The Water-Method Man
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| 1997 Paperback edition cover | |
| Author | John Irving |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Random House |
| Released | December 1972 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 365 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0394473329 |
The Water Method Man (1972) is the second novel written by American novelist John Irving (1942-).
[edit] Plot summary
The novel revolves around the mishaps of its narrator, Fred Trumper, a floundering late-twenty-something graduate student with serious commitment and honesty issues that earn him the nickname "Bogus." The novel shows Irving beginning to develop his notoriously masterful blend of comedy and pathos, as well as his unparalleled gift for fashioning memorably quirky and endearing characters. It follows a non-linear narrative in the form of a sort of 'confession' authored by Trumper, who humorously recounts his various failures in life and love, from his New England childhood through his experiences on foreign study in Vienna, Austria and as a graduate student in Iowa, leading up to the present-action setting, early-1970s New York, where Trumper is attempting to sever himself from his adolescent past. 'I want to change,' Trumper says at the end of Chapter one. The phrase seems to be the novel's central theme.
The title refers to a method prescribed to Trumper for the treatment of non-specific urological disorders relating to his abnormally narrow urinary tract--an early sign of Irving's fixation on using physical ailment and disfiguration as metaphorical constructs. Trumper's urologist--the deliciously wicked Frenchman, Dr. Jean Claude Vigneron--offers him three options for the treatment of his disorder: abstinence from sex and alcohol, a painful operation to widen the urinary canal, or the Water Method, which consists simply of consuming abnormal quantities of water before and after sex to flush bacteria out of the urinary tract. Trumper opts for the Water Method, suggesting both his generally comical cowardice and lack of self-discipline.
Trumper's narration meanders through flashbacks revolving around his relationships with the novel's two primary female characters: Sue 'Biggie' Kunft, a former championship downhill [ski]]ier whom Trumper courts, impregnates, and marries in Vienna while still a student, and Tulpen, Trumper's present day live-in girlfriend, a documentary film editor in New York, where he lands after losing Biggie. Though the two relationships function chiefly as a means of demonstrating Bogus Trumper's tendency to repeat his mistakes, Irving is often regarded for his strong, independent female characters, and Tulpen and Biggie can be seen as markers in the development of the strong women in his more popularly successful novels, particularly The World According to Garp (1979).
Other memorable characters include Trumper's best childhood friend Couth, a still-photographer; Merrill Overturf, a zany, alcoholic and diabetic loon Trumper befriends in Vienna; Ralph Packer, a pretentious documentary filmmaker who employs Trumper as a sound editor; and Colm, Trumper's young son from his first marriage to Biggie.
Trumper is a graduate student at the University of Iowa in comparative Literature whose dissertation is to be a translation of an ancient, 'Old Low Norse' epic called 'Akthelt and Gunnel.' Irving employs the 'Akthelt and Gunnel' poem as a means for allowing Trumper to poke merciless fun at himself through analogously inventing the story of the poem according to his own life's mishaps.
[edit] Major themes
Another, somewhat slapstick subplot element is documentary filmmaker Ralph Packer's decision to make his new film a study of Trumper's failed life, which he intends to title "F**king Up." Irving uses this ingenious device to force Trumper--the film's sound editor--to confront his mistakes and misdeeds as accounted by those against whom the acts were perpetrated. Trumper also recounts a ridiculous jaunt back to Vienna in search of his friend Merrill, who is believed to have drowned trying to find a World War II era tank rumored to be submerged in a river (a nod to Katz und Maus by German author and Nobel Laureate Günter Grass, one of Irving's main influences).
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
"The Water Method Man," while well-reviewed for the most part, was not a commercial success, and is now generally regarded, along with Irving's first and third novels, Setting Free the Bears and The 158-Pound Marriage, as precursors leading up to the phenomenally successful The World According to Garp. Indeed, those three novels all contain obvious trace elements of the more cohesive "Garp," and have even been published in a single volume titled Three by Irving. "The Water Method Man" is easily the least serious and most comic of Irving's novels, though it nevertheless manages moments of memorable pathos and insight into the complications of post-sexual revolution relationships in America. It also pokes good-natured if merciless fun at graduate school life's various insults and absurdities.
Though Irving will no doubt be best remembered for his more commercially and critically successful novels The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, and A Prayer for Owen Meany, all of which deal with major contemporary social issues (feminism and women's rights, abortion, religion, and the Vietnam era), "The Water Method Man" is not likely to be eclipsed as Irving's funniest novel, and should be regarded as a intelligent comedy, the most underappreciated of literary genres.
