The Reader Travels

It seems the founders of my little Dallas suburb were fans of literature, just like me. After all, they named the town after “America’s first man of letters,” Washington Irving. Credited with creating the short story, Irving was from New York City and served as a US ambassador in England and Spain.

Nowadays, there’s a very talented author also by the name of Irving who likes to take us to places like Toronto and Vienna and, yes, Bombay. John Irving’s A Son of the Circus took me to all three, and what a whirlwind adventure it was — serial murders and long-lost twins and Bollywood actors and proselytizing priests and dwarves and contortionists and other great circus acts.

John Irving gets a lot of flack for being too popular, but even the worst John Irving books are thought provoking and fun to read (and A Son of the Circus is one of his best). Yes, Irving is guilty of repeating themes and symbols in his novels, but for me, it’s an adventure to explore the symbolism of his life and find connecting roads that make me appreciate the journey that much more.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 6:53 pm and is filed under India, US and Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.