Syd Allan: My Review of the novel The Fourth Hand, by John Irving www.jagular.com/fourthhand.shtml November, 2001

     This is not really a proper book review, and I am not qualified as a literary critic. It is really just an essay in which I say a few things about the novelist John Irving, and his novel The Fourth Hand.

     I will say up front, for those of you aren't going to read the rest of this page, that John Irving is one of my favorite authors, that his novels A Prayer For Owen Meaney and The World According To Garp are among my favorite books, and that I really enjoyed The Fourth Hand.

     I have read everything I can find which has been written by my three favorite authors: John Irving, Robertson Davies and Charles Dickens. The list of my favorite 30 novels, which includes In The Skin Of A Lion by Michael Ondaatje (which I much prefer to The English Patient, a novel featured in The Fourth Hand), and Keel Kissing Bottom by Elizabeth de Freitas, is mostly made up of books by these three authors (with a few hundred pages of Stephen Leacock thrown in for comic relief). John Irving's latest novel, The Fourth Hand, has definitely made it onto this list.

     One of the things you notice when you read John Irving's books, is that he has a steadily growing list of personal interests, and a steadily expanding circle of knowledge about interesting topics, which includes:

• wrestling
• New England
• private boarding schools
• Austria
• medicine
• book publishing, and media in general
• Indian circuses

     I suppose that some readers might find it distracting that so many of John Irving's (I refuse to refer to him as Irving, as so many people do when they write about others, and which John Irving himself does in The Fourth Hand of his main characters, because I myself do not like to referred to as Allan) characters wrestled at their boarding school, and then travelled to Austria, but I enjoy the fact that these subjects keep coming up in his books. The thing which I really notice about John Irving's stories, is that you get to learn a lot about whatever topic it is that he has decided to write about, and which you realize that he himself has been learning about over the past few years. I now know far more about abortions (Cider House Rules) and Indian circuses (A Son of the Circus) than I would ever have imagined knowing, and I am glad that I do.

     I suspect that a lot has been written about the women in John Irving's novels. There are personality traits, and physical characteristics, which recur often enough to catch your attention if you have read several of his books. I have no idea whether these women resemble his wife (a proper book review would be sprinkled with biographical information about John Irving, including a description of his wife (wives?), but this is not a proper review, and I have found that I can enjoy his books very much without having to know about his movie deals, or how many children he has), or his past girlfriends, or his mother. I recognize that women are not usually the main characters in his stories (although A Widow For One Year, and The World According To Garp feature women, and strong and interesting women always play important roles in John Irving's stories), and I am sure that there are people who have something to say about that, and I suppose that there are things about women's personalities which John Irving does not understand. None of this bothers me, because I like the women in his books.

     Here is why I like John Irving's novels:

• they are smart

• they are funny

• the word usage and sentence structure are sophisticated, without being pedantic (this reminds me very much of Robertson Davies, with whom John Irving had a friendship for many years)

• there are always several compelling stories, with interesting details, interwoven together in an interesting way; any of the stories, or any of the 4 or 5 main characters, could easily fill a novel on their own, and so when you put them all together, you get something which is very rich (The World According To Garp was especially good in this regard)

• the sexual thoughts and sexual habits of the characters seem real, as opposed to being written to underplay, or over-emphasize, the sexual aspects of their lives, and it is clear that John Irving likes sex, and that he is not embarrassed to write about it (he even wrote a very good story about an adult brother and his adult sister having an incestuous relationship in The Hotel New Hampshire)

     But enough pre-amble; on to The Fourth Hand.

     The first things that you might want me to tell you, are, what is this book about, and what does the story really mean?

     My answer to the first question will not likely satisfy you: The Fourth Hand is about the same thing that all of John Irving's books are about -- interesting people with odd little eccentricities interact with each other in compelling ways that remind you of things in your own life. Along the way, you learn something about their various occupations, and the places to which they travel. That's pretty well it.

     But perhaps I should try a little harder to describe the story in more conventional terms. The main character of this story is Patrick Wallingford, an attractive, middle-aged journalist who works for a CNN-like television news organization. One day, while doing an on-camera report from a circus in India, Patrick's left hand is bitten off by a lion. The images of the incident are broadcast repeatedly all over the world, and Patrick becomes known around the world as "the lion guy." Several years later, hand-surgeon Dr. Nicholas Zajac offers to give Patrick a new hand, if they can find a donor. A woman in Wisconsin, Doris Clausen, convinces her husband Otto to sign a document which pledges his own hand to Patrick in the event of Otto's death. When Otto later dies in an accident, Doris Clausen immediately contacts Dr. Zajac, and offers her late husband's hand. As a condition of her offer, she asks for visitation rights with the hand -- meaning that she will be visiting Patrick Wallingford. The rest of the story concerns events in Patrick's life, including his relationships with several different women, events in Dr. Zajac's life, including his relationships with his son, and his housekeeper, and the relationship between Patrick and Doris Clausen.

     John Irving has a way of writing about relationships, and about his characters' thoughts and feelings, which is very compelling, and which resonates strongly in my mind when I read his stories. What else can I say? I like these people, and I enjoyed finding out what happened to them.

     I am not sure if I can give a satisfactory answer to the second question -- what does the story mean.

