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I first became interested in John Irving with A Prayer for Owen Meany in high school. I must have purchased Garp somewhere along the way since then, most likely at Syracuse. Irving's liberal use of semicolons led to one of my first major transformations as a writer. (Read: I started to use a lot of semicolons, which has since subsided.)
In the Owen Meany English class in school, I post-scripted a letter to the author (for a class assignment) with, "You use a lot of semi-colons." When Irving responded a couple months later, he didn't comment on my statement, but I am sure he nodded in agreement, and then tucked my letter beneath his pillow, where it remains to this day.
This is a classic, and twenty-or-so pages in, I am already hooked.
