The Hotel New Hampshire

John living was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942, and he once admitted that he was a “grim” child. Although he excelled in English at school and knew by the time he graduated that he wanted to write novels, it was not until he met a young Southern novelist named John Yount, at the University of New Hampshire, that he received encouragement. “It was so simple,” he remembers. “Yount was the first person to point out that anything I did except writing was going to be vaguely unsatisfying.”

In 1963, Irving enrolled at the Institute of European Studies in Vienna, and he later worked as a university lecturer. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, about a plot to release all the animals from the Vienna Zoo, was followed by The Water-Method Man, a comic tale of a man with a urinary complaint, and The 158-Pound Marriage, which exposes the complications of spouse-swapping. Irving achieved international recognition with The World According to Garp, which he hoped would “cause a few smiles among the tough-minded and break a few softer hearts.”

The Hotel New Hampshire is a startlingly original family saga, and The Cider House Rules is the story of Doctor Wilbur Larch—saint, obstetrician, founder of an orphanage, ether addict and abortionist—and of his favourite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted. A Prayer for Owen Meany features the most unforgettable character he has yet created. A Son of the Circus is an extraordinary evocation of modern day India. John Irving latest and most ambitious novel is A Widow for One Year.

Copyright © Garp Enterprises Ltd 1981

“A Birthday Candle” Copyright © 1957 by Donald Justice. This poem first appeared in The New Yorker.

“On the death of Friends and Childhood” Copyright © 1959 by Donald Justice.

“Love Stratagems” Copyright © 1958 by Donald Justice. This poem first appeared in The New Yorker.

“To a Ten-Months’ Child” Copyright © 1960 by Donald Justice.

“Tales from a Family Album” Copyright © 1957 by Donald Justice. These poems reprinted from The Summer Anniversaries by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

“The Evening of the Mind” Copyright © 1965 by Donald Justice. This poem first appeared in Poetry.

“The Tourist from Syracuse” Copyright © 1965 by Donald Justice.

“Men of Forty” Copyright © 1966 by Donald Justice. This poem first appeared in Poetry. These poems reprinted from Night Light by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

“I Forgot To Forget” Copyright © by permission of Stanley Kesler; Highlow Music Inc. 639 Madison Avenue, Memphis, Tn. 38130.

“I Love You Because” by Leon Payne Copyright © 1949 by Fred Rose Music, Inc. Used by permission of the Publisher. All rights reserved.

The novelist is indebted to the following works and wishes to express his gratitude to the authors: Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, by Carl E. Schorske; A Nervous Splendor, by Frederic Morton; Vienna Inside-Out, by J. Sydney Jones; Vienna, by David Pryce-Jones and the Editors of Time-Life Books; Lucia di Lammermoor, by Gaetano Donizetti, the Dover Opera Guide and Libretto Series, (introduced and translated by Ellen H. Bleiler); and The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud.

With special thanks to Donald Justice. And with special thanks and special affection—to Lesley Claire and the Sonoma County Rape Crisis Center of Santa Rosa, California.

On July 18, 1980 the Stanhope Hotel on Eighty-first and Fifth Avenue changed management and ownership and became the American Stanhope—a fine hotel currently not beset by the problems of the Stanhope described in this fiction.