The Last Doorstop
I’ve just finished John Irving’s latest tome, The Last Chairlift (not crazy about the title) which was a bit of a slog at 900 pages or so (I’m happy to have read it on my Kindle). Irving rationalizes that (and I’m paraphrasing here), “Hey if your writing about a character’s whole life, it gonna be long, right?.” Well, OK, I get it, but when one combines Irving’s penchant for repetition and digression (in this case, two screenplays folded into the mix) with the motif, say, of a David Copperfield, the result is a largely bloated piece of writing that would have benefited from the discerning eye of (in this case) a courageous editor. Considering the legacy of Mr Irving’s work, I don’t think many editors, let alone his own, would insist on radical cuts.
Don’t get me wrong, I still very much enjoyed this book— as it carries on with Irving’s major themes that he’s employed in many of his other novels, e.g.; elective single motherhood, character’s searching for their biologi…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Jones Reader to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.