The World According to Garp

T.S. Garp is a somewhat known writer with a peculiar mother who is a more famous writer than he is. Jenny Fields, his mother, was a nurse who was strong-willed and she enjoyed caring for folks but didn't have a desire to be in a relationship with anyone. She saw herself as asexual. When the desire to be a mother overcame her, rather than foster a relationship she didn't want, she copulated with a mentally injured soldier who died soon after inseminating her. Jenny raises Garp on her own, in her own peculiar way, instilling an interest in wrestling and literature into her boy. The first quarter of the book about Jenny raising Garp and his awkward adolescence is the best part of the entire book; the quirky premise of an asexual, feminist nurse raising her son at an all-boys school was a promising start for this novel.

When Garp graduates, the book segues to Jenny and Garp traveling to Europe together where Garp befriends a hooker and Jenny doesn't get out much to sight-see. Jenny declares a desire to write a book about herself even though she's never written before and Garp is inspired to write because of his time walking the streets. One of the themes Jenny harps on in her book is lust and her lack of having it. She both emasculates and sympathizes with her son for lusting after women, foreshadowing later events with Jenny's “fans” and their perception of Garp and his place in Jenny's life.

Garp and his mother return to the U.S. having both completed a manuscript: Jenny's autobiography A Sexual Suspect and Garp's short story with the awkward title of The Pension Grillparzer. Jenny's book gets published through the first publishing contact she makes (really?) and her book becomes a huge bestseller. She becomes nationally known as the asexual feminist who wears a nurse's uniform wherever she goes. Garp's short story is published with little fanfare. The bulk of the rest of The World According to Garp follows young Garp into adulthood as he marries his wrestling coach's daughter, Helen, and the two have children. Garp stays at home with their kids and is a doting father who worries tremendously about his kids. Garp writes a couple of novels that are mediocre and not very successful; his readership is considered small yet astute. He and Helen have consensual affairs with another couple. And the novel goes on and on, not giving much insight into any of these plot points. Even though Garp is described as a doting father, he gives very little insight into being a parent. Although Garp is a writer, he gives very little insight about the process of writing or pursuing writing as a career (Irving as narrator does offer a zinger or two about the process of writing, though. I'll get to that later). And the consensual affair seems to neither strengthen nor diminish their marriage; it ends simply because Helen tires of it and their marriage carries on.

Mostly, that's the way the entire novel goes, by just carrying on. Irving introduces quirky characters and premises but does not really dive into the quirkiness of the characters and premises very deeply. It's like he is creating a laundry list of interesting ideas then leaving us simply with the list. Asexual nurse and single mother who miraculously becomes a bestselling author? Check. A football player that becomes a transsexual and Garp's best friend? Check. A college student, Michael Milton, who has an affair with Helen then whose penis is bitten off by Helen in a car accident? Check. It all sounds more interesting than it plays out with very little insight into these weird characters' motivations or feelings or desires other than to say “Look at these loonies! Next.” For being such quirky characters, the interactions and conversations between them are a real drag. Their lasting love or friendship for each other through one bizarre event to another mundane event seems to be the only thread through the entire book; their lives are entwined simply because they held on together and that's it. As Garp states, “Life ... is sadly not structured like a good old-fashioned novel. Instead, an ending occurs when those who are meant to peter out petered out. All that's left is memory. But even a nihilist has memory.”

Sadly, that's what this novel does: peters out. All the characters summarily die off, their lives ending in mundane fashion, except for Garp and his mother, who are both murdered for being famous writers. The rest of them just live on, then die, as is life. The youngest of Garp's children–Jenny– outlasts them all. She finds a career in medicine, just like her grandmother. The novel ends with young Jenny's observation, “But in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

Duh.

Not very insightful, if you ask me. I can tell Irving has a knack for dropping an occasional zinger or two but I really wanted more of that from him. Lines like “A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories” were so few and far between that I was left wanting. Irving's novel was just teasing, just flirting, not really following through, then it petered out.