The Last Chairlift, John Irving. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022.

Summary: The son of a former slalom skier tries to make sense of the ghosts he sees, the father he never knew, and the different ways people love, and fail to love.

John Irving has written a number of novels, at least several of which might be judged among the great American novels: Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and The World According to Garp. All of these were written in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Where does this, which Irving describes as his “last long novel” rank among these others? I’ll get to this by the end of this review.

This is definitely a long novel, 889 pages in my edition. It spans the lifetime of the narrator, Adam Brewster, from his conception in 1941 until 2021–eighty years. His mother, Rachel “Little Ray” Brewster was an off-the-podium slalom skier in the 1941 Olympics in Aspen. She comes away, not with a medal, but a pregnancy, after a brief affair with an attractive young boy hanging around the Jerome Hotel who she never contacts again. She describes Adam as her “one and only,” which has more than one meaning for her.

He’s raised mostly by his grandmother and increasingly demented grandfather, the “Diaper Man.” Little Ray is gone in the winter months, working as a ski instructor and living with Molly, a trail groomer. But she and Adam are close–in fact so close she sleeps with him into adolescence–including one instance with unconsummated sexual overtones.

An English teacher in town eventually becomes a mentor. Elliot Barlow coaches wrestling as well as Adam’s writing aspirations. He’s small, but strong not only physically but in other ways. Adam, who hates skiing, despite his mother, takes to snowshoeing with Elliot. Little Ray meets him and they fall for each other.

Their wedding is a series of bizarre incidents including everyone overhearing niece Nora and her companion, the mute Em as Em climaxes. The wedding is accompanied by a zithermeister. A storm hits and the Diaper Man is electrocuted. And Adam stumbles upon his mother and Molly in bed together. It turns out that the marriage of Little Ray and Elliot is cover for both, even though they really do love each other, but not as man and wife. Elliot wants to be a woman, and eventually transitions and becomes “she.”

Adam learns that there are many ways for people to love each other. And the book depicts many ways people have sex with each other, including Adam in his attic, along with the ghosts, which literally scare the crap out of one girlfriend. In fact, the book seems to describe the varieties of sexual relationship other than a reasonably healthy marital one (Adam’s son is conceived before his marriage). And we hear about it in several chapters set at the Gallows, a New York comedy club where Nora and Em have an act, Two Dykes, One Who Talks. Nora does the talking and Em mimes, off stage as well as on. It is an odd set of relationships and yet they all care deeply for each other, and especially for Adam.

I mentioned ghosts. Adam not only sees the ghost of the Diaper Man, who hangs about the house, but a group that hangs around the Jerome Hotel–miners, Mr. Jerome, a maid, and others including a small, young, early adolescent boy wearing an oversized sweater and girlish ski hat. Unlikely as it seems, he begins to wonder if this might be his father. Then he sees the work of screenwriter and actor Paul Goode, whose resemblance to both the boy and to Adam himself is striking. Adam wonders if his own growing talent as a writer and his screenwriting aspirations come from his father.

There are two climactic scenes at the Jerome, both marked with tragedy. Both are written as screenplays rather than regular text and in them Adam encounters Goode, all too briefly. More significantly, they mark a transition of Adam from a serial lover to a father, even as his own marriage is breaking up and he is transitioning to the most enduring, albeit, unusual relationship that lasts to the end of the book.

The last chairlift. Chairlifts are a place of death throughout this novel, one tragic and others where the last chairlift marks a fitting coda on the lives of those brought down the mountain for the last time. One wonders if Irving sees this story as a coda, a last chairlift in his life. He explores in unconventional ways the themes of love and death so basic to literature, the sexual politics of his (and my) generation including the neglect of the Reagan administration toward AIDs, as well as the search for a missing parent that haunts so many young.

So what do I make of this work? Overall, I felt it undisciplined and overlong. I wonder if it tries to do too much. It seemed at times like a series of short stories (or screenplays) written by the narrator stitched into a book relatively unedited. Yet Irving gives us memorable characters, humorous moments, and a complicated yet coherent plot arc. I don’t consider it among his greatest works yet it bears the marks of his skill and his sensibilities. And for many readers, that is reason enough to engage “this last long novel.”