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Until he became linked with Hughes, Irving devoted himself to a life of semi-bohemian writing and wandering. The son of Cartoonist Jay Irving, who drew the comic strip Pottsy, Clifford Irving was born in New York City and graduated from Cornell in 1951. He traveled, took odd jobs —brush salesman in Syracuse, machinist's helper in Detroit—lived on a houseboat in Kashmir and taught creative writing at U.C.L.A.
On Ibiza, he finished his first novel, On a Darkling Plain, which was published in 1956. Since then he has produced three more novels. His nonfiction works were notable for their inaccuracies. His first marriage was annulled; his second wife died in a car crash in 1959, and he divorced his third wife, a London model, in 1965. Four years ago, Irving married Edith Sommer, a Swiss divorcee whose first husband, she says, was a German businessman and something of a "stiff."
Until recently, at least, the Irvings' island life was pleasantly anonymous. The natives recognized Irving only as the star center of the Ibiza basketball team.