GARP

This is John Irving. John never knew his father, due to the fact that his mother was not married at the time of his birth, and this has influenced a lot of his works. In 1978 he wrote his first best-seller, "The World According to Garp", which is a book about a man named T.S. Garp (Technical Sergeant). He is named after his father, who was a Technical Sergeant, and who got parts of shrapnel in his brains during the Second World War, and who is reduced to something resembling a vegetable, unable to take care of himself. The only word he can pronounce is his own name "Garp". In the first chapter of the book we get to know how Garp's mother (who is a nurse) decides to get pregnant with this man, since she does not want a husband, just because she wants a child. Irving claims that this is not a selfbiography, but, well... basically when authors claim that their works aren't selfbiographies, it just confirmes the whole theory.

He wrote Helen that "a part of adolescence is feeling that there's no one else around you who's enough like yourself to understand you." - The World According to Garp, ch. 5

John Irving is still alive today, and he is working on a new novel as we speak. One might say that Irving had some kind of difficult childhood, not knowing who his father was and all that, and a great deal of his characters don't know who one or more of their parents are.

The easiest thing in the world is to write about something close to you, the tricky part is to write about things you have no knowledge of.

Well, most people choose not to write at all, and most of the good authors write about things close to you, Irving is no exception. That does not make him a bad writer, just a normal one. Not having to look up every fact while you write is definetly a good sign and it doesn't complicate the whole writing process more than necessary.

It's by the way always fun to write about sex, and Irving does that a lot. Either he has had some pretty weird experiences or his imagination is just abnormally good.

Or both.