The World According to Garp

by John Irving

Now (as of this writing) we have President Trump—a narcissistic vulgarian, a xenophobic blowhard, and a fascist bully. In October 2017, Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, ruled that transgender citizens were not protected from workplace discrimination; Sessions argued that Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination “does not encompass discrimination based on gender identity per se, including transgender status.” Yes, several federal appeals courts have ruled against the Attorney General’s war on the LGBTQ community, but President Trump and the Department of Justice are clearly hostile to LGBTQ rights. What would Roberta say? We live in sexually intolerant times. That’s why this forty-year-old novel isn’t out-of-date, but it should be.

From the updated forward. I was blow away by how eerily on point the book remains and I appreciated hearing Irving’s thoughts on this point.

I’m reminded, almost every day, of my favorite lines from Shakespeare—what Edgar says at the end of King Lear. The weight of this sad time we must obey: Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. It’s true that The World According to Garp is a protest novel. Yet, when I was writing it, I never imagined I’d still be protesting forty years later. June 2018

Also from the updated forward. Sad and true.

“That dog was a killer, protected by one of the many thin and senseless bits of logic that the upper classes in America are famous for: namely, that the children and pets of the aristocracy couldn’t possibly be too free, or hurt anybody. That other people should not overpopulate the world, or be allowed to release their dogs, but that the dogs and children of rich people have a right to run free.”

Helen would later say that it is in the conclusion of “The Pension Grillparzer” that we can glimpse what the world according to Garp would be like.

“It is rich with lu-lu-lunacy and sorrow,”

As for Jenny, she felt only that women—just like men—should at least be able to make conscious decisions about the course of their lives; if that made her a feminist, she said, then she guessed she was one.

Perhaps rape’s offensiveness to Garp was that it was an act that disgusted him with himself—with his own very male instincts, which were otherwise so unassailable. He never felt like raping anyone; but rape, Garp thought, made men feel guilty by association.

Which is why I believe a significant portion of the male population is hostile to the “Me Too” movement. “Not all men” and all that...

Garp didn’t want a daughter because of men. Because of bad men, certainly; but even, he thought, because of men like me.

“You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.”

Garp thought it strange that people in the process of making a decision that will plant them firmly in a minority, forever, are possibly less tolerant of other minorities than we might imagine.

Garp pondered how these other women in his mother’s house, and in her care, had all been victims of intolerance—yet most of them he’d met seemed especially intolerant of each other.

Garp had no friends who could advise him against embarrassing himself—which is one of the valuable things friends are for.

If you ask me,” Jillsy said, “that’s just like men: rape you half to death one minute and the next minute go crazy fussin’ over who you’re givin’ it to—of your own free will! It’s not their damn business, either way, is it?”

Garp and Helen evoked the beast as a way of referring to their own sense of danger. When the traffic was heavy, when the road was icy—when depression had moved in overnight—they said to each other, “The Under Toad is strong today.”

The incumbent governor was obnoxious and clever; for example, the sense of fear that he successfully evoked: that New Hampshire was in danger of being victimized by teams of New York divorcees.

Insanely parallel to the way in which our so called president portrays immigrants.

The candidate running for governor against this well-liked fool was, apparently, a woman.

Again... eerie.

The hunters in their pickup trucks were of the opinion that to vote for this woman was to vote for faggotry—and lesbianism, and socialism, and alimony, and New York.

Here too...

But Garp believed in himself. It was just death in there; of course it would be heavy—the weight of his mother, Jenny Fields, the weight of Ernie Holm, and of little Walt (who was the heaviest of all). God knows what they all weighed together, but Garp planted himself on one side of Fat Stew’s gray gunboat of a coffin. He was ready.

In the world according to Garp, an evening could be hilarious and the next morning could be murderous.