4

OPINION

Page 4 Saturday, October 6, 1984 The Michigan Daily

John I
Some of his readers are horrified by the
depiction of a society permeated by sen-
seless violence and unjust suffering. Other
readers cherish his characters' absurdly
comical mishaps as they try to figure out
what it's all about. John Irving says he just
tells it like it is. Whatever the case may be,
it is difficult to deny Irving's ability
to elicit response from his readers in a way
few of his contemporaries are able to do.
Irving's first three novels, Setting Free the
Bears, The Water-Method Man, and The
158-Pound Marriage, were critically ac-
claimed but did not fair well commercially.
It was not until The World According to
Garp was published in 1978 that Irving
became a household name. Garp, which
was awarded the American Book A ward as
the best paperback novel of 1979 sold more
than three million paperback copies alone.
Irving's next book, The Hotel New Ham-
pshire, also sat atop the bestseller lists for
months.. His sixth novel, The Cider House
Rules, will be published in June. Irving, 42,
will read from his latest work at 8 p.m.
Monday at Rackham Auditorium as part
of the University's Visiting Writers Series.
In a recent telephone interview, Irving
spoke with Daily Arts editor Fannie Wein-
stein about- his work, what he sees as his
responsibility as an author, and his support
for Democratic. presidential candidate
Walter Mondale.
Dialogue
Daily: Are you going to be doing any cam-
paigning for Walter Mondale or meeting with
Mondale people while you're here.
Irving: I'm working for Mondale, the
Democratic Committee, and the National
Committee for an Effective Congress, so I've
been doing that kind of thing. I don't know how
much of that I'm going to do when I'm in
Michigan, but one of the reasons I'm traveling
at this time of the year and speaking at a lot of
schools is because of the closeness of the elec-
tion. In addition to talking about my work and
what I'm doing, I always try and get in a plug
for the Democrats and urge people in, the
college-age group to vote. They're not a very
good age group for voting. I didn't vote when
I was that age.
Daily: Have you been a long-time Mondale
supporter?
Irving: I started out as a Cranlston supporter.
I was a fundraiser for Cranston in New York

rnng: A
but when it was clear that Cranstona wasn't
going to make it, I switched to Mondale. I came
into this election feeling strongly about a
nuclear freeze but that's not the only issue in
the election. I'm happy with Mondale. I'm not
happy with his apparent lack of popularity, but
I don't think that's to be laid at his feet. I don't
have any qualifications about endorsing him.
Daily: Do you think he has a chance?
Irving: Sure I do. I think if everyone in this
country who dislikes and fears Ronald Reagan
voted, Ronald Reagan would lose. The dif-
ficulty is getting Democrats., out to vote. If all
the Democrats just voted - there are so many
more Democrats than there are Republicans -
Ronald Reagan would lose. But we have a poor
voting record. We have a way of getting
depressed and thinking the issue is beyond us
and I'm afraid that not enough people who are
anxious about Reagan are quite anxious
enough. I think they may take it as fait
accompli that Mondale has already lost and
that's a dangerous kind of thinking.
Daily: There are a lot of people who say that
artists and celebrities should stay out of
politics. How do you feel about this?
Irving: I've always been politically involved.
I don't think as an artist that my entry into
politics is special. I'm involved in politics
because I'm a citizen. Not all of my books are
terribly political. The one I've just finished is
and my first novel was. There are political
issues in some of the books, but I'm politically
active and always have been at one level of
politics or another. I feel that's a responsibility
of any citizen who has a little political
knowledge, a lot of political passion, and feels
that things can be much better run than they
are.
Daily: Your next novel is going to be
published in June?
Irving: June of '85.
Daily: And the name of that is ...
Irving: The Cider House Rules.
Daily: What can we expect from this novel?
Irving: I've always wanted to write an or-
phan novel-a David Copperfield or Jane Eyre
novel - but I also wanted this time to write a
political novel and the ideas just came
together. I began looking at the life of or-
phanages at the turn of the century and I
quickly discovered that the ones that were
connected with hospitals had a very high per-
centage of obstetricians who were also sym-
pathetic to performing abortions even though
abortion was illegal from the mid-nineteenth
century until 1973. I found that doctors familiar
with the lives of unwanted children and
familiar with delivering mothers who were
giving up their children for adoption were often
sympathetic to abortion, or more sympathetic
than other doctors. I sort of began from there.
It's a novel about an obstetrician and director
of an orphanage and an orphanage hospital in
rural Maine in the first half of the century. This
doctor can't separate his commitment to un-
wanted children or to orphans from his per-
sonal belief that women who choose to have an

