"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

The World According to Garp is a comic and compassionate coming-of-age novel that established John Irving as one of the most imaginative writers of his generation. A worldwide bestseller
since its publication in 1978, Irving's classic is filled with stories inside stories about the life and times of T. S. Garp, novelist and bastard son of Jenny Fields--a feminist leader ahead of her time. Beyond that, The World According to Garp virtually defies
synopsis.
----"Nothing in contemporary fiction matches it," said critic Terrence Des Pres. "Irving's blend of gravity and play is unique, audacious, almost blasphemous. . . . Friendship, marriage and family are his primary themes, but at that blundering level of life where mishap and folly--something close to joyful malice--perpetually intrude and disrupt, often fatally. Life, in Irving's fiction, is always under siege." Time magazine commented: "Irving's popularity is not hard to understand. His world is really the world according to nearly everyone."
----This Modern Library edition includes a new Introduction by the author.

The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editons of impor-tant works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House
redesigned the series, restoring
as its emblem the running torchbearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inaugurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.

This was my first John Irving novel, and after reading this I am hungry to read his other novels, and I haven't been this excited about a novelist in a long time. Garp isn't perfect: the brutal scenes can be painful and difficult to relate to, but at least it does fit in with the plot. And yes, the major plot twist in the middle is a bit artificial. But overall, Irving's style is wonderfully vibrant and joyful, with intermittent pages of pure poetry. And some themes sing with originality, like the women that cut their tongues out. One chapter in the middle, a simple description of his home life routine, is one of the best writing I've seen in a long time, full of wit and fun. It's one of those moments of reading heaven where you know you're in the midst of a perfect moment, and you may read the same part years later but it will never have that wonderful first impact, so you treasure the moment even in the midst of reading.

My first exposure to John Irving's writing was his 'The Water method man'. His writing style attracted my attention with its uniqueness, its nuances of comedy and drama intertwined with moral lessons that made my reading experience both meaningful and entertaining.

'The World According To Garp' is one of his first novels and despite its wholes, it is marked with the very same impulsiveness seen in all early works of the great authors. One can see the inexperience of reconciling the desire to say so much with the need to release the first `great work' while at the same time struggling with the impending sense of not enough time. These three factors are so overwhelming that the impact becomes etched into every page of their debuts. I enjoyed this book, but at the same time was robbed of the craving I get when reading his latter works.

John Irving creates a character he calls T.S. Garp and follows him from birth to his untimely death. Garp is an author, a husband and a father who stands for certain moral principles, commits life's mistakes and ultimately finds the peace we all search.

It is difficult to characterize this piece as `a book about life and death', or `a book about lust, loss and reconciliation'. It is much too rich with complexity and reflection to even attempt to label it. I highly recommend it, but with the caveat - if you like this one, you'll love his latter books.

Reading John Irving's "Garp" is like viewing a horrific car wreck. You know you should turn away, but it's too real, too raw not to watch. "Garp" is filled with images that will haunt me for a very long time. In fact, in the beginning they were so powerful, I almost stopped reading. Some of the passages are terribly sad, some are pornographic, some are funny in a bizarre way, and some are all three. But all are intriguing and uniquely created within Irving's very descriptive style. The characters are riveting and totally unique, but still true to life: Garp's mother, a woman who wanted a child but didn't want to share her body with a man; Roberta, formerly Robert and a star of the NFL; Ellen James, who unwittingly was the basis for a cult of self-inflicting tongue-destroying women; his three children; his unfaithful but loving wife Helen; and many others of complicated natures. They are a pallet of wildly contradictory colors that Irving uses to create this painting of a fascinating American landscape. The book encompasses the themes of man vs. woman, woman vs. man, a father's fears, lust, love, and inhumanity. In the twenty some years since this book first appeared, it has climbed in scope from a best-seller to a classic of contemporary literature. And justifiably so. This book is not for everyone, especially children, but if you have the stomach to see life like it is, or might be, then I highly recommend this book. Interestingly, this book became a movie and gave Robin Williams his first film role as Garp. Interesting, because throughout Garp's voice became interchangeable with Robin's in my mind's ear. Perfect casting.

John Irving's The World According to Garp is a literary novel originally published in 1978. It follows the life of T. S. Garp, a writer, as well as his mother, an asexual and unwitting feminist icon.

The World According to Garp is an extraordinarily complex book. There's a lot going on, a lot of interesting and bizarre characters, and many key themes, including infidelity and sexual identity. There is also a very welcome commentary on people (the literati) who read way too much into novels, particularly concerning the author's intent and autobiographical bleed-through. Irving is a very entertaining writer. His prose keeps things interesting, for the most part, even when there's not a lot going on in the story. His characters are fascinating. The situations he puts them in are thought-provoking. Irony abounds.

There are issues with the story, however. The World According to Garp is so full of sex that quite a large section of it reads like Garp's sexual biography. In the first half of the novel, there is scarcely a female character that Garp does not pursue sexually. Infidelity is a key theme of the novel, but even so, the sex is unnecessarily focused upon, and the book suffers as a result. There are other problems with the storytelling. The book's climax, which comes in the middle of the book, is dramatic, but contrived. The ending is somewhat poignant, but it is also predictable.

The World According to Garp is recommended, but not to the squeamish or narrow-minded.

T.S. Garp is the only child of the famous, yet constantly-misunderstood, Jenny Fields. Under her care he had a most peculiar upbringing and maybe...just maybe, that can help explain who he has become. For one thing, he has become a writer, like his mother, but he is different. His mother's memoirs, her only published work, are read by many as the original feminist manifesto. Garp writes fiction. The World According to Garp is exactly that: a glimpse of the world through the eyes of a man who was raised by the woman credited as the founder of the feminist movement, and is now married and raising children of his own.

I appreciate recommendations as much as, if not a little more than, the next guy. And this one came with a very passionate delivery. Anyone who can speak with that much resolve about a book has my attention. She did not tell me what it is about, just as I was unable to really tell anyone what it was about while I was reading it. She only told me that it was the best book she had ever read, and she seemed a credible source.

While it wasn't, necessarily, the best book I have ever read, I thoroughly enjoyed The World According to Garp. It took me awhile to get through it; each word seemed so carefully chosen that it deserved as much attention as the rest. From cover to cover I was captivated by the writing. A few sections of the book made me a little uncomfortable, but for the most part Garp was an interesting protagonist who was able to hold my attention.

The gentleman who sat next to me on an airplane as I read this book shared that he had enjoyed it when he read it. I told him my thoughts on the slow pace of the book and he said Irving writes each of his books that way, calling his writing very "Southern." I'm not sure if he was saying that so I wouldn't feel isolated in my opinion or as a caution should I ever choose to read Irving again. If he meant it as the latter I do not plan to heed his warning; I liked The World According to Garp and I am curious to read more from John Irving.