Review: JOHN IRVING Grips at 92nd Street Y

John Irving is the epitome of the modern American storyteller. His ability to render the passage of time in prose fiction is peerless--a testament to his success as the author of 13 novels spanning more than four decades. His 14th novel, Avenue of Mysteries, named after the street in Mexico City that famously leads pilgrims to the Lady of Guadalupe, is chock-full of that singular knack for dark humor that has made Irving a household name.

The lead character in Avenue of Mysteries is a self-described "Iowan" named Juan Diego, originally from Oaxaca, Mexico, who experiences the past more vividly than the present. Irving has perfected the art of reader sympathy, drawing seamlessly parallel narratives that link the aging Juan Diego with his traumatic childhood.

The pith of the Avenue of Mysteries narrative has basted in Irving's mind since an ill-fated trip to India in the 1990s. Futile efforts to produce a screenplay about child circus performers from the slums of India were resurrected in the form of a novel after multiple visits to Mexico. In Oaxaca, he closely observed children "scavengers," as they are known, for picking through burning heaps of refuse to earn money.

Juan Diego is a scavenger, or as he is known in Avenue of Mysteries, "a dump kid". Later in life, in a relatively more benign circumstance as a writer in the Midwest, he is overwhelmed by nightmares of his childhood in 1970s Oaxaca. As Irving explains, at the time when his fictional character scavenged trash, fire restrictions were almost nonexistent in comparison to today. The story begins in the "hellfire" as Irving writes, where Juan Diego finds books, and teaches himself to read.

Irving evades identifying as an intellectual, and even an artist. He is a craftsman, simply fortunate to have had the time and discipline to roll up his sleeves at a writing desk, where he has worked in longhand for an average of eight hours a day for decades on end. Yet, at once, he has challenged this definition, demonstrating a profound intellectual knowledge of classic literature. He will conversantly reference Thomas Mann, an immortal colleague within the pantheon of the classics, with the type of mental ease known only by writers of Irving's caliber.

What impresses audiences most is how Irving has illustrated human empathy and the grand range of emotion with his characteristic gift. His novels have unmistakable social undercurrents that speak to personal and collective histories. Juan Diego, in teaching himself to read, learned of the outstanding injustices rent against indigenous Mexicans by the colonial religious followings. In parallel to the separate phases of his personal life -- the unabated nightmares from his trash-scavenging childhood against his stable American adulthood -- are the histories of Mexico and the Philippines.

Susan Cheever, an outstanding literary historian herself, as well as a close friend of Irving, co-presented the reading, candidly seated with Irving onstage at the 92Y. She noted how Irving, in many ways, picks up where Dickens left off, and in so doing even outdoes the legendary Brit with an ingenious literary irony all his own.

To round out the reading, Irving spoke about why he went to the Philippines, which was to see the country through the eyes of Juan Diego. Avenue of Mysteries ruminates on the shared and ongoing traumas of global colonization (as in the Spanish occupation of Mexico and the lesser known, yet no less atrocious, American occupation of the Philippines.)

Avenue of Mysteries will not disappoint Irving fans and new readers. Readers will recognize certain characters modeled after those in his preceding novels, such as the sister of Juan Diego, Lupe who, in her prophetic nature, is like Owen Meany (A Prayer for Owen Meany), and just like Juan Diego, who happens to be a writer like Ted Cole (A Widow for One Year.)

Irving reminds his readers that Thomas Mann said that repetition is concomitant with saying something worthwhile. And so, while history repeats itself, Irving continues to brave the storms of the emotive imagination to renew the human story. "I know what my job description is," he says, in his sly tone. "I try to make a couple of principal characters sympathetic. And then, I want you to worry about what's going to happen to them, because the worst thing I can imagine will."

Photo Courtesy of OrchardWriting.com