The World According to Garp by John Irving
For years, I have read and heard Irving’s name mentioned as an important, contemporary, American writer, and film adaptations of his books have attracted such stars as Robin Williams and Michael Caine. In particular, The World According to Garp is a book that caught my attention because text books and articles that I read when teaching often used extracts from this novel to illustrate literary ideas and techniques. Having now read it, I understand why this was the case – Garp is a writer, in a book featuring several other writers, and it spends a fair amount of time exploring the idea of storytelling and writing. That doesn’t mean that it is an introverted book even though Garp is a classic example of the novelist as navel-gazer. There’s actually a lot of dramatic action in what is essentially an account of his life.
It’s a relatively long book at 500 pages and on top of the usual catalogue of first love, real love, marriage, parenthood, loss, infidelity and career anxieties and imperatives, Garp also experiences several dramatic events far outside most people’s lives as well as encountering the type of characters one tends to meet rarely. Therefore, I’m at a loss about how to summarise the plot. Garp wouldn’t be at such a loss because as a writer he tends to over-do it and use a paragraph when a sentence would do. And in the same way that I’m now having a conversation with myself about what to write, Garp seems to have that sort of conversation in his head and with his family and friends constantly. Let me try instead to keep my synopsis as straightforward as possible.
Garp’s mum, Jenny Fields, is a nurse determined to live her own life in mid-century America without the encumbrance of a man in her life. However, she wants a child and so in what could be seen as a rather tacky scene she gets pregnant following sex with one of her patients, a severely injured aircraft gunner called Garp. She brings up her son at a private school where she works as a nurse and is left alone. There Garp finds his sport, wrestling, and meets his future wife, Helen, the wrestling coach’s daughter. In this early part of the story, our focus is on Jenny and her single-minded determination to live on her own terms which seems to involve raising Garp, having a job and reading lots of books. Garp, more conventionally, gets educated academically and in the ways of the world, including sexually and romantically.
In these passages from Garp’s youth, there are some very funny set pieces usually involving the wealthy and obnoxiously self-regarding Percy family whose ancestor founded the school – Garp’s attack on their family dog that terrorises the boys on campus is particularly funny and hints at our protagonist’s idiosyncratic nature. Eventually, though, when Jenny thinks Garp has reached adulthood, she moves on to her next project, a bestselling account of her own life that becomes a must read for 1960s boomers. Reluctantly she becomes a feminist icon and gradually begins to use her platform to push women’s rights issues and sets up a commune for a whole range of vulnerable people. So, Garp is still in her shadow as he begins his own writing career. Yet it is clear from everything people say about him and his work, as well as the extracts from his work that are inserted into the story, that Garp is a serious and talented writer.
For a period of time, Garp settles down and starts a family whilst trying to write; but he ends up spending the days channelling his energy into distance running, energetic games of squash with his transgender friend, Roberta, and happily taking on the role of homebuilder. Of course, with a mother like Jenny he seems remarkably comfortable about gender roles although he is highly sexed and has several affairs. Then in the second half of the book the plot goes mad and Garp and his family are subjected to nasty and life changing events that are partly of their own making and partly the consequence of a chaotic, mad universe. There’s no point saying much more except the gear shift from the usual to the exceptional didn’t seem that surprising to me because all the way through I felt on edge with Garp’s character: he seemed the sort of person to whom things would happen.
What to make of it, therefore? Well, when it was written over forty years ago the discussion of gender relations and how men and women might develop a more healthy and equal relationship was a hot topic in the western world; and, arguably, that hasn’t changed much. Garp encounters a nurturing and caring brand of feminism through his mother and wife but this is contrasted with a bitter, antagonistic brand embodied in the self-mutilating Ellen Jamesians. I suspect that we are supposed to respond positively to Garp because of the way he responds to the people he encounters with interest and kindness – and I do – but I’m not sure that some of his ‘When Harry Met Sally’ attitudes about male-female relationships would be looked on so positively in the current climate. The thing is, though, that he and most of the other characters are trying to do their best and act, most of the time, out of love and compassion … but they also make mistakes. Ultimately, it reminded me of Candide – it’s the striving in life that makes it bearable and most of us spend our lives trying to get better and be better knowing that we’ll never quite get there.
When I glanced at some reviews of this book, it struck me that people either considered Irving a towering genius dispensing wisdom through a beguiling combination of comedy and tragedy. Or, they found his writing bloated and Garp an annoying, solipsistic and ridiculous character. Typically, I fell between these two extreme judgements. I did laugh several times when reading this book and was also genuinely shook up by some graphic scenes in the second half as well as moved by Irving’s exploration of loss and how people carry on. However, by the end I was glad to finish the book and will probably never read another book by Irving. Like a rich, heavy meal of several courses, it was an experience but I ended up forcing the final mouthfuls down.