The World According to Garp

"Lord, no," John Wolf said.

"Lawd, no, huh?" Jillsy said.

"No one's going to blame you for anything in the book, if that's what you mean," John Wolf said.

"Well," said Jillsy.

John Wolf showed Jillsy where the dedication would be; he showed her other dedications in other books. They all looked nice to Jillsy Sloper and she nodded her head, gradually pleased by the idea.

"One thing," she said. "I won't have to meet him, or anythin', will I?"

"Lord, no," said John Wolf, so Jillsy agreed.

* * *

--

There remained only one more stroke of genius to launch The World According to Bensenhaver into that uncanny half-light where occasional "Serious" books glow, for a time, as also "popular" books. John Wolf was a smart and cynical man. He knew about all the shitty autobiographical associations that make those rabid readers of gossip warm to an occasional fiction.

Years later, Helen would remark that the success of The World According to Bensenhaver lay entirely in the book jacket. John Wolf was in the habit of letting Garp write his own jacket flaps, but Garp's description of his own book was so ponderous and glum that John Wolf took matters into his own hands; he went straight to the dubious heart of the matter.

"The World According to Bensenhaver," the book jacket flap said, "is about a man who is so fearful of bad things happening to his loved ones that he creates an atmosphere of such tension that bad things are almost certain to occur. And they do.

"T. S. Garp," the jacket flap went on, "is the only child of the noted feminist Jenny Fields." John Wolf shivered slightly when he saw this in print, because although he had written it, and although he knew very well why he had written it, he also knew that it was information Garp never wanted mentioned in connection with his own work. "T. S. Garp is also a father," the jacket flap said. And John Wolf shook his head in shame to see the garbage he had written there. "He is a father who has recently suffered the tragic loss of a five-year-old son. Out of the anguish that a father endures in the aftermath of an accident, this tortured novel emerges...." And so forth.

It was, in Garp's opinion, the cheapest reason to read of all. Garp always said that the question he most hated to be asked, about his work, was how much of it was "true"--how much of it was based on "personal experience." True--not in the good way that Jillsy Sloper used it, but true as in "real life." Usually, with great patience and restraint, Garp would say that the autobiographical basis--if there even was one--was the least interesting level on which to read a novel. He would always say that the art of fiction was the act of imagining truly--was, like any art, a process of selection. Memories and personal histories--"all the recollected traumas of our unmemorable lives"--were suspicious models for fiction, Garp would say. "Fiction has to be better made than life," Garp wrote. And he consistently detested what he called "the phony mileage of personal hardship"--writers whose books were "important" because something important had happened in their lives. He wrote that the worst reason for anything being part of a novel was that it really happened. "Everything has really happened, sometime!" he fumed. "The only reason for something to happen in a novel is that it's the perfect thing to have happen at that time.

"Tell me anything that's ever happened to you," Garp told an interviewer

once, "and I can improve upon the story; I can make the details better than they were." The interviewer, a divorced woman with four young children, one of whom was dying of cancer, had her face firmly fixed in disbelief. Garp saw her determined unhappiness, and its terrible importance to her, and he said to her, gently, "If it's sad--even if it's very sad--I can make up a story that's sadder." But he saw in her face that she would never believe him; she wasn't even writing it down. It wouldn't even be a part of her interview.

And John Wolf knew this: one of the first things most readers want to know is everything they can about a writer's life. John Wolf wrote Garp: "For most people, with limited imaginations, the idea of improving on reality is pure bunk." On the book jacket flap of The World According to Bensenhaver, John Wolf created a bogus sense of Garp's importance ("the only child of the noted feminist Jenny Fields") and a sentimental sympathy for Garp's personal experience ("the tragic loss of a five-year-old son"). That both pieces of information were essentially irrelevant to the art of Garp's novel did not deeply concern John Wolf. Garp had made John Wolf sore with all his talk about preferring riches to seriousness.

"It's not your best book," John Wolf wrote Garp, when he sent the galleys for Garp to proofread. "One day you'll know that, too. But it is going to be your biggest book; just wait and see. You can't imagine, yet, how you're going to hate many of the reasons for your success, so I advise you to leave the country for a few months. I advise you to read only the reviews I send to you. And when it blows over--because everything blows over--you can come back home and pick up your considerable surprise at the bank. And you can hope that Bensenhaver's popularity is big enough to make people go back and read the first two novels--for which you deserve to be better known.

"Tell Helen I am sorry, Garp, but I think you must know: I have always had your own interests at heart. If you want to sell this book, we'll sell it. 'Every business is a shitty business,' Garp. I am quoting you."

Garp was very puzzled by the letter; John Wolf, of course, had not shown him the jacket flaps.

"Why are you sorry?" Garp wrote back. "Don't weep; just sell it."

"Every business is a shitty business," Wolf repeated.

"I know, I know," Garp said.

"Take my advice," Wolf said.

"I like reading the reviews," Garp protested.

"Not these, you won't," John Wolf said. "Take a trip. Please." Then John Wolf sent the jacket flap copy to Jenny Fields. He asked her for her confidence, and her help in getting Garp to leave the country.

"Leave the country," Jenny said to her son. "It's the best thing you can do for yourself and your family." Helen was actually keen on the idea; she'd never been abroad. Duncan had read his father's first story, "The Pension Grillparzer," and he wanted to go to Vienna.

"Vienna's not really like that," Garp told Duncan, but it touched Garp very much that the boy liked the old story Garp liked it, too. In fact, he was beginning to wish that he liked everything else he had written half as much.

"With a new baby, why go to Europe?" Garp complained. "I don't know. It's complicated. The passports--and the baby will need lots of shots, or something."

"You need some shots yourself," said Jenny Fields. "The baby will be perfectly safe."