. So I had always planned to be back here, coincident with the writing of that last chapter.”

Irving was a charming raconteur, telling enough funny stories to fill a novella. But amid the laughter he elicited, an essential humanity and compassion shone through, just like in his works. He spoke about being a student in Vienna and having an American Jewish roommate who actually looked like the ideal Aryan, tall and blond. He had always felt like an outsider growing up, he said, “And I didn’t realize that a writer is always an outsider... In Vienna, I finally felt I was where I should be.”

Having a Jewish roommate was a learning experience, he said, “Because without it, I think the existent antisemitism in Austria at the time would just have gone over my head.”

When Irving and his roommate had to give their names, the writer said he would often use just his last name. “They didn’t know it was my last name, and every once in a while, I realized I was being treated badly because somebody thought I was Jewish. I didn’t know, but my roommate would say, in his better German, to whoever was talking, ‘I’m the Jew, you idiot!’”

HE ALSO told stories about how he was circumcised at a time when this was uncommon in America, because his mother, an OB-GYN nurse’s aide, was concerned about the possible health consequences of having a foreskin, and said this helped him bond with his Jewish teammates on the wrestling squad in school.

As he told entertaining stories about his life and career, he proved again why he is such a unique literary star. While he is known for his wildly imaginative novels that dealt in prescient ways with such issues as rape, incest, and, especially in The Cider House, abortion – and transgender people, one of his most memorable characters being Roberta Muldoon, a transsexual ex-football player in The World According to Garp, which was published in 1978 (he also spoke affectionately of his own trans daughter, the writer Eva Everett Irving) he is also the rare novelist who is comfortable enough to go against the grain of much of today’s literary establishment.

He made his iconoclasm abundantly clear by both his clear support for Israel and Jews, as well as his rejection of reductive “fascism of the imagination” wokism. The audience responded enthusiastically to his warmth, candor, wit, and contrarian spirit.

For many in the audience, though, the highlight came at the beginning of the event, when he signed books for a mix of English speakers and native-born Israelis of all ages, holding dog-eared copies of his novels, some in Hebrew, some in English. He spoke for a moment with each of them, with the enthusiasm of a neophyte author at his first book signing. Perhaps those interactions, as much as anything he said on stage, represent the essence of John Irving.