John Irving is an American-Canadian author well known for his novels, which are large stories about family, sexuality, relationships, and somehow always bears. According to Terrence Du Pres on Irving's website, "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 disrupt, often fatally. Life, in Irving’s fiction, is always under siege. Harm and disarray are daily fare, as if the course of love could not run true. As if existence were governed by caprice and mockery, by the perverse power of some yet-to-be-charted tenth planet; and if a sign or emblem were wanted for this new ruler of the zodiac, there is no doubt, in Irving’s universe, what name and shape it would take."