The Water-Method Man

　　The main character of John Irving's second novel, written when the author was twenty-nine, is a perpetual graduate student with a birth defect in his urinary tract--and a man on the threshold of committing himself to a second marriage that bears remarkable resemblance to his first....
　　"Three or four times as funny as most novels."
　　THE NEW YORKER
　　
　　
　　 From the Paperback edition.