I just finished reading John Irving’s The Fourth Hand. While it is worth noting that I have previously read both The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany, found each to be better than The Fourth Hand, and recommend that you read both, The Fourth Hand is especially significant today--two days after the Virginia Tech shooting. The Fourth Hand is a story that follows a cad of a television field reporter who loses his left hand to an Indian circus lion while on an assignment. The reporter, Patrick Wallingford, later falls in love with the widow of his hand transplant donor. The book has fewer layers than Garp or A Prayer for Owen Meany, and is without the adroit literary architecture present in most of Irving’s work. However, its commentary on the era of sensationalist ‘all-news-networks’ and their exploitation of national tragedies is particularly pertinent this week.The following is from a Facebook group, posted by a news outlet on Monday:"Hi everyone. My name is Karen Park. I am working with Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) in New York City. We are looking for (korean) people from VT who knew Mr. Cho personally, had a class with him, was his roommate in previous years, etc…We would also like to know if anybody has any photographs or video clips of him or with him. We are interested in only showing his face and so we will blot out the faces of other people in the photographs.Lastly, if anyone is willing to do a brief on-camera interview with one of our correspondents in Virginia or a telephone interview, please call us immediately..."On Monday night, Brian Williams did the NBC Nightly News broadcast from the Hokie campus in Blacksburg. Tucker Carlson, MSNBC’s chief political pundit, was also there. Hoards of reporters have descended on Blacksburg, looking for the “he kept to himself” sound bytes and B-roll of the hysterical, sobbing friends of victims; ESPN is reporting on the canceled Hokie spring game and how the ‘innocence’ of college sports will bring us back together. Even the all-sports-news network struck gold: “you realize there are 32 people who aren't walking down to the football game."In The Fourth Hand, Wallingford is at the anchor desk the week of JFK Jr’s plane crash over Martha’s Vineyard. He curses both the local news and all-news networks for taking telephoto shots of the victims’ friends and family, and the networks’ proclivity to stretch a tragic story into a multi-week feeding frenzy. Wallingford would chastise Brian Williams for his reporting with all the gravitas and feigned verisimilitude of having been in the classroom with the victims, and the way the press will scrutinize the writings of Cho Seung-Hui and opine that someone should have seen it coming. The Fourth Hand is about a man who loses his hand and finds his soul. Needless to say, it is a work of fiction. Our aggressive all-news culture will ride the Virginia Tech story like they did Imus and Duke and Anna Nicole Smith; they will be relentless. There are 28,000 students at Virginia Tech and, by the end of this week, each will have been solicited for an on-camera interview, photographs of Cho Seung-Hui and more information about the thirty-two victims. On the fourth or fifth day of non-stop reporting following Kennedy’s plane crash, Wallingford sits in the anchor’s chair watching—with millions of viewers worldwide—a network montage of Kennedy Jr.’s life. The montage ends—with the image of John-John saluting his father’s funeral procession—and the camera is back on Wallingford. In lieu of his usual signoff (“Goodnight, Doris. Goodnight, my little Otto.”) Wallingford says, “Let’s hope that’s the end of it.”
