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Trying to Save Piggy Sneed: 20th Anniversary Edition
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Arcade 2016
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A commemorative hardcover edition of the only collection ever published of the celebrated novelist's shorter works.
Here is a treat for devoted fans of John Irving. First published twenty years ago, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by the author, beginning with three memoirs. The longest of the memoirs is "The Imaginary Girlfriend," his candid account of his twin careers in writing and wrestling, which, as the Denver Post observed, is filled "with anecdotes that are every bit as hilarious as the antics in his novels . . . [and] combines the lessons of both obsessions."
The middle portion of the book is fiction. Over a career that spans thirteen novels, these are the six stories that Mr. Irving considers finished. Among them is "Interior Space," for which he won the O. Henry Award. In the third and final section are three homages: one to Günter Grass and two to Charles Dickens. To each of the twelve pieces, he has contributed author's notes, which provide some perspective on the circumstances surrounding the writing of each piece. For readers who prefer a hardcover, this commemorative edition is a book to treasure. For new readers, it is a perfect introduction to the author of works as moving and mischievous as The World According to Garp,A Prayer for Owen Meany, and In One Person.
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
02/02/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781628726282
ASIN:
B017WS32SE
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APA Citation (style guide)

John Irving. (2016). Trying to Save Piggy Sneed: 20th Anniversary Edition. Arcade.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

John Irving. 2016. Trying to Save Piggy Sneed: 20th Anniversary Edition. Arcade.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

John Irving, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed: 20th Anniversary Edition. Arcade, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

John Irving. Trying to Save Piggy Sneed: 20th Anniversary Edition. Arcade, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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      • role: Author
      • fileAs: Irving, John
      • bioText: John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942. His first novel, Setting Free the Bears, was published in 1968, when he was twenty-six. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, and coached wrestling until he was forty-seven. Mr. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for his novel The World According to Garp. He received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for his short story "Interior Space." In 2000, Mr. Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules. In 2013, he won a Lambda Literary Award for his novel In One Person. An international writer—his novels have been translated into more than thirty-five languages—John Irving lives in Toronto. His all-time best-selling novel, in every language, is A Prayer for Owen Meany.
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publishDate
2016-02-02T00:00:00-05:00
isOwnedByCollections
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title
Trying to Save Piggy Sneed: 20th Anniversary Edition
fullDescription
A commemorative hardcover edition of the only collection ever published of the celebrated novelist's shorter works.
Here is a treat for devoted fans of John Irving. First published twenty years ago, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by the author, beginning with three memoirs. The longest of the memoirs is "The Imaginary Girlfriend," his candid account of his twin careers in writing and wrestling, which, as the Denver Post observed, is filled "with anecdotes that are every bit as hilarious as the antics in his novels . . . [and] combines the lessons of both obsessions."
The middle portion of the book is fiction. Over a career that spans thirteen novels, these are the six stories that Mr. Irving considers finished. Among them is "Interior Space," for which he won the O. Henry Award. In the third and final section are three homages: one to Günter Grass and two to Charles Dickens. To each of the twelve pieces, he has contributed author's notes, which provide some perspective on the circumstances surrounding the writing of each piece. For readers who prefer a hardcover, this commemorative edition is a book to treasure. For new readers, it is a perfect introduction to the author of works as moving and mischievous as The World According to Garp,A Prayer for Owen Meany, and In One Person.
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Denver Post
      • content:

        "A rich, wonderful, and diverse look at the creative mind of one of America's most imaginative and passionate novelists."

      • premium: False
      • source: New York Times Book Review
      • content: “Supple and energetic as a stylist, Mr. Irving also knows just how to create in the reader's mind a vivid impression of an existing world--and just how to populate it."
      • premium: False
      • source: Detroit News/Free Press
      • content: [This] affable collection of fiction and nonfiction is never less than opinionated."
      • premium: False
      • source: Newsday
      • content: "The essays on himself and other writers make the book valuable, for they tell us a great deal about Irving's view of fiction."
      • premium: False
      • source: Publishers Weekly
      • content: "Irving proves himself, once again, a garrulous and engaging raconteur."
      • premium: False
      • source: USA
        Today
      • content: "Candid . . . colorful . . . Those who have followed John Irving's writing career will delight in his newest, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed. . . . Readers will leave this book feeling as if they have had a terrific conversation with Irving about why he writes and how he goes about it."
      • premium: False
      • source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
      • content: "[This] newest book is a first for Irving: a collection of memoirs, short fiction, and essays. Trying to Save Piggy Sneed features tributes to Dickens and Günter Grass, whose novels percolate with a political and moral courage Irving admires. It also includes six short stories, a form Irving doesn't claim as his own. Reminiscences round out the collection, from his caustic recollections of an awkward dinner with former President Reagan to the title piece, in which the death of his town's garbage collector symbolically sparked the teenage Irving's desire to write."
      • premium: False
      • source: Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer
      • content: "These pieces are worth saving and savoring. . . . Trying to Save Piggy Sneed is a welcome oasis on the long desert passage leading to John Irving's next novel."
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        January 29, 1996
        Irving proves himself, once again, a garrulous and engaging raconteur in this collection of fiction and nonfiction divided into three sections: Memoirs, Fiction and Homage. In the last, while admiring the work of Gunter Grass, he notes that ``Grass is never so insecure as to be polite.'' Given Irving's fascination with the malfunctioning or assaulted human body, one can't help feeling that he's defending his own work--both acne (in the story, ``Brennbar's Rant'') and genital warts (the O. Henry Prize-winning ``Interior Space'') figure in these pages. Sometimes, however, Irving's grotesquerie lacks the compassion with which his favorite writer, Dickens, moderated his caricatures. In the title essay (in which Irving relates his discovery of the powers of fiction-making), Piggy Sneed, the retarded garbage collector and pig farmer whose disappearance stimulates Irving's imagination, is harshly ridiculed: Sneed ``smelled worse than any man I ever smelled--with the possible exception of a dead man I caught the scent of, once, in Istanbul.'' There are other, more engaging pieces: an amusing account of a dinner at the Reagan White House; an early, sentimental story, ``Weary Kingdom,'' about a lonely woman; and, best of all, ``The Imaginary Girlfriend,'' a rambling autobiographical sketch with a heavy emphasis on the mentors and rivals who shaped Irving's defining obsessions--wrestling and writing. Each of the 12 sections is followed by ``Author's Notes''; ``The Imaginary Girlfriend'' is supplemented with personal photographs (not seen by PW). 150,000 first printing; BOMC selection; author tour.

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shortDescription
A commemorative hardcover edition of the only collection ever published of the celebrated novelist's shorter works.
Here is a treat for devoted fans of John Irving. First published twenty years ago, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by the author, beginning with three memoirs. The longest of the memoirs is "The Imaginary Girlfriend," his candid account of his twin careers in writing and wrestling, which, as the Denver Post observed, is filled "with anecdotes that are every bit as hilarious as the antics in his novels . . . [and] combines the lessons of both obsessions."
The middle portion of the book is fiction. Over a career that spans thirteen novels, these are the six stories that Mr. Irving considers finished. Among them is "Interior Space," for which he won the O. Henry Award. In the third and final section are three homages: one to Günter Grass and two to Charles Dickens. To each of the twelve pieces, he has contributed...
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