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....<br>&quot;Three or four times as funny as most novels.&quot;<br>THE NEW YORKER<br><br><br><i>From the Paperback edition.</i>