SOURCE: Disch, Thomas M. “Love Me, Love My Novel.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 3994 (20 October 1978): 1195.

In the following review, Disch argues that the appeal of The World according to Garp lies in the voice and personality of the book's narrator.

The novelist, like Cleopatra, seduces us by the infinite variety of his (and, by inference, our own) contradictions. This kind of seduction (or if you would rather, charm) is the key to compulsive novel-reading. The World According to Garp is a novel about the novel, and the novelist, as seducer. Practising what it preaches, it is also an irresistibly good read, the specific charm of which continually defies analysis. A bare summary of the plot would suggest that it is just the sort of book any novelist should most beware of writing—and any reader of reading.

The hero, T. S. Garp, is born, grows up in a New...