The World According to Garp book cover

The World According to Garp is a novel by John Irving. Published in 1978, the book was a bestseller for years; Irving has subsequently become one of the most "bankable" modern American novelists. Image File history File links The World According to Garp book cover This image is a book cover. ... Image File history File links The World According to Garp book cover This image is a book cover. ... John Winslow Irving (born March 2, 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (for The Cider House Rules, based on his book of the same name). ... 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ...

The story deals with Garp, the son of a ball-turret gunner who was effectively reduced to a mental vegetable by a piece of shrapnel which pierced his head; his mother, Jenny Fields, is a strong-willed nurse who wants a child but not a husband (and has no interest in sex except as a means to the end of having a child), and so uses the bedridden Technical Sergeant Garp to impregnate herself. Her parents are both wealthy and shocked; Garp's mother raises Garp without their support, taking a position at a boys' school. She becomes a well-known feminist speaker after publishing an auto-biography called A Sexual Suspect (referring to the general assessment of her as an unwed mother). Meanwhile Garp becomes interested in wrestling, sex, and writing: three topics which his mother seems to have a rudimentary and unemotional interest in. Shrapnel is the collective term for fragments and debris thrown out by an exploding shell or landmine. ... Feminism is a social theory and political movement primarily informed and motivated by the experience of women. ...

The book contains some elements that appear in almost all John Irving novels: bears, wrestling, Vienna and a complex Dickensian plot that spans the protagonist's whole life. John Winslow Irving (born March 2, 1942) is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (for The Cider House Rules, based on his book of the same name). ...

The novel was adapted by Steve Tesich into a screenplay for a 1982 movie directed by George Roy Hill and starring Robin Williams as Garp. Glenn Close played Fields, and John Lithgow was featured as Roberta Muldoon, a transsexual former football player. Steve Stojan Tesich is an Oscar-winning screenwriter and playwright who was born in Uzice, Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro) on September 29, 1942. ... 1982 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... George Roy Hill (December 20, 1922 - December 27, 2002) was an American film director. ... Robin Williams - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947 in Greenwich, Connecticut) is an American film and stage actress. ... John Lithgow (born October 19, 1945 in Rochester, New York) is an accomplished actor, best known for starring in the 1996-2001 NBC sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun. ...

External links

• The World According to Garp at the Internet Movie Database