SOURCE: Jamal, Zahir. “The Value of Laughter.” New Statesman 96, no. 2483 (20 October 1978): 519.

In the following review, Jamal describes The World according to Garp as a deeply inventive narrative that blends elements of nightmare and farce in its creation of an American “puritan folk-hero.”

The suspicion that living remains a highly experimental form of existence not unreasonably oppresses many citizens of America the Unsafe. So many incentives to keep going, the confused resident finds himself musing, yet such powerful inducements to fall dead. It's the kind of anxiety that sprouts thickly in The World According to Garp, John Irving's caringly funny treatment of tenacity and mistrust amid his nation's endless possibilities of harm.

In the compact, muscular figure of T. S. Garp, ex-schoolboy wrestler and dedicated writer, parent, husband and home-maker, Irving has supplied the American imagination with one of its last puritan folk-heroes. For Garp is a born worrier...