# The World According to Garp - or, what the hell did I just read? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 2, 2007, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257 "2007-07-02T18:15:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2007, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/61 "2007-07-05T14:23:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Lets see - plot… I’m not coming up with a good plot author (Plot authors don’t tend to appeal to me - I’m a character girl). How about Doyle? Sherlock Holmes stories are carefully plotted out. They have to be, or they make no sense. Of course, Doyle was great on character, too – great writers don’t skimp on the important stuff. Plot is important in his other, non-Sherlock stories as well. Any story where there’s a cute “twist” in it has to have Plot as a major element, so throw in Fredric Brown and Robert Sheckley and O. Henry as Plot writers. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2007, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/62 "2007-07-05T14:30:49Z")
In Danse Macabre, King suggests Ira Levin as a Plot writer. ---
**Author:** ![burundi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@burundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burundi)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2007, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/63 "2007-07-05T15:29:17Z")
I do not like John Irving one little bit. I made it through \*A Prayer for Owen Meaney \*and halfway through _Cider House Rules_. The man has capital-I Issues with women, and I don’t have time for that nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2007, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/64 "2007-07-05T15:39:32Z")
[QUOTE=Dung Beetle] In Danse Macabre, King suggests Ira Levin as a Plot writer. [/QUOTE] Specifically, he suggests “Rosemary’s Baby” and “A Kiss Before Dying.” This was written before the glurg of “Son of Rosemary.” King also says the accident scene in Garp was one of the scariest things he had ever read. ---
**Author:** ![Khampelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Khampelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khampelf)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2007, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/65 "2007-07-06T05:07:55Z")
What, no love for _A Son of the Circus_? Circus Dwarves and Hejiras, but you get them up close and personal as human beings, not freaks. That’s Irving’s genius. I wouldn’t have touched the author (Sci/Fi Mystery predilections) if it weren’t for the Robin Williams movie. ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2007, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/66 "2007-07-06T06:02:10Z")
On a side note, there was a band in Atlanta in the late 80s-early 90s called [The Ellen James Society](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_James_Society). I saw them live once; my only memory is that they were horrifyingly LOUD, like knock-you-off-your-feet loud. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2007, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/67 "2007-07-06T06:11:44Z")
[QUOTE=jackelope] On a side note, there was a band in Atlanta in the late 80s-early 90s called [The Ellen James Society](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_James_Society). I saw them live once; my only memory is that they were horrifyingly LOUD, like knock-you-off-your-feet loud. [/QUOTE] Given their namesake, did they only do instrumentals? ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2007, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/68 "2007-07-06T06:20:18Z")
Would have been fitting, but no, I think they had stridently feminist lyrics. I can’t be sure, though; seriously, they were so loud (at an outdoor show, no less) that I couldn’t understand a word. ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2007, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/69 "2007-07-06T08:22:02Z")
[QUOTE=burundi] The man has capital-I Issues with women, and I don’t have time for that nonsense. [/QUOTE] Could you please expand, since I don’t get that all from his writing. ---
**Author:** ![Khampelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Khampelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khampelf)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2007, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/70 "2007-07-06T13:14:53Z")
[QUOTE=The Sonoran Lizard King] What, no love for _A Son of the Circus_? . [/QUOTE] I see Dangerosa touched on it, with a nod to Irving’s excellent character studies. Do the extraordinary situations these characters find themselves in count as ‘plot’? ---
**Author:** ![Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e68b1a/32.png) [@Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abby_Emma_Sasha)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2007, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/71 "2007-07-06T14:00:14Z")
May I share a Garp story? Okay. My best friend and I saw the movie in the early 80’s. Neither of us had read the book, nor had read any Irving novels heretofore. On the ride home she asked me what I thought of the film. I said I didn’t understand what the point was and I found it , well, stupid. BF said in return, “Well, I guess you have the mentality for films like that”. Wha? :eek: ON further prodding from me, BF tried to explain why she liked the movie. She hemmed and hawed a lot and I never got a good explanation. She said things like “It’s an intellectual movie, don’t you get it?”. Nope, didn’t get it. Sorry, I guess I’m now intellectually defunct. All was not lost, since I decided to read Irving’s book to see if I missed something. Uh, no. Same thing, didn’t get it, didn’t care. None of this put me off Irving altogether. I liked Prayer for Owen Meany and Hotel New Hampshire, but the movie versions were shitty. For some reason Hollywood cannot translate Irvingese to film. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2007, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/72 "2007-07-06T17:19:19Z")
[QUOTE=Charlie Tan] Could you please expand, since I don’t get that all from his writing. [/QUOTE] Actually if you listen to the interview posted earlier in this thread ( which I agree is actually sort of interesting ) Irving does go a little into his issues with women. Specifically how a sexual relationship as an apparently barely pubescent boy with an older woman kind of fucked him up later in life. But I’m not sure those specific issues are what **burundi** was referring to. ---
**Author:** ![zelie\_zelerton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/59ef9b/32.png) [@zelie\_zelerton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zelie_zelerton)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2007, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/73 "2007-07-06T18:56:02Z")
[QUOTE=tremorviolet] I think most of Irving’s books are similar: wacky, interesting things happen but there’s a cold distance from almost unlikeable characters. FWIW, I thought Garp was one of the warmest and fuzziest of Irving’s novels, his other charaters are even less likeable. They’re still good books but they’re not comfort reading. [/QUOTE] Have you read A Prayer for Owen Meany? Now there are a couple of wonderful characters. You still have the distant narrator as with Garp and Hotel New Hampshire but the book is imho the best Irving has written and has much less clumsy moralising and much more interesting story. ---
**Author:** ![Auntbeast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Auntbeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Auntbeast)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2007, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257/74 "2007-07-07T16:25:05Z")
In re: some responses. Hey, I didn’t write Jenny! I do not think she was supposed to be a compassionate, moral character. Nor do I think that she was right. I think she was a screwed up person, working her own moral code within the confines of the era that she was in. It’s 2007 and we still haven’t worked out all the kinks of parenthood. I wish their was more compassion on both sides on the issue. As long as one of us carries the kid and the other makes it happen, it’s gonna be a quandary. Malacandra: I’ll cry a river for you too. It is inherently unfair, I hope that adoption changes for the better or procreation for that matter. The only other Irving book I’ve really enjoyed besides Garp was A Prayer For Owen Meany. I’ve not read Garp in 25 years, but it was a pretty shocking/amazing/odd book to read when you are 11. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-world-according-to-garp-or-what-the-hell-did-i-just-read/410257.md?page=3)