Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John
Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr.
Irving's dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The
longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend, is the core of this
collection.
The middle section of the book is fiction. Since the publication of his
first novel, Setting Free the Bears, in 1968, John Irving has written
12 more novels but only half a dozen stories that he considers finished:
they are all published here, including Interiors, which won the O. Henry
Award. In the third and final section are three essays of appreciation:
one on Günter Grass, two on Charles Dickens.
To each of the 12 pieces, Mr. Irving has contributed his Author's Notes.
These notes provide some perspective on the circumstances surrounding
the writing of each piece--for example, an election-year diary of the
Bush-Clinton campaigns accompanies Mr. Irving's memoir of his dinner
with President Reagan; and the notes to one of his short stories explain
that the story was presented and sold to Playboy as the work of a
woman.
Trying to Save Piggy Sneed is both as moving and as mischievous as
readers would expect from the author of The World According to Garp,
The Cider House Rules, A Prayer of Owen Meany, A Widow for One Year,
and In One Person. And Mr. Irving's concise autobiography, The
Imaginary Girlfriend, is both a work of the utmost literary
accomplishment and a paradigm for living.