     I do not know what this story means any more than I know what any of his other stories mean. The question implies that John Irving is trying to offer us his philosophy of life in his novels. The English literature professors of the world have convinced most of us that we must know what every story really means, and that we must demonstrate our understanding of that meaning by writing insightful answers to examination questions, but, fortunately, I did not read this book under the direction of an English literature professor, and so I don't have to answer questions about what someone else thinks I should be getting out of the story. I don't read John Irving's novels (or anyone else's, for that matter) in order to get his philosophy of life. I read them because I want to meet some interesting people, and to learn something about what they know. I have imagined talking to John Irving about this (I am sure that he is a very cool guy to talk to), and hearing him say "Why do my stories have to mean something? Why can't they just be good stories?"

     I don't know what the story means, but I did end up thinking about a few things while I was reading it. For me, the best part of reading fiction is often the time I spend staring out the window, thinking about some issue or idea which came into my mind while I was reading. Here are some of the things I thought about while I was reading The Fourth Hand.

• Most of us, despite any outward appearances to the contrary, are missing something. One of the main themes of this book is to examine the various types of things that are missing in the characters' lives.

• Many of us have recurring dreams, sometimes of the nighttime, and sometimes of the daytime, variety. Those dreams can motivate us to do different things, but sometimes dreams come true, either exactly as we imagined them, or with interesting variations from what we expected. The role of dreams, and the fulfillment of dreams, is another important theme in this story.

• Another important theme is that of ending and beginning. The losing, and re-gaining, and losing again of Patrick's hand is a good metaphor for other things which end, and begin. Sometimes it is the ending of one thing that makes way for the new thing to come, and sometimes things are not timed well at all, and we lose something long before we see anything else begin. We are reminded though that even when important things in our lives end, that doesn't have to mean that nothing good will ever happen to us again. This particular theme had a strong impact on me personally as I read the story, and I was reminded that I should focus less of my attention on things which have ended in my life, and more on recognizing new things which are beginning. This theme is probably the reason why I was particularly receptive to this story at this time in my life.

• Patrick Wallingford's employer is a tabloid television news network. The superficial nature of many of the news stories they cover, and the superficial nature of some of the relationships in this story, made me think about other things in life in which style is emphasized over substance. Patrick's love of Mrs. Clausen, despite the fact that she was not obviously beautiful like the dozens of other women who Patrick could have spent time with, was very satisfying for me to read about, because it reassured me that in the end, it is usually substance that really matters.

• Patrick Wallingford has a public image as a newsman, and as the "lion guy." This image is not the "real" Patrick Wallingford who we come to know in the story, and this reminds the reader that people are more complex than their public persona would usually suggest. I expect that this theme is close to John Irving's heart, because he himself will have a public image which, undoubtedly, differs from the John Irving that his friends and family know.

• In this novel, as with several of John Irving's other ones, the men are remarkably good at knowing how to get laid. Even when they are not really into it, they seem to be able to pick up women in hotels, at the office, at the gym, and wherever else they go. I would love to talk to him about this. Am I the only man who has no idea what you have to do to meet a woman and then take her home?

• Patrick Wallingford is described as being pretty irresistible to the opposite sex, and he ends up in bed with several different types of women. I liked these women, but I don't understand the first thing about women, and so I am not sure that I can really say anything intelligent about how their various personalities fit into this story. They all provoked plenty of staring out the window for me, but I didn't come up with anything that is going to help me, or anyone else. Despite John Irving's insights and examples, I know as little about women now as I did before I read this book.

• Most of us would be better off if we spent more time reading real literature, by authors like John Irving, and Charles Dickens, and less time reading bestseller pop-fiction by John Grisham and Michael Chrichton and Sue Grafton and so on. I know that the sort of light fiction written by authors like these is popular, but, forgive me for saying so, the stuff they write is crap.

     If John Irving was trying to send us a message with this story, then perhaps the message was that when something important in your life ends, there is still the hope that something equally good will begin (I can only hope that he is right), and that we will all be happier if we emphasize substance over style in our work and our relationships. And to tie these themes together, perhaps he is telling us that when we do emphasize substance over style, the new things in our lives will come sooner, and be better, and last longer, than they would otherwise. Maybe that is what the story means.

     There is an element of the novel of which I'm sure much will be made by the English literature professors, but I am not sure what it means: the use of the books The English Patient, Stuart Little, and Charlotte's Web in the story. I can understand that Charlotte's Web contributes to the theme of loss and renewal, but I am not sure exactly why the other two books were used. I suppose it is possible that they are simply good stories which John Irving likes, but a more careful analysis would probably reveal how all three books contribute to the themes which arise in The Fourth Hand. Thank goodness I am not studying this book in English class, or I would probably have to write 2,000 words on that topic.

     While reading The Fourth Hand, I watched the 1971 film Harold and Maude, and then went on the Internet to search for information about the film. There are a lot of discussion groups and web pages dedicated to discussing Harold and Maude. It seems that I am one of the few adults over 30 years of age who had not seen this movie. The thing that really struck me, as I watched it, is how much the characters reminded me of characters in John Irving's novels. Harold, his mother, the three girls which Harold's mother brings into their home, Maude, the "suicides", the hearses -- all of these things seem like something out of The Hotel New Hampshire, or The World According To Garp, or A Prayer For Owen Meaney, or Cider House Rules, or Setting Free The Bears, or almost any of his other stories. If you like the characters in Harold and Maude, then I am sure that you will like John Irving's novels (and vice-versa).