n author faces the facts

and at my best a comic novelist and there are
other readers who think my books are terribly
depressing and terribly sad, and have a ten-
dency to see only the terrible things that hap-
pen in them. All I know is that any portrait of
the world today that's going to be truthful must
include some of these really comic absur-
dities that lead and construct the stories of our
lives. Also, if it's going to be true, people have
to be hurt; people have to be hurt all the time
and there has to be an appropriate amount of
sadness. Who's to say what's appropriate. I
think if you wrote a novel today where there
wasn't any bloodshed, and there weren't any
tears that spilled, you'd be creating a gross en-
tertainment and an insult for so many of the
people in the world whose lives are largely
about pain and suffering. You're responsible if
you're pretending to write about the world and
not just making fables. You're responsible to
include the worst things you can imagine; the
worst things you can see around you. If you
help that go down a little better, if you can help
people get through that vision more easily by
also making them laugh - I think that's more
of a political tactic than anything else. I've
always felt that I can steer or guide a reader
through the rough stuff by creating the illusion
that it's not going to be as bad as he thinks -
because just up to the monent of calamity he's
been enjoying himself. I think you can make
people see what you mean better that way than
by letting them know from the first that this is
rough stuff and all rough stuff and there's
nothing to smile about it, at which point the
reader really doesn't know what to say.
Daily: The last sentence in Garp is that "In
the world according to Garp, we are all ter-
minal cases." Is that also in the world accor-
ding to John Irving?
Irving: If you follow anyone to his or her con-
clusion, you're going to lose them, aren't you?
It's an easy claim to make. It's a doctor's view.
No one lives forever. But more strongly, Ithink
there is an act of, if not violence, undeserved
suffering or soorow waiting for all of us. I don't
feel that is necessarily a lugubrious point of
view or a morbid point of view. I don't think the
tone of my work is that. I think that knowing
that inevitably in all our lives some act of, if not
violence at least sorrow or unfairness, is most
likely to coincide, should simply make our lives
all the more determined to be lived pur-
posefully and well. You can't predict or avoid
the dangers. I think the tone, whether you call
it comic or whether you call it sad, is probably
the voice of some kind of anxious parent who
just wants everyone to be a little more careful
than they think it is necessary to be. When my
kids got older they would always tease me.
They said I simply concluded every conver-
sation with them by telling them to be careful
and they got very good at anticipating the
moment when I was about to say "be careful."
They-were very good at interrupting me and
saying, "I know. Be careful." I think anybody.
reading me suffers the same anticipation.
Dialogue is an occasional feature of the
Opinion Page.

John Irving is an active supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale and fir-
mly believes in the individual's responsibility to participate in the political process.

abortion instead of an orphan should have the
right to make that choice. I came into the
politics of abortion in this novel very honestly
by looking at the history of what I was in-
terested in and the history of the period, and
the book developed from there about three
years later.
Daily: It's been said that your universe is
governed by mishap and violence, and that
your novels either contain one central violent
episode or are dominated by death. How do
these concepts fit in with your impression of
society today? Is this what you see going on?
Irving: Very much so. I'm always quite im-
patient to hear that some readers find my
books excessively violent or they find my work
excessively bizarre. If I had,, for example, set
out to write a novel about a war between
Britain and Argentina in which Britain uses the
Queen Elizabeth as a troop transport, that
would have been bizarre. But it actually hap-
pened. If I tried to write a novel detailing the
Reagan administration's policy in the Middle
East, it wouldn't make a good story. It would be
an almost unfollowable plot. I don't feel that I
needlessly or recklessly invent a world where
mayhem and violence are commonplace and
ordinary and everyday. Those things have
become horribly commonplace, and normal,
and everyday. So much so that Americans find

it rather comfortable to screen themselves
from much of this stuff in the world. I think the
reason those things get noticed in my novels is
that if you write well, you don't make it
possible for people to screen themselves from
those scenes. People can skip the news; they
can skip what they don't want to hear. Bad
news always happens to someone else. Violen-
ce is always happening in another country. But
in a good novel, you really take the reader by
the back of the neck and you say "No, you're
not going to look away from this. I'm going to
make you see what this is like." Therefore,
someone who I think has a naive understanding
of what happens everyday in the world picks up
a novel by me and says, "My God, there's a lot
of violence-in here." I think there's very little
violence in my work compared to how much
violence there is in everyday American lives.
Daily: Do you see the comic sequences in
your books balancing what could be described
as the darker side?
Irving: Other writers I know say over and
over again that the longer you look around you,
the more upper hand the darker side seems to
get. I don't know if it's balance. I think the
balance is a matter of the individual reader's
judgement and individual reader's taste. I think
there are many readers who feel that I am strictly

r


LETTERS TO THE DAILY


0

&e AIttgaun 73a~ll
Edited and managed by students at The UniVersity of Michigan


Protecting life's inherent value

Vol. XCV, No. 27

420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board

Diag days
As many lines close in the dial's center;
So many a thousand actions, once afoot,
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
wW.out defeat.

