Cider House Garp

     The only book by John Irving that I ever liked is Cider House Rules. It is the only one I still have on my shelves – Hotel New Hampshire and Prayer for Owen Meany were given away, and after Owen, I decided life is too short to spend time on any more Irving creations. But Cider House Rules – why? The characters, the abritrary rules which are consciously or even unknowingly broken – the parallels to all our lives – the doctor – even the movie version is good, and that's hard to do!

     And why do we keep books on our shelves these days, our libraries, after we have read them? There are very few I have read more than once. (And as an aside, I highly recommend reading Wuthering Heights at least three times in your life – first as a romantic teen, second as a weary parent, and third as the parent of teens – quite the experience with totally different emotions each time!)

     But I had always wanted a library of all the books I had owned so I could access it anytime for quotes or enhancements to conversation – like I could be quoting Heathcliff right now if I wanted to. I also wanted the well stocked shelves to look like heaven to my children and grandchildren and to entertain them with all their pages!

     So of all the books and all the years, what did I ever pull off of the shelf, other than reference materials to illustrate a point during dinnertable discussions with my daughters?

Cider House Rules, of course! And for the most bizarre reason. I don't know how the conversation got started, but somehow or other I got to telling the girls how you can kill someone with a razor blade and leave little outward sign of foul play. They thought I was making it up – and so I went to the bookshelf, pulled out Cider House Rules and actually managed to find the page where the teenage girl killed her father in the same manner that he himself had killed people – with a razor blade. Sarah and Amanda seemed both impressed and disturbed. I know I was. John Irving continues to unnerve me.

     And, there was Garp.

     The World According to Garp is a John Irving novel that came out when I was working at Roswell Park – before children, before marriage. The book was so popular – everyone was talking about it. I resisted reading it – I felt it was too overhyped, and I always avoid hyped books and movies. If it was really good, it would pass the test of time, and I thought I would read The World According to Garp after all the popularity died down, at least a few years later.

     But people were talking, and talking about it. Mom read it – she said there were some chapters that she would read the first page or so, realize where it was going, and she would skip it – knowing the chapter would be too disturbing for her and also knowing that avoiding it would not leave a gap in the main plot at all. I think what she mostly meant was that there were chapters where Garp brought all his fears to life and played them out as if they were real, but they were only in his mind – so skipping those pages was all right.

     Other people talked about the book, and when they realized I had not read it, assured me that I should – that I would really like it. And when they recommended Garp, I told them I would read it when it passed the test of time.

     And there was my boss.

     He and I were doing an assay in the lab one day and chatting. I was probably spouting off one of my idealistic philosophies, sincere but usually from left field. Which prompted the boss to say, “You are just like Garp's mother!”

     Since I was unfamiliar with Garp's mother, he had to explain. Jenny was a nurse. One day she climbed on top of an unconscious wounded soldier in a hospital bed for the purpose of getting pregnant! On the soldier's pocket were the letters T.S. Garp – so that was what she named her son!

     What my boss meant by comparing me to Jenny was that I seem to go to extreme unconventional means to get what I want – and for the most part, I could get what I want without being so weird about it.

     In other words, we are both strong willed.

     Neither a compliment nor an insult – but closer to the latter than the former . Aside from the fact that my own pregnancies were a tad more routine than Garp's conception – Jenny and I probably are a lot alike. Sometimes doing things the hard way by myself is preferred to asking for a little help from my friends.

     I haven't heard anyone talk about Garp in years. But the book might still pass the test of time. So maybe I should read it after all – which by now has been 37 years! Of course I'll have to get a copy in large print – or perhaps download it on the kindle where I can enlarge the print to a readable size. I won't have to keep a copy on the shelf afterwards even if I discover I like the book – if ever I should want to reference it or clarify a passage in the future, the answers are at our fingertips - with the Internet, we can get excerpts, reviews, quotes. I can google right now and tell you that the T.S. in T.S. Garp stands for Technical Sergeant.

     On second thought, I think I'll wait still a few more years for Garp – and in the meantime give Cider House Rules a second reading.

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