Of the novel with manic haste the narrator's homosexual brother sleeps with a dressmaker's dummy toilets explode: Anything for a laugh.īut these warmhearted hijinks are deceptive. Midgets, dwarfs and performing bears race in and out ''The Hotel New Hampshire,'' the story of an eccentric family that sets up house in various unlikely hotels here and abroad, isĪ hectic gaudy saga with the verve of a Marx Brothers movie one can see those old words ''antic'' and ''zany'' emblazoned on the marquee. In the face of this anxiety, Irving has decided to charm and entertain his readers - with a vengeance. One can hardly avoid detecting in Lilly's complaint a certain defe nsiveness on her creator's part. Given the vast attention now concentrated on his career, Writer like Garp, who was always brooding over his reviews, his audience and his artistic integrity, he has clearly thought about theperils and demands of the literary vocation. Wealth and fame can't guarantee one's literary future indeed, they can have a disorienting effect, as the young F. Made him America's newest literary celebrity. ''And the one after that will have to be even bigger.'' A familiar problem for novelists fortunate enough to have an audience, but even more so for Irving, whose ''The World According to Garp'' ''MY God, the next book has got to be bigger than the first,'' laments Lilly Berry, the suddenly successful writer in the family John Irving has conjured up in ''The Hotel New Hampshire.'' Section 7, Column 1 Book Review Deskīy JAMES ATLAS James Atlas is an associate editor of The Atlantic Monthly September 13, 1981, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
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