I kept hearing over and over and over again that I need to read this book.
So of course, I read it. And I’ve been sitting on this review for over a week, in the hopes that something nearly as brilliant as the book itself would wash over me…
Let’s start from the beginning. First, it was first published in 1978, an age that I would consider the height of social rebellion. The 60s had taken over the free love movement and pro-women feminism and civil rights had really began to bloom throughout the masses. There were the really liberals and there were the folks who refused to budge an inch from the conservative traditions, and between the two was a mottled struggle for what was socially acceptable… and what was completely inappropriate in the minds of the American people. Throw in a few controversial politics like the Vietnam War, and you’ve got a whole big group of people who believed strongly in what they believed was right.
Let that pot boil over, simmer some, and then you’ve got the seventies. Phenomenal new music burst into the scene, dramatic battles tugged the mainstream folks in varying binary directions, and suddenly people who had been thinking about all these issues for years now have had time to mature and put their souls into their creative ventures.
And then John Irving publishes his fourth book, The World According to Garp.
In 2011, I found his book entirely shocking. And by now all those issues have found their comfortable homes on the questioning minds’ bookshelves, kind of settled in where the children of those 60s and 70s rebels have now grown into their own generation, whispering about the crazy stories their parents told them of times past.
This was sort of like that. Within the pages of this best seller from the 70s are: “inappropriate” sexual interactions, swingers, feminism, rule-breakers, gasp-out-loud “did he really put that in here moments, liberation, political hurrahs, murder, and much more.
But those things aren’t really what the book is about. Garp is a young man, conceived by his feminist mother, on the job while nursing a Technical Sargent, brain damaged to the point of childlike innocence and obsessed with his penis, who was hurt in the war. Jenny, Garp’s mother, in her own innocence, sees nothing wrong with the sexual act with a man who is degenerating to the point of death from his injuries. She wants to be a single mother, and so that’s what she does.
The brilliance of this book is that this first itchy situation, among a plethora of others, is presented in a way that is matter of fact, and completely non-conflictually, non-controversially. Not only that, but throughout the entire story, the author throws in desertly-dry humor that one wouldn’t laugh at by itself, but in the combination of absurdities, I found it entirely amusing and endearing.
Everything is tied together, incident after incident, like the perfectly drawn puzzle. It’s the story of Garp’s life, his childhood, his young adulthood, his hopes and dreams and goals and motivations, up to his death. He is an aspiring author who marries his high school crush, and has a happy little family until tragedy– an absurd and horrifying and oh my god did that really happen sort that was as hilarious as horrifying– strikes them. But it doesn’t end there. Irving continues on with the story in the way where you simultaneously love and hate the characters, but either way, you understand them.
This is not a traditional novel. There is really nothing traditional about it. In fact, it is so unusual that I’m not even sure there is anything really like it. I imagined the utter outrage and coy smirks this story probably elicited back in the time when it was released. I dreamed of my grandparents’ generation and how they might have scoffed at the book, stating that if anything was worthy of being banned, this filth was top on the list. I intuited that if and when this book was presented in a college classroom, there were students who willingly dropped the class so that their pristine minds would not be scathed by it.
But how many authors can present material that is so very… off… and have it packaged in such a benign story setting?
My ranking: I loved this book. Every literary mind should try it on for size. I am rather liberal, so the contents didn’t offend me per se, but even for those who are easily offended, I recommend you read it. It probably won’t change your mind, but it would absolutely give you insight on the bits and pieces that changed the generation of those before us. Good or bad changes, these were the things they were talking about.
And if you’re looking to support A Perilously Precocious Librarian book blog, buy your copy from Tattered Cover here.
Say it with me, “Awww.”
