Word: garp
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This is the type of human drama that fills the bizarre literary world of novelist John Irving. The author of the 1978 bestseller, The World According to Garp, Irving writes with a perpetual sense of impending doom--at any time some sort of garish literary vehicle similar to Claudio's fateful truck can roar by and rip away everything familiar and safe. In Garp, penises fly, ears get chomped, tongues are replaced with stitches, and death always looms. "In the world according to Garp," Irving explains, "an evening could be hilarious and the next morning could be murderous...
When this quirky saga of writer-wrestler T.S. Garp first received attention in 1978, critics embraced the life-to-death story as a work which imaginatively blended modern-day issues such as rape and the threatened American family with startlingly fresh humor. But not long after the initially warm reception, some began to find the popular and violent images and story-lines in Garp a little less wonderful. While the book continued to sell rapidly, an inverse reaction occurred in literary circles. The jury went back into session on Irving and produced a revised verdict, charging him with excessive, gratuitous...
With the profusion of "I Believe in Garp" bumper stickers and sweat bands by 1980, many who had raved about America's "last Puritan" novelist were cowering amid Garpmania. The hitch was that the glowing reviews for the book had already been written Criticism of Irving's literary world--now often described as unreal and unnecessarily violent--had to wait until the publication last summer of Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire, which was panned despite hardcover sales far more brisk than its predecessor...
...film version of The World According to Garp debuts today, and every critic still ashamed over having praised the novel now has an opportunity to slam the blood and guts and love which follow T.S. Garp from his less-than-dignified conception through the notoriety and fame which dominate his later years. With Robin Williams of "Mork and Mindy" fame as Garp and a cast of unknowns playing the other principal characters, there may be a tendency towards pessimism even among the most avid Garpmaniacs. Irving's sprawling tive makes it easy for the cynic to believe that the powerful...
...work and society wants them to work," says Novelist-Critic Elizabeth Hardwick. "There is an illiberal and I think tyrannical minority imposing its will on obvious needs for social change," remarks Novelist John Irving, who wrestled questions of feminism and family into contemporary myth, The World According to Garp. "Feminism is simply one of many human rights. The whole thing is very depressing...