"Garp was a natural storyteller," says the narrator of John Irving's incandescent novel, referring to the book's hero, the novelist Garp, who has much in common with Irving himself. "He could make things up one right after the other, and they seemed to fit."
Irving packs wild characters and weird events into his classic--officially recognized as such in a Modern Library edition with a new introduction by the author--while amazingly maintaining the rough feel of realism in every scene and the pulse of life in every heart. Many novelists of his time might have populated a novel with a novelist protagonist whose life and books comment on each other and the novel we're reading. Transsexual football players, ball turret gunners lobotomized in battle, multiple adultery, unicycling bears, mad feminists who amputate their tongues in sympathy with the celebrated victim of a horrifying rape--Irving made them all people. Even the bear is a fitting character.
In a crucial episode, Garp's wife's seduction of a young man coincidentally occurs at the moment when Garp is delighting their young sons with a reckless car trick (one of the few scenes beautifully, eerily, heartbreakingly captured in the film version as well). Many authors would have been content with the harsh comedy of the scene, but Irving respects its integrity, and he builds the rest of the book on the consequences of the event. How does he get away with his killer cocktail of slapstick and horror? Because it's simply what we all face daily, rearranged into soul-satisfying art. "Life is an X-rated soap opera," according to Garp, and who can contradict him?
Rereading Garp 20 years later, one is struck by how elegantly Irving structures his bizarre and complex story. Take the two most celebrated bits in the book, the Under Toad and Garp's story "The Pension Grillparzer," which shimmers like an exquisite Kafkaesque insect in the amber of the novel. When Garp warns his son about the "undertow" at the beach, the boy imagines a monster out of Beowulf who lurks beneath the waves to suck you under: the "Under Toad." It's funny at first, but we soon find that the Under Toad is a metaphor with teeth--he connects with a prophetic dream of death in "The Pension Grillparzer," set in Vienna. Garp's son's last words are, "It's like a dream!" And as Irving--who studied at the University of Vienna--can certainly tell you, the German word for "death" sounds precisely like the English word "toad."
All that death, and yet Garp is mainly exuberant. This story is, as Garp's stuttering writing teacher puts it, "rich with lu-lu-lunacy and sorrow." It enriches literature, and our lives. --Tim Appelo
The World According to Garp is a sweeping biography of a young man born of an independently minded mother when such a thing was supposed to be unheard of. We get to experience society's reactions to this interesting family, and the wonderful cast of characters who come to surround them. Both mother and son go into writing, and both find themselves being used in political ways that neither imagined initially. Some reviewers have complained of some of the stark happenings in the book. Yes, there are rapes and child molestations, dismemberings and murders, marital infidelity (consensual and otherwise) and the ultimate horror of burying your own child. Through it all, however, Iriving's incredible prose carries you along. You may find yourself on the brink of tears one moment and laughing out loud soon after. Individual readers will find personal chords struck within the book, as there are many themes and images. For me, the most interesting sub-plot was that of Ellen James and the Ellen Jamesian's. Raped and her tongue cut out as a child, James is horrified that grown women begin to protest this act by engaging in self-mutilation in her name. Irving takes us on a very powerful journey, exploring how and why someone would do this to themselves, and whether it is a sincere act or merely a mindless act of protest born of needing to have an enemy and needing to belong to some group or other. In fact, this is the only thing I would have liked Irving to do in the book that he did not. He makes reference to the essay "Why I am not an Ellen Jamesian" (by Ellen James). He does not provide us with the essay, however, in contrast to other pieces written by Garp himself. Perhaps it is just better to envision the essay, but I believe Irving could have pulled it off. Running through much of the narrative is also Roberta Muldoon, a transgender woman who used to be a tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles (John Lithgow was perfect as the character in the movie version of the book). Roberta's journey and perspective are also fascinating, and show Irving's artistry as an author. The image of Roberta reading Ellen's poetry while Ellen sits by, clearly wishing she could read her own poetry, is truly arresting. Garp is a book that will justifiably be considered a clasic. Whenever you feel the presence of the Undertoad, think of Garp.
I read this book along with A Prayer For Owen Meany and both books are excellent studies in tragic characters. Garp, a school teacher seems to finally get his life together only to be undone by an obsessed woman (she reminded me of the character in Fatal Attraction).
The book never gets boring and is difficult to put down!
