The bestselling American author John Irving, now seventy-eight years of age, is unique in the world of literature. Before writing modern-day classics such as The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany — both translated into thirty-five languages and made into films — he spent twenty years competing as a professional wrestler. Irving’s parents separated before he was born and he never knew his father. He was sexually abused by an older woman when he was only eleven. These experiences scarred him and are reflected in his work.
In his own words, Irving has used his large-scale, multi-layered novels to address what he calls America’s “puritanism, her pettiness, her sexual anarchy, her dysfunctional families, her damaged children, her bullying patriotism.” His great strengths are narrative and character, just like his hero, Charles Dickens.
Best-Known Work
Published in 1978, The World According to Garp was Irving’s fourth novel. A feminist book with a strong-willed heroine, it was an immediate bestseller that propelled Irving to international fame. The novel tells the tale of two lives, those of T.S. Garp and his mother Jenny. She is a Second World War nurse who wants a child, but definitely not a husband.
“I wanted a job and I wanted to live alone. That made me a sexual suspect. Then I wanted a baby, but I didn’t want to have to share my body or my life to have one. That made me a sexual suspect, too.”
“Quería trabajar y vivir sola. Eso me convirtió en sexualmente sospechosa. Después deseé un hijo, pero sin que para ello tuviera que compartir mi cuerpo ni mi vida. También eso me convirtió en sexualmente sospechosa”.
RAPE AND PREGNANCY
One of Jenny’s patients is an airman with severe brain damage and an almost permanent erection. She rapes him and becomes pregnant. He grows up and becomes interested in sex, wrestling and writing fiction. After Garp’s graduation, in 1961, Jenny takes him to Vienna, where her son writes his first novella. She, in turn, starts writing her autobiography, entitled A Sexual Suspect.
the art of fiction
The World According to Garp is full of observations about the art of fiction. The young writer, for example, places emphasis on the importance of memory.
“It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.”
“Solamente la intensidad de la memoria puede mantener vivos a los muertos; el trabajo del escritor consiste en imaginarlo todo de una forma tan personal que la ficción sea tan intensa como nuestros propios recuerdos personales.”
GARP AND WOMEN
Garp then marries Helen, the daughter of a wrestling coach, and begins a family. His mother, after the success of her autobiography, is now a famous feminist icon who works to support women who have been traumatised by men. Through her, Garp meets many different kinds of women, including a transgender ex-football player. He is unfaithful to his wife, but he is gentle on himself.
“He would always call her ‘the wisest of my life’s decisions’. He made some unwise decisions, he would admit; but in the first five years of his marriage to Helen, he was unfaithful to her only once – and it was brief.”
“Él siempre la llamaba ‘la más sabia de las decisiones de mi vida’. Sin duda había tomado algunas decisiones poco sabias, pero durante los cinco primeros años de matrimonio con Helen solo le había sido infiel una vez; y había sido algo breve”.
DEVOTED BUT DESPERATE
Garp is a devoted parent who is desperately worried about the safety of his two young boys, Duncan and Walt, in a dangerous world.
“Helen knew Garp was thinking up a story to tell Walt after dinner. She knew Garp did this to calm himself whenever he was worried about the children – as if the act of imagining a good story for children was a way to keep children safe forever.”
“Helen sabía que Garp estaba pensando en alguna historia que contarle a Walt después de cenar. Sabía que Garp lo hacía para tranquilizarse cuando se sentía preocupado por los niños; como si el acto de imaginar una buena historia de niños fuera una manera de mantenerlos a salvo para siempre”.
In fact, Garp’s fears extend much further than the safety of his two children; he is obsessed with mortality. This is another recurring theme in Irving’s books and in his own life.
“It had been an unpleasant sensation for Garp, shortly after Duncan turned six, to smell that Duncan’s breath was stale and faintly foul in his sleep … This was Garp’s first awareness of the mortality of his son.”
“Sentir que, después de cumplir seis años, el aliento de Duncan se tornaba rancio y un poco fétido mientras dormía le había provocado a Garp una sensación desagradable... Aquella fue la primera vez que fue consciente de la mortadlidad de su hijo”.
Garp and his family experience some troubling events, which transform and evolve the characters. They culminate in a horrific accident, which more than justifies Garp’s fears.
TYPICAL IRVING
The novel has many of the elements of a typical Irving work. It contains numerous Irving motifs, including bears, wrestling and adultery. It has a complex Dickensian plot and the story is told in wonderfully entertaining prose. When Irving wrote it, he thought that its theme of sexual hatred would quickly become dated. In fact, in these times of sexual intolerance and violence, the book has never been more topical.