The World According to Garp, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving's fourth novel and his first international bestseller it also became a George Roy Hill film. 'Yount was the first person to point out that anything I did except writing was going to be vaguely unsatisfying.' Although he excelled in English at school and knew by the time he graduated that he wanted to write novels, it was not until he met a young Southern novelist named John Yount, at the University of New Hampshire, that he received encouragement. But at the time of its publication - Monty Python was big on US college campuses just then - what mattered was that it was bizarre.John Irving was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1942, and he once admitted that he was a 'grim' child. It was sick, especially when set against its academic, Waspy background. “Although it was unlikely to travel, The World According To Garp caught on in America as a piece of contemporary surrealism with a handful of ‘memorable’ incidents - like an English major whose penis gets bitten off in a car crash.

William McPherson, Washington Post, April 30, 1978 So I read it again, and it seemed just as true the second time around, as full of the hilarity of survival as the pain, an X-rated soap opera that runs from the ridiculous to the sublime.” On the most elementary level, I kept reading to find out what would happen next and when it had all finally happened I didn’t want it to stop. “You know The World According to Garp is true. They way he filters them through his hero’s unique imagination, we not only laugh at the world according to Garp, but we also accept it and love it.”Ĭhristopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times, April 13, 1978 At least these things oughtn’t to be funny. Nor is the “First Feminist Funeral,” held for Garp’s mother after she has been assassinated by a crazed anti-feminist deer hunter, which funeral Garp attends in drag because no men are to be admitted, and then gets mugged at when he is recognized by the younger sister of a former girl friend. Nor, for that matter, is a former tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles named Roberta Muldoon who has given up professional football to become a transsexual. Nor are brain damage and automobile collisions. Rape and mutilation aren’t the least bit funny. But John Irving’s fourth novel is something more than high-camp entertainment it’s a skilfully crafted black comedy that confirms the 36-year-old American author’s reputation as one of the best young novelists writing today.” “This, surely, is the stuff of pulp fiction, in which improbably characters and highly spiced incidents jostle for attention.

Here’s what some of the most-read critics had to say about the book when it first came out in the spring of 1978. John Irving’s fourth novel, The World According to Garp, quickly became a bestseller, shocking and titillating readers at the same time.

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