SOURCE: Harter, Carol C., and James R. Thompson. “The World according to Garp: Life as a Doomed Effort at Reclassification.” In John Irving, pp. 74-102. Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1986.

In the following essay, Harter and Thompson discuss Irving's use of narrative technique and point of view in The World according to Garp, concluding that the novel effectively integrates a comic-tragic worldview within a traditional family saga.

In the four years following the publication of what must be considered his least successful novel, The 158-Pound Marriage, a still youthful Irving conceived and brilliantly executed his masterpiece, The World According to Garp. Previous struggles with point of view, clarity, tone, and breadth of canvas resolved themselves—by the mysterious processes that shape an artist's sensitivity and capacity to create a superbly realized work—in a novel whose voice, structure, and vision define it as a unique expression of “true” (as opposed...