Review: Trying to Save Piggy Sneed by John Irving

John Irving’s Trying to Save Piggy Sneed is a collection of short works divided into sections of memoir, fiction, and homage. I was in the midst of a long historical novel and needed something with which to cleanse my pallet and Irving’s short works seemed just the thing to dip into as needed. I am a fan of Irving’s novels. I genuinely enjoy his sense of absurdity and moralizing; Irving’s novels hit on the core of humanity, which is what I was expecting from this collection. Sadly, it did not deliver in the same fashion.

My grandmother sometimes shares with us letters about her childhood, her disaffected mother and the father she lost early in life, and finally her 50+ year long relationship with my grandfather. These letters and stories are so important to me because they are the makeup of this great woman that I adore. However, they would probably be uninteresting to a stranger. John Irving’s memoir reads much like my grandmother letters, and frankly, I am basically uninterested in his stories of the boys he may or may not have wrestled back at Exeter. There is a way to write about your life in sports (that can even be of interest to a nonsports enthusiast such as myself); unfortunately, John Irving hasn’t quite discovered it. However, when he writes about realizing that he was always a writer, about his education and initiation into the literary world and the friendships forged there I was thrilled. I come to Irving’s novels time and again because I like the way he writes about people, which comes across brilliantly here.

What you have really come to Piggy Sneed for though is the fiction. Irving has written very few short stories (his style is not exactly suited to the form) but I was eager to read each of them. The inclusion of “The Pension Grillparzer” from The World According to Garp is alone worth the price of the book. This is easily Irving’s best story. This is the story of a rundown hostel in Austria populated with the world’s oddest circus and its toothless trained bear. The most outrageous of Irving’s plots (such as this one) serve as a ballast for humanity by speaking deep truths about human cruelty and kindness. Irving’s created worlds, like our own, are dangerously unpredictable, absurd, and full of extremes. That’s the beauty of working our way through them.

The final section of the collection is that of homage to Charles Dickens and Gunter Grass. Dickens is Irving’s ultimate hero and instructor. The seed of all Irving’s plotting and moralizing lies within the novels of Charles Dickens. Here Irving is mostly writing in defense of Dickens’ sentimentality and in praise of Grass’ skill. His homage led me to pick up copies of both The Tin Drum and The Pickwick Papers, so I would say he succeeded in him aim.

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed is not Irving’s best work. It is a collection for those (like myself) interested in learning the whole of a writer they enjoy. Both through the literary section of his memoir and the short stories themselves an interested reader will learn much about Irving’s process. Definitely recommended for the Irving completest, but as I said worth it for “The Pension Grillparzer” alone.

World Book Night: Those I've Read

Of the thirty books being dispensed on World Book Night I've only read six. I must say, that makes me a little sad - like maybe my finger isn't on the pulse of the literary world. I am happy to be remedying some of the more glaring holes in my reading repertoire; I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've never read Maya Angelou and I cannot tell you how many times I've received a shame-filled stare and teenage tut-tutting when I happen to mention that I haven't read "The Hunger Games". Before April 23rd I'll have at least another twenty four holes filled. I'll be posting my responses to the books here as I read them, but first I wanted to talk about about those I've already read.

"A Prayer for Owen Meany" was the first John Irving book I read and since then I have read one of his novels every year. Irving is so wonderful that I can't allow myself to read him all in one go - I'm pacing myself which makes that one book each year all the more glorious.

Owen Meany is God's instrument. His entire life, as sad and difficult as it often is, can be measured up against this statement. Owen was born with quite a few problems. He has a weak heart, a weird voice, and a tiny stature, but none of this will stand in the way of him performing God's Will - not in any way that he knows of I might add. Owen Meany knows his destiny is huge and he has surrendered to it.

John Irving's novels are always heavily plotted, and with this one in particular Owen's martyrdom is what pushes the book forward. However, as is the case with all of Irving's novels, it is what is said and not really what happens that is most important. This is truly a book about
faith and morality.

Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" is one of those novels that has stuck with me, but not in a good way. I read this book a few years ago and while I didn't hate it, I definitely recall much more of what I did not like about it than what I did. I'll start with what I liked though. I liked the way the book opened. You knew that Susie was going to die from the first sentence. I think that's a daring way to begin a novel. The author has to work harder to make the reader care about a character that we know is going to die. Characters can be flat and distant if we know what's coming for them, but Sebold challenged this to good effect. I also really enjoyed Sebold's heaven - she created a beautiful and tragic fantasy. But what I couldn't stand, what my mind is left with, is the ending. I laughed, I rolled my eyes, I lost the goodwill I had for these characters. A bad ending can ruin a good book, and for me that was the case with "The Lovely Bones".

When I read "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" I was awed. Henrietta's story, Rebecca Skloot's research, the scope of the entire incident/book/etc... just floored me. This book altered my worldview. Skloot forces her readers to look at big ethical questions about informed consent and how medical research (or scientific research in general) is done. I actually read this book for the store's bookclub and it was on of the best discussions we've had yet. There are some issues here that are black and white, but on the whole the saga of the Lacks family is difficult to reconcile. The loss of their mother and the facts of poverty are both devastating. The manner in which the medical establishment handled the family and their questions is unfortunate, but what rights do they really have to the HeLa cells? It never occurred to me to think about my appendix and my ownership of it before. Will that appendix still be mine if it's not inside of me? Will it be more 'mine' if it turns out to be profitable and would I be willing to spend the money funding research and testing to determine whether or not it was profitable then mining the legal and medical fields to establish myself in the body parts business in order to profit from my appendix. That's an incredibly simplified version of events, but you can see that even there all of the issues get murky. Rebecca Skloot's book debates this issue and so many others using what happened to Henrietta Lacks and her cells as well as several cases wherein the doctors or research scientists did not have the best interest of their patients at heart. This is also the story of the Lacks family as the personalities that they inject into book humanize the subject matter and allow us to look at the people on the other side of the science.

Finally, "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak. I have wanted to write about this book since I read it a year ago, but I just haven't been able to. This is a book that needs to be felt. I really still cannot think of what to tell you about it, even something as simple as a reaction. The book is about WWII, it is narrated by death. It is absolutely gut wrenching and you should read it. That's really all I can leave you with; you should read it.


I've written previously about "Just Kids" and "Little Bee". I look forward to reading the rest of the World Book Night titles and responding to them here.