T IS hard to believe that Shakespeare
didn't spend any sunny afternoons on
the Diag since his words so accurately
describe that special aura about it.
The last few weeks of sunny, cool days
have shown the diag at its best and call
for a humble tribute.
Few campuses have a point of con-
vergence as beautifully engineered as
the Diag. In East Lansing, for instan-
ce, the focal point is more likely to be a
bus stop than the steps of a library.
But in Ann Arbor all roads lead to the
big block. "M". Where else can you run
into someone you haven't seen in three
years?
One travels to different worlds by
simply passing through the Diag.

King in a Burger King" Smock to disco
queen Cindy and Stoney Burke, there is
always someone to heckle or laugh
along with. And because it's so easy to
build a crowd, it is the perfect place to
hold a demonstration. The Diag is a
treasured resource for all who desire a
little dialogue and casual people wat-
ching.
But the Diag is more than the big
crowds and grassy lawns, it creates a
sense of interaction. Whether it is the
sounds of a lone saxophone player cut-
ting the air on a misty night or a
collision with a frenzied frisbeehplayer,
something always causes you to look
up; something always jars the mind
free from books and resumes.

To the Daily:
The purpose of this letter is to
comment on Brian Leiter's
column "Defenders of the asen-
sual lifestyle"(Daily, September
26).
Leiter is correct in stating that
some anti-abortion beliefs are in
fact anti-sex attitudes. Some see
unwanted pregnancy as divine
retribution for extra-marital sex,
or believe that the only purpose of
sex in marriage is procreation.
They hope that "those who play
must pay", and the more
payment the better in order that
sex be given a smaller role in
today's society.
Leiter is mistaken when he
identifies this anti-sex contingent
with the "extreme" position of an
anti-abortion law without an ex-
ception for rape. Since women
who conceive in rape don't cone
sent to or enjoy the act, there is
no sin for which pregnancy is ap-
propriate punishment. It is
pregnancy as punishment to in-
still the proper sense of regret
that the anti-sex crowd wants;
that purpose unserved in a rape
victim, she may have her abor-
tion. The true pro-lifer is less
likely to approve of an exception
because the value of fetal
life-the basis for his anti-abor-
tion stance-cannot be lessened
by the nature of the conceiving
sex. It is strange that those so ex-
treme as to use the lives of
children as a way to punish sex
would have the more

has no value. Furthermore, to
have value a life must also have
"cognitive and emotional ex-
periences familiar to us."
Without those sensual experien-
ces and cognitive and emotional
activities, the life has no value
and may be terminated if it so
much as hinders (his word)
anybody's life ("mother, mate,
etc.").
The acceptance of Leiter's
ideas would lead to the ending of
life that is now protected.
Newborns, the retarded, the
emotionally disturbed,
schizophrenics., the senile all have
cognitive and emotional ac-
tivities unfamilar to Leiter and
the reader. Would the lives in
these groups have any value in
Leiter's mind? Furthermore, if
the criterion of "familar
cognitive and emotional ac-
tivities" was defined broadly
enough to include the above
groups, could it avoid including
some species of animals? I don't
pose these problems tongue-in-
cheek. Leiter's ideas closely
resemble Prof. Michael Tooley's
(an "organism possesses a
serious right to life only if it
possesses a concept of self as a
continuing subject of experiences
and other mental states").
Tooley is led to deny any moral
obstruction to abortion or infan-

ticide but admits some animals
may deserve protection equal to
adult Homo sapiens. The
reader can decide if these results
would be contrary to his moral
standards.
Also, Leiter seems to think that
his second element, sensual ex-
periences, defines the fetal life as
valueless so that it 'may be
morally ended at whim. Even
accepting his ideas on life's
value, that result is not reached.
Suppose a person falls into a
coma, with a decent chance of
recovery. He has ceased to sen-
sually experience the world, and
has no cognitive and emotional
activities. Even accepting
Leiter's definition of value, it in-
tuitively seems absurd to say that
we can now end this person's life.
One could substitute "sleep" for
"coma" for a more dramatic
resulting problem.
The answer is one we know
without saying. A comatose per-
son living a presently worthless
existence may someday awaken

to lead a worthwhile existence
just like us. The value of a life
presently worthless is the chance
it may have worth in the future.
Fetal life will probably have a
worthwhile life if the pregnancy
is carried to term. Therefore,
like the hypothetical comatose
person, it presently has some
value even in Leiter's value
system. Leiter's attempt to show
that fetal life has no value fails;
he must look to other reasons to
support his conclusions that abor-
tion is always morally justified.
Those reasons may exist. This
letter is far from any sort of
position paper on one of the moral
dilemmas of our time. Its pur-
pose is to show the reader how the
principles that support either
position- are sometimes without
firm basis at all. It is to en-
courage the thoughtful reader to
apply logic and personal morality
to the concepts on either side, so
they might arrive at a truly prin-
cipled stand.

- Gregory Bueche
October 2

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Board.

BLOOM COUNTY

by Berke -Breathed