©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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![[Trying To Save Piggy Sneed]]( ../images/tryingtosavepiggysneed.gif)
Gathered together in Trying to Save Piggy Sneed are 12 short works written by novelist John Irving over the last 30 years. The big surprise here is that the six stories, which make up its middle section, are the least interesting part of an interesting book. Still, these stories comprise the sum total of Irving's published short fiction, so even the ugliest duckling among them is, if not a swan, at least, well, an unusual duck.
"Amateurish," Irving writes with disarming candor about the ungainliest of these pieces in his "Author's Notes" (these notes, by the way, are among the consistent pleasures of Piggy Sneed). And so it is. But we should thank the publisher, who convinced Irving to include the story, because it shows by contrast the craft and cunning-and moral vision as well-that go into the seemingly effortless storytelling of Irving's novels and such stories as "The Pension Grillparzer," also collected here. "Grillparzer," of course, is a story within the story of Irving's hugely successful novel, The World According to Garp. "I never worked as hard on a story, before or since," Irving remembers here, and that hard work has paid off. For even without the superstructure of the larger work, this story resonates and is worth a second look.
Of course, Irving has never claimed the short story as his form, preferring instead the broader reach of the novel. Nor, I think, would he claim to be a critic. But the three "Homages"-two on Charles Dickens and one on the great German novelist Günther Grass-and the notes (which sometimes exceed in length and energy the pieces they comment on) that make up the book's final section are interesting both in what they have to say about Dickens and Grass and in what they reveal about Irving's tastes and sensibilities-that he admires writers who have political and moral courage and that he thinks "Great Expectations has the most wonderful and most perfectly worked out plot for a novel in the English language," for example.
But by far the most interesting and enjoyable section of Piggy Sneed is its first section, which is comprised of three memoirs. "All memoirs are false," Irving warns at the outset of the book's title piece, and readers hoping for a keyhole peep into the dark closets of Irving's soul will be sorely disappointed. Instead Irving offers himself in a more indirect and, I think, a more deeply satisfying way-through narrative.
In "Trying to Save Piggy Sneed," for example, Irving tells a story about his grandmother, the thoughtless cruelty of young boys (himself among them), and the ludicrous characters who populate small-town life. In the end, all at once and with barely a word of self-analysis from the author, we suddenly understand the origins of one the most compelling features of Irving's fiction-its mischievous and energetic mix of the ridiculous and the tragic.
So too in the book's longest piece, a memoir purportedly about Irving's career as a wrestler and a wrestling coach. Here are the details of Irving's formative years as a wrestler and a writer (and, as Irving makes clear, the two are linked in significant ways). These are important details; they add to our understanding of Irving's life and development. But what's best about this memoir is that Irving, fine storyteller that he is, somehow sidesteps the limelight. What this piece is really about is mentorship and friendship and the feelings Irving carries for those who have helped him make his way. It is but another display of the wide and generous spirit that powers the best of Irving's fiction.
Alden Mudge is on the staff of the California Council for the Humanities.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.