Despite my deep curiosity about writing groups who have enjoyed lasting success, I’m shifting gears in a big way. As much as I’d like to go down that path, the questions that are emerging from my research seem to be pointing toward answers that are primarily sociological and historical. I’d like to use my opportunity in Junior Seminar to explore a textual or literary artifact through the application of a critical theory.

John Irving has always been a favorite author of mine. In his 1976 novel, “The World According to Garp”, he deals with many controversial topics for that time (and even in this time) such as rape, asexuality, marriage, paternal love, feminism and more. As I researched this novel and its impact, something that came up in several critiques of the work was the reader response to the text.

Professor Harold Harris writes, “no novel that I have taught was so well liked, talked and written about as well, or succeeded nearly as well in getting students to think seriously about what novels are, what novelists do, and what we as readers can do with novels” (Harris, p. 111) Harris acknowledges that there are certainly finer novels. But no other novel has sparked such a reaction from his students.

Benjamin Percy states, “He has sold tens of millions of copies of his books, books that have earned descriptions like epic and extraordinary and controversial and sexually brave. And yet, unlike so many writers in the contemporary canon, he manages to write books that are both critically acclaimed and beloved for their sheer readability. He is as close as one gets to a contemporary Dickens in the scope of his celebrity and the level of his achievement; the two of us couldn’t walk down the street or order a coffee in Toronto without his being hyperventilatingly recognized by a fan” (Percy).

So what makes the novel “The World According to Garp” so compelling to its readers? What makes them tremble with excitement at meeting its author?

One reason is that Irving’s well-crafted novel leaves enough room in the text for “multiple explanations – which allow or even invite readers to create their own interpretations” (Tyson, p. 166). This is a novel where the author means for the reader to find a position, discuss it, and even defend it. Transactional reader response theory allows the author the opportunity to create experiences for the reader to engage in “retrospection… anticipation… fulfillment or disappointment…revision… and so on” (Tyson, p. 166). This text, that positions itself as the biography of a writer as he develops, “guides us through the processes involved in interpreting… it” (Tyson, p. 166). As the writer Garp grows and evolves, so does the reader’s interpretation of him and the events and characters of the story.

The transaction between Irving and his readers is what makes this novel and others he’s written compelling and exciting to discuss and write about.

Works Cited

Harris, Harold J. “Teaching Garp.” Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 16, no. 2, 1982, pp. 108–111. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3332284.

Percy, Benjamin. “THE Wrestler.” TIME Magazine, vol. 179, no. 19, May 2012, pp. 40–45. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=75053051&site=eds-live.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.