based on the length (820 pages, i think), heft (800 pages weigh a lot), and the sheer number of times we hear about penises, i think John Irving’s new novel Until I Find You is an hommage to his own johnson. it is as though he wants to make it abundantly clear that he has a penis and he knows how to use it.

it doesn’t help that in all the press for Until I Find You Irving talks about how this is his most autobiographical novel yet. and if it is his most autobiographical novel, i hope Irving is nothing like his main character, Jack Burns — an emotionless prick.

it’s hard to like characters who don’t suffer, who get things in life too easily. that’s Jack Burns. though Jack lives through plenty of stuff that should make him suffer (he’s molested repeatedly throughout the book, the most egregious molester a 40something woman who takes him back to her apartment to have sex with him every day for months), Jack doesn’t treat the tragedies in his life like they are tragedies. they don’t effect him at all, at least not to any extent that we can see. at one point Jack even says he feels nostalgic for the sex (can you call it sex when it’s a 40something and a nine-year-old boy?) he had with Mrs. Machado, his molestor. I’d like to think anyone who suffers doesn’t get nostalgic for the person who makes them suffer, but in the world of John Irving novels, that’s exactly what happens. In fact in Irving’s world (where at least one character is a wrestler who went to prep school in New England) you don’t just get nostalgic for your molestor you become best friends with the girl, six years your senior, who starts touching your penis when you’re seven and continues to hold your penis at random times throughout your life.

this is the biggest problem with the novel, Jack is detached from everything that happens to him. he never seems to feel anything– even though he lives through tons of things that should make him feel something.

let’s see he’s abandoned by his father, travels through europe at the age of four with his tattoo-artist mother chasing after his father, he goes to an all-girls school as a child, has an affair with a teacher when he’s still in junior high, sleeps with many women who suffer tragic deaths, becomes a movie star (without even trying really, because in Irving’s world it’s easy to become a star and it’s also easy to become a best-selling author– neither suffer any sort of rejection), his mother sends him away so she can live with her lesbian lover, upon his mother’s death he learns that everything he thought he remembered from his childhood is a lie, and well there’s the missing father. and yet Jack shows no emotion or angst about all this. nope Jack takes it all in stride. it’s maddening.

the entire book is maddening, and an utter disappointment. it’s hard when your heroes let you down, but with this one Irving has totally let me down.