The Fourth Hand, John Irivings 2004 bestseller, is the story of a talking head who works for a TV version of the National Enquirer. What is sordid, outrageous, and not really worthy of our attention is the stuff of the network for which Patrick Wallingford reports.His own maiming while by a lion in India while he is reporting a story about the circus industry makes him the subject of his own network's reporting. He becomes The Lion Guy, One-Hand.He also becomes the subject of a medical experiment in hand transplantation that places him in the company of one Doris Clausen, whose recently decease husband's hand becomes Wallingford's third hand for a little while. The encounter with Mrs. Clausen effects Wallingford in ways he could not have imagined at that point in his fast-paced, high-profile, completely insubstantial point in his life. Wallingford, a shallow, thoughtless womanizer (a good looking guy who does not seduce but is seduced over and over again), realizes, thanks to Mrs. Clausen, that he wants more than anything to be happy. The only way to be happy is to be genuine. Getting to that point requires changing himself. The Fourth Hand is Wallingford's journey from Mrs. Clausen and back to her again. Along the way, Wallingford stops asking for permission to make his life and be happy and takes the chances that make claiming happiness possible.Happiness is possible even in the unlikeliest of circumstances if you make up your mind that happiness is possible--even in the unlikeliest of circumstances. Even for real people who have messed up their lives beyond belief and demonstrated their worst qualities in outrageous ways. If you want it, happiness is yours.While the events in Wallingford's life seem to be maddeningly random, there nevertheless seems to a plan that drives his life amid the plane crashes and other catastrophes that shape the course of his life. Does he move through a pattern laid out before him without any control over the outcome, or does the deep desire for a genuine experience of happiness impel him forward in ways he never completely understands? Is there a goodness inside him that claims him, or does he claim it?It might not matter.________This is the first book I read on my Kindle, which I purchased online Christmas after I saw the one my daughter received for Christmas. I was taken by how clear and beautiful the screen is. I was taken, too, by the beautiful screen savers that take form all by themselves. The Kindle makes me think of the living pictures in the Harry Potter movies. In a delightful way, the text on a Kindle seems to be alive--perhaps because the Kindle makes it easy to connect with others reading the same book or to jump out of the book and into the online world for a while. I don't know. But the Kindle doesn't let me forget that the universe is alive, vibrant and vibrating; nothing is still or changeless. This idea and the potential it suggests--that texts are living things that engage us and change us if we let them--reminds me of why I love to read and love to teach reading.
What do You think about The Fourth Hand (2003)?
I found The Fourth Hand a highly entertaining read with an interesting premise—what are some of the moral and ethical issues associated with appendage transplants versus internal organs? As usual, Irving creates some slightly odd but memorable characters and does an excellent job of moving them and the story forward with his particularly unique style of humor, shock, and sensitivity. I tire of some Amazon reviewers comparing an author’s novels to that author’s past works. An American gem like John Irving constructs a distinct and different story with each new project. Their (authors and their books that dare) quality should not be judged, measured, or based on previous works; in this case, A Widow for One Year, The World According to Garp, or The Cider House Rules. Fiction does not have to be regurgitated facsimiles or seemingly a product of manufacturing.
—Andrew Harkless
For to have laboured for many years and to have fashioned a small brown cylindrical, tapered object has got to be much more disappointing, and confusing to an author than it can ever be to me. All I've lost is 2 days of the opportunity to read something better. He has lost so much more.Witness any movie, any person walking down the street, any building, anything and you see something that someone has spent years and tears fashioning and moulding and creating. That young girl you passed on the street with barely a glance was the product of her parent's efforts to conceive, her mother's pain to deliver, their time, instruction and money to raise, not to mention her own stumbling progress, as she fashioned the ways and means of getting by and built her springboards to success. And yet, what thought do we give to this marvel as we stroll by?Everything we see took something to make.Everyone we meet is a miracle.But still, I'm sorry Mr. Irving - I don't like this one.The premise is good - a guy loses his hand and then has another one sewn in its place. But then there's some mystical stuff about a pill that can make you dream of the future. Then there's all the sleeping around and the unsatisfactory job. Then there are all the other, self-absorbed characters that come and go in their flimsy, unappealing, uncoordinated, unsatisfying, unpleasant, unimaginative way. Then there is the ending.There are a few shiny places on the way, but in the main, I feel that this is more a treading water kind of novel that something serious.But, like I say - even swimming in place takes effort and time and ...Nevertheless - I didn't like it much.So - three stars for effort, plus one star for being easy to read.Next!
—Robert C.
John Irving's characters are often quirky to say the least. Normally they draw one in. Irving's typical forays into the minds of the odd but believable individuals who populate his stories are usually irresistably intriguing. I have often had a difficult time putting an Irving novel down. This novel for some reason does not work. The characters did not interest me, and I neither liked nor disliked most of them. The plot drags on. I often considered putting the book down for good, and not finishing it, which is NOT like me, once I get in very far. Sorry for the short discussion, but I disliked this book so much I would rather not think about it too long now! For those who have not tried Irving, don't judge him by this one! I especially recommend A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, one of my all time favorites, and THE CIDER HOUSE RULES.
—Stephanie "Jedigal"
