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Loading... The World According to Garpby John Irving
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  r1hard | Nov 22, 2009 |  I love this book, have loved it since it was first published in the late 70s, and I reread it every year or two. Like all well crafted books, the reader sees something more or something differently in each reading. Irving is actually an 18th century writer resurrected. He reminds me of the comic Laurence Sterne whose Tristram Shandy still delights. Also like earlier writers, Irving believes in plot and characterization -- no minimalism for him. And he favors semi-colons which most modern writers no longer use or use correctly. Punctuation is divine and used correctly it can add an important dimension to your work. "I was a sexual suspect." I'll remember that proclamation all my life. Garp's mother is wholly original in her view toward life. Her retreat, which includes members of the Ellen Jamesians and a transsexual among others, was an important sanctuary in this book for many reasons. But, for many fans, this book grabbed them in the shocking middle, the event that changed everything, totally unexpected (but foreshadowed properly, just overlooked). Garp, the book, also spawned a trend in family making for the men. For awhile, it was popular to have a lot of kids in a strong, caring family structure. Robin Williams, who played Garp in a very decent movie version, rearranged his family life after playing this role. Irving has a fondness for bears and the bizarre that I don't share; bears pop up in almost all his books. I can't think of any of his books that is better for including the bears. This book and Cider House Rules are my favorite Irving novels. (  ) macktan894 | Nov 7, 2009 | This is the second book by Irving that I have read, and even though I did not find it quite as good as a prayer for Owen Meany, it is still a very good novel. I like the way the unique and interesting characters (a nervous writer, his brilliant professor wife, his feminist (or is she?) nurse mother and his sex-reassigned, ex-rugby player friend, to mention a few) complement each other, and the way he makes extraordinary events seem quite believable. I like Irving's sense of humour, and how it does not stand in the way of a serious plot; as an example, take the Under Toad, at first a cute mishearing by one of the main character's children, but later a word used to describe all the fears the parents have for their family. There are parts of the book that are macabre, or even downright disgusting. Some are required for the plot, to get a sense of what the characters are going through, but I do feel that the book could have done without others. It maked a change of tone that comes suddenly, and in a way I felt tricked by the author - the book suddenly turns into something else, something darker than what I started, and then, a chapter later, it is back to normal. As I said, I see the point of at least some of the grim parts, but I still do not appreciate the sudden changes and the graphicness of some of them. All in all, I am still happy that I picked this up from the library. I was captivated from start to finish. I would reccomend it to others... But warn them too. (  )1  losseloth | Oct 1, 2009 | I actually didn't like the eponymous hero very much, or at least not consistently. Nevertheless, Irving creates an often humourous, occasionally even quite brilliant story and, likeable or not, has a knack for creating character that are...not quite real but at least easily imagined by the reader. As for Roberta Muldoon - well, if only she had a book to herself! ( ) LadyHax | Sep 23, 2009 | This book seems very dated. I'm sure when it was first published its view on feminism as well as its over the top quirkiness seemed fresh. I found it alternately amusing and mind-numbingly boring. The over-sensualized depiction of rape was the straw that broke the camel's back though. (  ) bookworm814 | Aug 29, 2009 | 
 The World According to Garp was more than single, memorable moments. It was unforgettable as a whole for a simple reason - it was epic. It was what a Great American Novel needs to be: all of life between covers.
Amazon.com (ISBN 034536676X, Mass Market Paperback)"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 (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:56 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
Das Ergebnis ist eine melancholische aber niemals deprimierende Ode an das Leben, welches trotz aller Rückschläge, Ängste, Verluste und Katastrophen als einzigartig und wunderschön zelebriert wird.Wer wissen will, wie transsexuelle Footballspieler, radikale Feministinnen, die sich ihre Zungen abhacken, und vor allem eine Kröte mit all dem zu tun haben, muss den Roman schon selbst lessen. Es lohnt sich auf jeden Fall. “The world according to Garp” ist eines der Meisterwerke der vergangenen 30 Jahre.