I know a lot about writers, too-not just doing the work but how writers see, internalize, and detach themselves. JI: After 12 novels, most of them complex, I know a lot about not only the process of writing but about its origins-about the need to do it. GR: Why are there so many characters who are writers in your work? Anxiety, grief, the passage of time, the perils facing children (and other loved ones)-these are huge, and lingering, obsessions, and they are oft-repeated in my novels. But loss, and the fear of losing someone dear to you-these are obsessions. Bears, wrestling, New England boarding schools, violent accidents-these are the mere landscape details in much of my fiction. For a serious novelist, there are recurring obsessions repetition is the natural concomitant of having something worthwhile to say, and repeatedly needing to say it. JI: I'm not poking fun at my own image but at how insistently book reviewers overemphasize autobiography in fiction-or trivialize it, as the case may be. Coincidentally, the main character's career trajectory echoes your own. Goodreads: Readers are calling this new book quintessential Irving.
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