I don’t think she’s being “punished” for wanting a child but not a husband. When you’re committing what essentially amounts to rape in order to get what you want, then yes, that’s wrong. “Kill Bill” was brought up here. Is Jenny a more morally ambiguous person than say, Buck, because what she did was done in the goal of obtaining a child and Buck simply wanted to get off?
Definitely true. That said, I absolutely prefer A Prayer for Owen Meany, about which I am writing my Extended Essay for the IB requirements.
While I enjoyed the movie - I asked my (now) dead brother’s (now) dead boyfriend whether I should read the book and he said ‘Irving writes meritritious (sp) crap’. I guessed the word is spelled around the word merit, and agreed whenever I tried to read subsequent books.
MiM
So she wanted a child but didn’t want a husband. Great for her. But what Garp wants is a father. Why do her needs outweigh the needs of her child?
I loved Garp.
Early on in the book I decided I was reading an absurdist novel. Maybe that helped.
This is exactly how I feel. It’s one thing to raise a child in a single parent home because you have to. It’s another thing to do it because you hate men. (And yet she had a boy child.)
I love this book. Absolutely love it.
My take on it is that it was a commentary on the new sexual mores of the 1960’s. Garp is sexually normal: He loses his virginity to Cushie, the town bad girl (who dies giving birth), marries a good girl, has “2.3” children and a few affairs. He (a male) walks away from his affairs, but Helen pays the ultimate price for hers–the death of her child.
Everyone else in the book is a sexual wacko–Jenny (Sexual Suspect), Roberta (a football player turned female, which was wacko back then), etc. The detonguing of Ellen James is a great commentary on rape, but the women who worship her are sick. (and wouldn’t Ellen’s life story make a great book?).
Meretricious. It’s spelled around the words meretrix, which is Latin for whore.
No comment on Garp, since I read it ages ago, but I remember liking Owen Meany and The Cider-House Rules a lot more.
I like Irving and remember liking Garp, when it first came out. It’s just that in retrospect, I get the distinct feeling that he was always trying to write literature, something he only approached or achieved from Cider House Rules and onward, i.e. first find the story, then make it literature.
Back then, he only had one story to tell and tried oh so hard to make it an interesting ride.
And my caring, compassionate response is: cry me a river. At worst she’s in the same boat as a man who wants to be a father without wanting a wife. In practice, rather better off, because a woman who really wants some sperm and nothing more can probably find it.
Of course, we may argue that motherhood, but not fatherhood, is a basic human right. But I’ll wait to address that one until I see if anyone’s going to seriously advocate it.
stupid question, have only seen the movie, and that’s been a loing while ago…
Why did the girl shoot Garp? I never understood that… it seemed so random, and I dont recall the movie ever explaining it.
She had become an Ellen Jamesian and cut out her tongue. The Ellen Jamesians were furious at Garp for having written the book condeming them and (in the film at least, can’t recall the book) infiltrating his mother’s women-only funeral. Plus, she was pretty psycho in general.
In the book, it was Pooh Bainbridge (I think I’m recalling the name correctly - it’s been a while since I’ve read it) who shot Garp - she was Cushie’s little sister and for some reason blamed Garp for “fucking her sister to death”, even though Cushie died in childbirth, with a baby that was not Garp’s. She starts out unbalanced and her hatred for Garp grows through most of the book (not that it’s a major theme - it’s just randomly mentioned every now and then); by the time she shoots him she’s become an Ellen Jamesian and a complete psycho.
The main reason the Ellen Jamesians were so down on Garp by this time is because the real Ellen James, who was living with the Garps after Garp met her on an airplane after his mother’s funeral, wrote and published a scathing essay entitled “Why I’m Not an Ellen Jamesian”. The Jamesians, unable to accept that their idol for whom they had sliced out their own tongues in a show of solidarity might actually be revolted by them, concluded that Garp had warped and perverted her fragile little mind and turned her against them. Before the shooting another Jamesian tried to run Garp over as he was out jogging.
I kind of like Garp, myself, but I like A Prayer for Owen Meany better; it’s not as graphic, for starters, and the characters are a lot more likeable, except the ones you’re not supposed to like. I’d say give that one a try before you give up on Irving.
Hah. Not from here. I just saw an Indian movie recently, and one of the conversations consisted of the young woman going to a wedding and one of the older women saying, “Haven’t you had kids yet? A woman isn’t complete until she’s had kids, you know. As a matter of fact, she isn’t really a woman…” :rolleyes:
My SO started laughing because he knew I was going to flip, and sure enough, I did.
(Then again I’m one of the few women I know that think men should have a right to an “abortion” as well - if she wants to have the baby and he doesn’t, she should have every right to but that doesn’t mean hitting him up for child support. We’re modern enough as women now that it’s our own lookout.)
Anaamika,
Have you read other John Irving books or is Garp the first? I haven’t read Irving in years but used to love him (Cidar House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany are my favorites - I stopped reading when I couldn’t get into Son of a Circus.)
There is a theory that some authors write plot (King), some write place (Tolkein), and some write characters (Irving). I think Irving excels at character - they aren’t likeable, they aren’t necessarily realistic, but he is so into the characters he writes that he’ll spend three pages describing a character he introduces on page 120 and kills on page 125. And they are disposable to him - sudden death of characters - major and minor, occurs regularly.
He reminds me of F. Scott Fitzgerald in style.
Only Garp. I’m not sure if I will try another or not. Right now I’m immersed in Guns, Germs, & Steel (finally). If I do, it won’t be for a while - I think you can only take him a dose at a time.
King writes PLOT?
I don’t buy it. King writes characters. It’e frequently clear to me that he has no idea where his plot is going, and he has to go through weird gyrations to try to wrap things up, or else he never does come to a satisfactory ending. But he’ll describe his characters well and frequently gets caught up in minutiae, taking pages to describe what transpires in a couple of minutes.
You may be right, I haven’t read King in longer than I’ve read Irving - and was never a King fan. 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).
I think Tolkein was a Plot as well as Place author.
And what about Nabokov, who was more of a Language writer? (I.e. with a few exceptions, I read him just for the poetic language than plot, place, orpeople.)
I don’t get Plot from Tolkein, but that’s my opinion - the Plot is driven by the Place - the plot is the place, or the Place is the Plot - there is a sense of destiny driven by What Has Gone Before that is more Place than Plot to me, it feels inevitably driven by its setting.
Atwood is, I think, also a Language writer. I like Nabokov sense of Place in “Lolita” myself - I read that book for Americana.
(I have to read more, I’ve been lost in going back to school and have been reading business textbooks and feel so out of touch with this - like its slipping).