Epilogue

"'An epilogue,' Garp wrote, 'is more than a body count. An epilogue, in the disguise of wrapping up the past, is really a way of warning us about the future.'" Pg. 567

Like most school related reading assignments, I wasn't too thrilled when I learned about the blog project and the 600 or so pages I'd be required to read. I assumed that the book would be boring and tedius, I couldn't have been more wrong.

I can easily say that The World According To Garp is one of the greatest books I've ever read. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what I loved about it, but some odd combination of factors in the book made me enjoy reading every page.

Garp's cynicism and dark sense of humor provided an enjoyable experience throughout the novel. His pessimistic views, his paranoid and irrational fears, his witty thoughts, and his outrageous actions made him one of the most believable fictional characters I've ever come across. John Irving omits no detail, no matter how small or seeimingly insignificant, and when the tiny details from chapters before are brought into play and the sudden realization of why they were included strikes you, the feeling is indescribable. The World According To Garp isn't some fantasy world inside a man's head; it's Garp's fears, your fears, my fears, and the fears of the human race all bundled together in a truthful manner, with no flashy attempts at glamorizing life for entertainment. The World According To Garp, is an honest one.

Irving also manages to delicately balance the seriousness and depressing themes with sarcastic humor, so that the emotional conflicts within the book don't overwhelm the reader. And with multiple accounts of rape, assassinations, and death in the novel, it's a good thing Irving is as talented as he is.

Now that I've finished the novel, I wish there was more of Garp's story to read. I have no plans of casting this book aside to some miscellaneous pile of junk in my room. This book is truly among my favorite pieces of literature, and I plan to read it through again in its entirety.

I've been searching for a way to wrap up this final post for quite sometime, but I suppose the best way to do so would be through Garp's own words. Garp described a novelist's job as being a "doctor who sees only terminal cases." And with coming to the conclusion and end of both the blog and the novel, I feel like I've taken on somewhat of the same role a novelist possess; Garp was a terminal case, every character in the novel was one, the aging John Irving will be one, and all the work put into this blog is soon to become one, but all in all it really doesn't matter, "for in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases."