Word: garp
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...girlfriend who ODed near the Afghan border, and the presence of his Hollywood producer-director father. McInerney has an unfortunate penchant for Christian metaphors, and his story is heavy with meditations about redemption. A pity; the rest of the way he is as good as the pre-Garp John Irving. All McInerney needs, like his heroes, is to grow up a little...
Glenn Close has proven that she is an excellent actress in films such as The big chill and The World According to Garp, and she does her best here, but it just isn't enough to salvage Maxie. Indeed, it's remarkable she doesn't fail completely in light of the lines Maxie is given. The script, which manages to cram at least five 20's cliches into every sentence, must have been hard for Close to read without either laughing or bursting into tears...
...script is not Close's only problem here. She is also grossly miscast. She is by far too wholesome and maternal looking to be convincingly sexy as Maxie. In The Natural, she was an angel; in Garp, she was immaculately conceived. Thus, when Close slinks around a piano cooing "Bye Bye Blackbird," it's kind of disturbing, like watching your mother do a striptease...
...among bystanders systematically shot and killed by hold-up men at a fast-food outlet. Baldly stated, the irony seems a tasteless contrivance: Son of Junk-Food Expert Slain ) at Burger Bonanza. But like Evelyn Waugh in A Handful of Dust and John Irving in The World According to Garp, Tyler uses the senseless loss of a child to refine feelings out of a parent's worst fears...
Although he appears in name only, Charles Dickens is one of the undisputed heroes of John Irving's sixth novel. This homage seems both fitting and inevitable. The phenomenal success of The World According to Garp (1978) vindicated Irving's belief that what Dickens knew in the 19th century still holds true: a serious novel with an irresistible plot and vivid characters will not go begging for readers. The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), though lighter and frothier than Garp in most respects, offered a gallery of Dickensian eccentrics. But the author of such novels as Oliver Twist and Hard Times...