“John Irving, it is abundantly clear, is a true artist.”— Los Angeles Times Fred "Bogus" Trumper has troubles. A divorced, broke graduate student of Old Norse in 1970s New York, Trumper is a wayward knight-errant in the battle of the sexes and the pursuit of happiness: His ex-wife has moved in with his childhood best friend, his life is the subject of a tell-all movie, and his chronic urinary tract infection requires surgery.  Trumper is determined to change. There's only one problem: it seems the harder he tries to alter his adolescent ways, the more he is drawn to repeating the mistakes of the past. . . . Written when Irving was twenty-nine, Trumper's tale of woe is told with all the wit and humor that would become Irving's trademark. “Three or four times as funny as most novels.” — The New Yorker Praise for The Water-Method Man “Friendship, marriage, and family are his primary themes, but at that blundering level of life where mishap and folly—something close to joyful malice—perpetually intrude and distrupt, often fatally. Life, in [John] Irving's fiction, is always under siege. Harm and disarray are daily fare, as if the course of love could not run true. . . . Irving's multiple manner . . . his will to come at the world from different directions, is one of the outstandint traits of The World According to Garp, but this remarkable flair for . . . stories inside stories . . . isalready handled with mastery . . . and with a freedom almost wanton in The Water-Method Man  [which is Garp's predecessor by six years].” —Terrence Des Pres “Brutal reality and hallucination, comedy and pathos. A rich, unified tapestry.” — Time “Three or four times as funny as most novels.” — The New Yorker “John Irving, it is abundantly clear, is a true artist. He is not afraid to take on great themes.” — Los Angeles Times “Friendship, marriage, and family are his primary themes, but at that blundering level of life where mishap and folly—something close to joyful malice—perpetually intrude and distrupt, often fatally. Life, in [John] Irving's fiction, is always under siege. Harm and disarray are daily fare, as if the course of love could not run true. . . . Irving's multiple manner . . . his will to come at the world from different directions, is one of the outstandint traits of  The World According to Garp,  but this remarkable flair for . . . stories inside stories . . . isalready handled with mastery . . . and with a freedom almost wanton in  The Water-Method Man  [which is Garp's predecessor by six years].” —Terrence Des Pres “Brutal reality and hallucination, comedy and pathos. A rich, unified tapestry.” — Time The main character of John Irving's second novel, written when the author was twenty-nine, is a perpetual graduate student with a birth defect in his urinary tract--and a man on the threshold of committing himself to a second marriage that bears remarkable resemblance to his first.... "Three or four times as funny as most novels." THE NEW YORKER From the Paperback edition. The main character of John Irving's second novel, written when the author was twenty-nine, is a perpetual graduate student with a birth defect in his urinary tract--and a man on the threshold of committing himself to a second marriage that bears remarkable resemblance to his first.... "Three or four times as funny as most novels." THE NEW YORKER "From the Paperback edition. John Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times—winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp . In 1992, Mr. Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules —a film with seven Academy Award nominations. 1 Yogurt & Lots of Water Her gynecologist recommended him to me. Ironic: the best urologist in New York is French. Dr. Jean Claude Vigneron: ONLY BY APPOINTMENT. So I made one. “You like New York better than Paris?” I asked. “In Paris, I dared to keep a car.” “My father is a urologist, too.” “Then he must be a second-rate one,” Vigneron said, “if he didn’t know what was wrong with you.” “It’s nonspecific,” I said. I knew the history of my ailment well. “Sometimes it’s nonspecific urethritis, once it was nonspecific prostatitis. Another time, I had the clap—but that’s a different story. Once it was just a common germ. But always, nonspecific.” “It looks very specific to me,” Vigneron said. “No,” I said. “Sometimes it responds to penicillin, sometimes sulfa does the trick. Once, Furadantin cured it.” “There, you see?” he said. “Urethritis and prostatitis don’t respond to Furadantin.” “Well, there,” I said, “you see? It was something else that time. Nonspecific.” “Specific,” Vigneron said. “You can’t get much more specific than the urinary tract.” He showed me. On his examination table I tried to be calm. He handed me a perfect plastic breast, as lovely a one as I’ve seen: realis