For No Reason: A Plea for Your Thoughts on John Irving

OK, here is a sign of how far afield things get, but whatever. I was reading a particular book and it mentioned an author who was very much beloved, by me, in my ghastly misspent youth. That writer is John Irving, about whom I hadn't thought seriously for years until like three weeks ago when I read two or three pages at my soon to be ex-job while I was standing around doing nothing, from the Pension Grillparzer part of Garp. So anyway, now you see what the topic is, and here I ask:

What do we think of John Irving? The reference to him in that book I am reading now was majorly slighting, if that makes sense; the Times called his most recent book "bloated and lugubrious" but seemed to view this as a too-bad falling off of Garp's creator (Their review of Garp is all about tone and, for the Times, strangely void of a real critical stance). And weirdest, his admiring wikipedia page HAS A CHART LISTING COMMON WEIRDNESSES IN HIS BOOKS, with check marks for what book has what. New England, Prostitutes, Wrestling, Bears, Vienna, Bears, Deadly Accidents, and Sexual Variations (the Variations are, helpfully?, named). Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire are the ones, incidentally, that hit the octfecta. That seems like something that would get done for, say, pulp writers, rather than the sort of guys who get tapped to review the new Gunter Grass memoir.

I hope this doesn't sound hopelessly snobbish or pigeonholeminded, especially since a good chunk of it is based on the discrepancy between what seems to be reported (middlebrowish) and what I remember from eighth grade (cool). I don't think it is; Pierre Bayard says, "we never talk about a book unto itself...[each book and its associated books] serves as a temporary symbol for a complete conception of culture." (Bayard, op.cit, 73) So help me out, if you will: how should this guy fit into our symbol for a complete conception of culture?

Will anyone, will I, ever write here about poor dear Timofey Pnin? Who knows? More on something in the coming days.