The Fourth Hand

John Irving

I am very saddened by the lost of the members of the Columbia shuttle. It was indeed a tragedy that their mission and consequently their lives ended in such a catastrophic way.

However, the media's melodramatic and copious coverage into the tiniest minutia of the astronaut's lives has really bothered me. Just having read The Fourth Hand by John Irving and seeing the movie Wag the Dog has likely increased my sensitivity to the media's exploitative tendencies.

That message was probably one of the things I liked best about The Fourth Hand, which is shorter and lighter than other Irving works. He develops the story of Peter Wallingford, a field reporter promoted to anchor of a "24 hours news network", through a series of ironic events linking himself, his future hand surgeon and the future hand donor. Obviously Peter loses his hand in a freak accident. The story centers on Peter coping with the trivialities of working for a network like his while his accident has made him one of their greatest news items - while he endeavors to grow beyond the meaningless sexual encounters which constitute his personal life.

In spite of the two-dimensional characters, their questionable motivations and not really caring if Peter finds true love or not, I found I enjoyed certain feelings the book evoked. I felt compassion for the divorced hand surgeon who finds a connection with his six year old son through a game of tossing shit with a lacrosse stick in to the Charles River, & adopting a shit eating pound puppy. Interest at the view of women presented in the novel which varied from cut-throat bitches at the news station to the misunderstood intellects at the woman's convention where Peter is asked to give a speech. Peter's attempts to understand the women are awkward and humorous - and his newsroom's limited willingness to accurately portray the women agitating. These messages - about women and men in society, and about the media role in our country are the redeeming qualities of the novel.

I don't regret the time spent with the book, but wouldn't recommend indiscriminately. Being quick, and having a few interesting things and ways to say them made it worthwhile to me.