I was in medical school in the ’70s, and I was at a bookstore looking for some novels. Until then, the novels that were affecting me the most were anything written by Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. I randomly chose The World According to Garp – even though I had never heard the name John Irving. In the bookstore, I started reading the first paragraph, the first page, and I remember thinking this was like Vonnegut and Heller all in one. So I bought it. I read it. I just could not have fallen in love with the novel more. 

At the time, I was living in downtown Toronto in a house with a few guys. One of them had a friend whose name was Janet Turnbull, and she was an English major at U of T. I said, “Janet, you have to read this book. It’s the most amazing book.” And that was her introduction to The World According to Garp. Full disclosure: She doesn’t remember it that way. [Laughs] Anyway, that’s how I became a John Irving fan. I felt like a groupie. I read his three earlier books and waited for the next to come out, The Hotel New Hampshire. And I read everything after that. At that time in my life, if there was anybody who I would have died to meet, it would have been Paul McCartney. But then it was John Irving – he replaced McCartney. If there was only one person in the world I could meet, it was him. 

About 10 years later, I’m no longer living in that house. I’m practicing medicine. And I’m on a streetcar in Toronto when I see Janet Turnbull [who was at that time a book publisher] walking down the street. I jumped out and said hi and like that, we were back in contact. 
A couple of years after that, I got a note from Janet saying that she’s dating John Irving. She said, “We’re getting married. Would you like to come to the ceremony?” My wife, Susie, and I weren’t invited to the reception, but we were invited to the ceremony. Robertson Davies spoke, and he was high on my list of revered authors. It was amazing. I didn’t meet John there, it was their wedding, they were busy. But it was a thrill. 

Then, John puts out The Cider House Rules and there’s a book launch in Toronto. Janet calls and says, “Would you like to come to the book launch?” I’m a complete little bopper, jumping up and down. Susie and I go, and I’m on a complete high. Janet says, “Let me introduce you to my husband.” So that’s when I met him, at the launch for Cider House. It was, “Hello, how are you? Very nice to meet you,” stuff like that. He’s John Irving, who has been on the cover of Time magazine, and I was just his wife’s friend. But it was very lovely to meet him, and that was that. I certainly didn’t have his ear. 

Later, when I was reading Cider House, there was a description of a baby being delivered. And I knew John liked getting every medical detail perfect – if someone said, “This isn’t right, ” he was very interested. And I thought there was a slight error in the paragraph. 
So I reached out and I said, “Hi, it’s me and I just wanted you to know, I think there is a mistake.” He took a very big interest and wanted to know even though the book was already published. And it turns out there wasn’t a mistake – there were two ways of looking at it. But now I’m speaking to him. Over the years we became friendly, when we both had kids of the same age. And Janet said, “Why don’t you come down and visit us in Vermont?” 
Up until then, we had seen each other but never one-on-one. So Susie and I went to Vermont and it was wonderful. I was like, “I can’t believe this is happening to me” – it was still very groupie-ish to me. When we went home, I was dying to go back and my wife said, “If they want you back, they’ll invite you. Don’t ask for an invitation.” But I phoned Janet and said, “My wife made me promise that I would not ask you for another invitation to Vermont.”
So she said, “Well, you’re invited.” A-ha, that was my plan. 

As the years passed, John would ask me to comment on the medical aspects of his new books, and fortunately, there’s a doctor in almost every book. He’d say, “I need to have a very healthy young woman die during intercourse. What did she die of?” So I came up with the most likely and perfect answer which is real and accurate and no one can say boo – and he said that’s great. And then I think it was for Avenue of Mysteries, he wanted me to find out about rabies and lions. So you think that would be easy, but there’s nothing harder because, generally speaking, if someone gets bitten by a lion, they don’t die of rabies. So not much work had been done on rabies and lions.
Finally, there was one article, but that was the hardest research I ever did for him. 

With this new book, Queen Esther, it reached a different level of collaboration. At this point, we’ve already become pretty good friends, and I’m his doctor. But this book had to do with his experiences in Israel culminating in 1981, and because it had a Jewish theme and he had never written anything about anything Jewish in his life, he came to me. I was a good friend and Jewish, so he asked me to do more than just research medical stuff. He asked me about Israel and about the cultural aspects of the book and the historical aspects, etc. 
And when the book was maybe half written, October 7 happened, and I phoned him and said, “John, is there anything changing in your book because of the historical events that are occurring right now?” And he said, “No, my book ends in 1981 and it has nothing to do with the events of 2023.” I said, “That’s true, but it’s an opportunity because history has happened.” And this happens to him all the time when historical events coincide with what happens in his books. So I took a much deeper dive with him into the book, and we would fight and argue and move through it. 

When he gave me the first three chapters of Queen Esther to read, he sent it to me on printer paper, regular 8×11 white paper, like he’s always done. I opened it up, and there’s the title page, and on the third page, it says, “For Marty Schwartz” and then I started reading the book. I phoned him and said, “I really think it’s good.” And he says, “Well, I should hope so. The book’s dedicated to you.” I said, “It is?” I thought that “For Marty Schwartz” had meant it was just my early reader copy.

Not that many books ago, he dedicated one to Janet. And I remember thinking, that’s something to have a book by John Irving dedicated to you. And then, years later, here I am getting a book dedicated to me. It’s all been a dream come true.  –As told to Shanda Deziel