John Irving Quote
The night she died, Dan found her propped up in her hospital bed; she appeared to have fallen asleep with the TV on and with the remote-control device held in her hand in such a way that the channels kept changing. But she was dead, not asleep, and her cold thumb had simply attached itself to the button that restlessly roamed the channels—looking for something good. At the time, in 1989, it seemed a fairly unusual way to die. Nowadays, I suspect, more and more people are dropping off that way. And we’re still looking for something good on television. We won’t find it. There’s precious little on TV that can keep us awake or alive. Ever the prophet, Owen Meany was right about television, too.
The night she died, Dan found her propped up in her hospital bed; she appeared to have fallen asleep with the TV on and with the remote-control device held in her hand in such a way that the channels kept changing. But she was dead, not asleep, and her cold thumb had simply attached itself to the button that restlessly roamed the channels—looking for something good. At the time, in 1989, it seemed a fairly unusual way to die. Nowadays, I suspect, more and more people are dropping off that way. And we’re still looking for something good on television. We won’t find it. There’s precious little on TV that can keep us awake or alive. Ever the prophet, Owen Meany was right about television, too.
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About John Irving
Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of his fourth novel The World According to Garp in 1978. Many of Irving's novels, including The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), The Cider House Rules (1985), A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), and A Widow for One Year (1998), have been bestsellers. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 72nd Academy Awards in 2000 for his script of the film adaptation of The Cider House Rules.
Five of his novels have been fully or partially adapted into the films The World According to Garp (1982), The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Simon Birch (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999), and The Door in the Floor (2004). Several of Irving's books and short stories have been set in and around New England, in fictional towns resembling Exeter, New Hampshire.