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.
"Jesus," Garp complained to her, "first a sex reassignment and now you're in love. For a tight end with tits, you're really boring, Roberta." They were very good friends and they played squash fervently whenever Roberta and Jenny came to town, but this was not frequently enough to occupy all of Garp's restless time. He spent hours playing games with Duncan--and waiting for Walt to get old enough to play games, too. He cooked up a storm.
"The third novel's the big one," John Wolf told Helen, because he sensed she was wearying of Garp's restlessness and she was in need of a pep talk. "Give him time, it will come."
"How's he know the third novel's the big one?" Garp fumed. "My third novel doesn't even exist. And the way it was published, my second novel might as well not exist. These editors are full of myths and self-fulfilling prophecies! If he knows so much about third novels, why doesn't he write his own third novel? Why doesn't he write his first?"
But Helen smiled and kissed him and took up going to the movies with him, although she hated movies. She was happy with her job; the kids were happy. Garp was a good father and a good cook and he made love to her more elaborately when he wasn't writing than he did when he was hard at work. Let it come, Helen thought.
Her father, good old Ernie Holm, had shown signs of early heart trouble, but her father was happy at Steering. He and Garp took a trip together, every winter, to see one of those big wrestling matches out in Iowa. Helen was sure that Garp's writing block was a small thing to endure.
"It will come," Alice Fletcher told Garp, on the phone. "You can't forth it."
"I'm not trying to force anything," he assured her. "There's just nothing there." But he thought that desirable Alice, who could never finish anything--not even her love for him--was a poor one to understand what he meant.
Then Garp got some hate mail of his own. He was addressed in a lively letter by someone who took offense at Second Wind of the Cuckold. It was not a blind, stuttering, spastic farter--as you might imagine--either. It was just what Garp needed to lift himself out of his slump.
Dear Shithead,
[wrote the offended party]
I have read your novel. You seem to find other people's problems very funny. I have seen your picture. With your fat head of hair I suppose you can laugh at bald persons. And in your cruel book you laugh at people who can't have orgasms, and people who aren't blessed with happy marriages, and people whose wives and husbands are unfaithful to each other. You ought to know that persons who have these problems do not think everything is so funny. Look at the world, shithead--it is a bed of pain, people suffering and nobody believing in God or bringing their children up right. You shithead, you don't have any problems so you can make fun of poor people who do!
Yours sincerely,
(Mrs.) I. B. Poole
Findlay, Ohio
That letter stung Garp like a slap; rarely had he felt so importantly misunderstood. Why did people insist that if you were "comic" you couldn't also be "serious"? Garp felt most people confused being profound with being sober, being earnest with being deep. Apparently, if you sounded serious, you were. Presumably, other animals could not laugh at themselves, and Garp believed that laughter was related to sympathy, which we were always needing more of. He had been, after all, a humorless child--and never religious--so perhaps he now took comedy more seriously than others.
But for Garp to see his vision interpreted as making fun of people was painful to him; and to realize that his art had made him appear cruel gave Garp a keen sense of failure. Very carefully, as if he were speaking to a potential suicide high up in a foreign and unfamiliar hotel, Garp wrote to his reader in Findlay, Ohio.