With such successes as The World According to Garp, A Prayer For Owen Meany, and The Cider House Rules to his name, John Irving is one of the most beloved novelists of our time. Last week he appeared at IFOA XXX to promote his twelfth novel, Last Night in Twisted River. (You can listen to the early part of the event via The Globe and Mail’s podcast.)

At first, Irving spoke about his writing process, which always begins with him figuring out the final sentence of his intended novel. Only then, he explained, can he know where to start. For two decades, Irving struggled to find the closing words of Twisted River. When he had them at last, he was able to craft the book with unprecedented speed. Irving started writing in 2005, and delivered the manuscript to his publisher just over a year ago — a furious pace by his standards.

Irving read the novel’s opening passages, then sat down with CTV host Seamus O’Regan for a fascinating discussion. O’Regan quoted a passage from Twisted River wherein the protagonist, a renowned writer named Daniel Baciagalupo, laments the propensity of readers to search his novels for evidence of autobiography. O’Regan likewise lamented that this put him in the awkward position of recognizing autobiographical elements in Twisted River, but feeling reluctant to explore them. Irving jokingly threw his interviewer a lifeline when he admitted that Kurt Vonnegut, in scenes from the book, repeats the same advice to Danny at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop that he once gave Irving, in reality, at the same institution.

During the audience Q&A session that followed, a high school English teacher asked Irving how he feels about his work being taught in schools. The author confessed to mixed feelings. Many of his favourite books are those that he first read in school, he said, and so he likes that students will be exposed to his work. But there were other books (e.g. Faulkner canon), he continued, that he was made to read when he wasn’t ready for them, and so he hates the idea of students being forced to slog through his novels if they don’t enjoy them. “Teach the books,” Irving instructed his questioner, “but make sure your students know I’m not the one forcing them to read them.”

Later, Irving related an amusing anecdote about Charlton Heston’s arrival at a Planned Parenthood benefit screening of The Cider House Rules, the 1999 film based on his abortion-themed novel. No one would sit with Heston, fearing he was a right-wing zealot, but the writer knew better. “The Planned Parenthood people assumed that because he was a big gun-rights guy, he must be pro-life — when actually, and I’ll bet you didn’t know this, he was as staunchly pro-choice as he was pro-gun. His entire political philosophy was, ‘Don’t you tell me what to do!’”

All in all, a very enjoyable evening with one of America’s most celebrated storytellers.