The World According to Garp: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Though “The World According to Garp” is one of John Irving’s early works, it is one of the later ones that I have read. “I was a big fan of “A Widow for One Year” and the resonance between the novels is interesting, almost as if Irving performed a thought exercise pitching forward the story of Garp ten years into the future. How might a family with tragedy that sought solace in a new life really be healed? Beyond that perceived linkage, I found it refreshing that social issues, such as feminism and the transgender experience, had a popular forum decades ahead of the current political climate. To a certain extent, it highlights how reactionary political forces have reignited issues that at one point seemed close to resolution as a way to inflame a base. As Irving points out in his forward, at one point he was concerned that his novel would be an anachronism of an unenlightened age, only to find that it is unfortunately even more appropriate to the current climate. At its heart is the evocative language and storytelling of Irving, who has a gift for creating memorable characters and situations. At times, it gets a little “Inside Baseball” about the process of writing and the publishing industry - so much so that it is hard to credit the protests of the author that it is not autobiography. I found the characters both fantastic and relatable, which is an accomplishment. The moody foreshadowing that permeates the novel builds effectively to the bittersweet finale. My takeaway is that the World According to Garp is one obsessed with the power of death, a power that can only be mitigated by building the life that suits the person and not the mob. A great novel.

Well, I'm not sure if it's good or bad news that my tastes haven't changed much since middle school ;)

As a tween, I made an English teacher super, super angry by attempting to do some sort of book report on Garp--after simply attempting to retell just part of the first chapter, someone needed to get out the smelling salts for that woman! (side note: If you ever tell a kid a book is "banned," that's a surefire way to make sure they devour it...)

Way back then, I fell in love with Garp and John Irving, but it was probably mostly because of the shock value. At that point, it was hands down the most screwed up thing I had ever read. After reading a few "duds" in a row, I decided to return to Garp to see how I (hopefully!) would look at it differently much, much later.

The verdict? I still love Garp, and I still adore John Irving...but thankfully, my reasons for doing so have matured. I could write a novel about this novel, but I'll try to keep it brief!

(Before even getting to the text itself, Irving's screed against Trumpian politics in his new introduction made me want to give him a standing ovation!)

Without delving deeply into plot, I think the overall reason I love Garp and Irving is that the writing is both believable and unbelievable at the same time. I tend to like stories that are either very realistic or totally fanciful, and Irving is one of the few people whose writing manages to be both things at the same time.

On the surface, the things that happen to the characters are so ridiculous (and usually terrible) that the plot seems beyond belief. But after you sit with them, you realize that the events and the characters' actions are so messy, flawed, and imperfect that they seem incredibly real.

As one of the minor characters explains: “A book feels true when it feels true,” she said to him, impatiently. “A book’s true when you can say, ‘Yeah! That’s just how damn people behave all the time.’ Then you know it’s true,” Jillsy said.

Garp is ridiculous, but it's real. To the horror of my middle school English teacher, I still give it seventy bajillion stars :)

I watched this film years ago when I was either in my teens or twenties. Something about it then resonated with me and I knew I should revisit it some day. My wife and I have a podcast where we make each other watch a movie the other has never seen before. Garp was coming up, so I wanted to challenge myself to read the novel before we recorded. I didn't quite make it because Irving's writing is so dense, but I forged on after we recorded. I couldn't stop reading. This story spoke to me in ways the movie simply fails on. I am a standup comedian. I haven't been performing as much lately because I have a family now. I wonder, like Garp does, how do I define myself then? Am I still a comedian. Just like if he isn't writing, is he still a writer? The pursuit of art and excellence at the expense of anything else just really hit me hard. I'm so glad I read this. I feel like a better person for having done so. The through-line I felt was that nothing in life is binary. There is no right or wrong. Comedy and tragedy. Everything is somewhere in between. What a beautifully moving, heart breaking, heart warming, witty, timely novel. Especially in this age of a polarized United States and women's rights being taken away, The World According to Garp is perhaps more important now than it ever has been before.