John Irving - The World According to Garp

“It's a comedy!” Garp cried out, over and over again. “No one got it. It's supposed to be very funny . What a film it would make!”

But no one even bought the paperback rights.

As could be seen by the fate of the man who could only walk on his hands, Garp had a thing about escalators.

Helen said that no one in the English Department ever spoke to her about Second Wind of the Cuckold ; in the case of Procrastination , many of her well-meaning colleagues had at least attempted a discussion. Helen said that the book was an invasion of her privacy and she hoped the whole thing had been a kick that Garp would soon be off.

“Jesus, do they think it's you ?” Garp asked her. “What the hell's the matter with your dumb colleagues, anyway? Do you fart in the halls over there? Does your shoulder drop out of socket in department meetings? Was poor Harry a stutterer in the classroom?” Garp yelled. “Am I blind?”

“ Yes , you're blind,” Helen said. “You have your own terms for what's fiction, and what's fact, but do you think other people know your system? It's all your experience —somehow, however much you make up, even if it's only an imagined experience. People think it's me, they think it's you. And sometimes I think so, too.”

The blind man in the novel is a geologist. “Do they see me playing with rocks?” Garp hollered.

The flatulent woman does volunteer work in a hospital; she is a nurse's aide. “Do you see my mother complaining?” Garp asked. “Does she write me and point out that she never once farted in a hospital—only at home, and always under control?”

But Jenny Fields did complain to her son about Second Wind of the Cuckold . She told him he had chosen a disappointingly narrow subject of little universal importance. “She means sex,” Garp said. “This is classic. A lecture on what's universal by a woman who's never once felt sexual desire. And the Pope, who takes vows of chastity decides the issue of contraception for millions. The world is crazy!” Garp cried.

Jenny's newest colleague was a six-foot-four transsexual named Roberta Muldoon. Formerly Robert Muldoon, a standout tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles, Roberta's weight had dropped from 235 to 180 since her successful sex-change operation. The doses of estrogen had cut into her once-massive strength and some of her endurance; Garp guessed also that Robert Muldoon's former and famous “quick hands” weren't so quick anymore, but Roberta Muldoon was a formidable companion to Jenny Fields. Roberta worshiped Garp's mother. It had been Jenny's book, A Sexual Suspect , that had given Robert Muldoon the courage to have the sex-change operation—one winter as he lay recovering from knee surgery in a Philadelphia hospital.

Jenny Fields was now supporting Roberta's case with the television networks, who, Roberta claimed, had secretly agreed not to hire her as a sports announcer for the football season. Roberta's knowledge of football had not decreased one drop since all the estrogen, Jenny was arguing; waves of support from the college campuses around the country had made the six-foot-four Roberta Muldoon a figure of striking controversy. Roberta was intelligent and articulate, and of course she knew her football; she'd have been an improvement on the usual morons who commented on the game.

Garp liked her. They talked about football together and they played squash. Roberta always took the first few games from Garp—she was more powerful than he was, and a better athlete—but her stamina was not quite up to his, and being the much bigger person in the court, she wore down. Roberta would also tire of her case against the television networks, but she would develop great endurance for other, more important things.

“You're certainly an improvement on the Ellen James Society, Roberta,” Garp would tell her. He enjoyed his mother's visits better when Jenny came with Roberta. And Roberta tossed a football for hours with Duncan. Roberta promised to take Duncan to an Eagles game, but Garp was anxious about that. Roberta was a target figure; she had made some people very angry. Garp imagined various assaults and bomb threats on Roberta—and Duncan disappearing in the vast and roaring football stadium in Philadelphia, where he would be defiled by a child molester.

It was the fanaticism of some of Roberta Muldoon's hate mail that gave Garp such an imagination, but when Jenny showed him some hate mail of her own, Garp was anxious about that, too. It was an aspect of the publicity of his mother's life that he had not considered: some people truly hated her. They wrote Jenny that they wished she had cancer. They wrote Roberta Muldoon that they hoped his or her parents were no longer living. One couple wrote Jenny Fields that they would like to artificially inseminate her, with elephant sperm—and blow her up from the inside. That note was signed: “A Legitimate Couple.”

One man wrote Roberta Muldoon that he had been an Eagles fan all his life, and even his grandparents had been born in Philadelphia, but now he was going to be a Giants or a Redskins fan, and drive to New York or Washington—"or even Baltimore, if necessary"—because Roberta had perverted the entire Eagles offensive line with his pansy ways.

One woman wrote Roberta Muldoon that she hoped Roberta would get gang-banged by the Oakland Raiders. The woman thought that the Raiders were the most disgusting team in football; maybe they would show Roberta how much fun it was to be a woman.

A high school tight end from Wyoming wrote Roberta Muldoon that she had made him ashamed to be a tight end anymore and he was changing his position—to linebacker. So far, there were no transsexual linebackers.

A college offensive guard from Michigan wrote Roberta that if she were ever in Ypsilanti, he would like to fuck her with her shoulder pads on.

“This is nothing,” Roberta told Garp. “Your mother gets much worse. Lots more people hate her .”

“Mom,” Garp said. “Why don't you drop out for a while? Take a vacation. Write another book.” He never thought he'd ever hear himself suggesting such a thing to her, but he suddenly saw Jenny as a potential victim, exposing herself, through other victims, to all the hatred and cruelty and violence in the world.

When asked by the press, always, Jenny would say that she was writing another book; only Garp and Helen and John Wolf knew this was a lie. Jenny Fields wasn't writing a word.

“I've done all I want to do about me , already,” Jenny told her son. “Now I'm interested in other people. You just worry about you ,” she said, gravely, as if in her opinion her son's introversion—his imaginative life—was the more dangerous way to live.

Helen actually feared this, too—especially when Garp wasn't writing, and for more than a year after Second Wind of the Cuckold , Garp didn't write. Then he wrote for a year and threw it all away. He wrote letters to his editor, they were the most difficult letters John Wolf ever had to read, much less answer. Some of them were ten and twelve pages long; most of them accused John Wolf of not “pushing” Second Wind of the Cuckold as hard as he could have.

“Everyone hated it,” John Wolf reminded Garp. “How could we have pushed it?”

“You never supported the book,” Garp wrote.

Helen wrote John Wolf that he must be patient with Garp, but John Wolf knew writers pretty well and he was as patient and as kind as he could be.

Eventually, Garp wrote letters to other people. He answered some of his mother's hate mail—those rare cases with return addresses. He wrote long letters trying to talk these people out of their hatred. “You're becoming a social worker,” Helen told him. But Garp even offered to answer some of Roberta Muldoon's hate mail; Roberta had a new lover, however, and her hate mail was rolling off her like water.