The World According to Garp by John Irving

Whew, done!

Just about four months after starting, I can stick a fork in this one. And then return it to the library and pretend to be mystified by the four lined-up holes that have appeared in the book. Maybe it was one of their machines?

I would be remiss in talking about this book without talking about the Best Chart Ever (rivaled possibly by the McDuck family tree http://duckman.pettho.com/tree/v_american.html)

After noticing that Garp and the main character in Owen Meany were really short, I started wondering if John Irving were no short, short man. So I looked it up.

To my amazement, Wikipedia gave me the following chart:

If you’ve ever doubted the wonders of Wikipedia, be here converted. How hilarious is this? Maybe I’m just unjustifiably enamored, but I happen to think this is a stroke of genius, particularly the “Bears” column. Some of the others don’t so much float my cookie or whatever, but that column will be the one I use as a guide in picking any future Irving books.

So what the hell took me so long to finish this book? It was long, but even at nearly 700 pages that puts me at a rate of about 7 pages a day. Not too impressive.

There were a lot of factors. Have you guys heard that Nintendo Wii is a thing that was invented?

But there was something else that made it even more difficult.

I visited with an old teacher from college. She was (and is) a fantastic teacher, as evidenced by the fact that she always asks “What are you reading?” I told her that I was working on Garp. She told me that one of her professors brought Irving to her school and that he was a short asshole who was trying to nail every student on campus.

It was kind of an awkward moment, made worse by the fact that she dropped a grape on the ground, and after I nudged it into the sewer with my foot she suggested that I could have left it out for a squirrel or a bird.

Does it matter if the author is an asshole?

It shouldn’t. I think that I enjoy the music of Metallica the same amount as I would have regardless of their dislike for Napster, although that’s kind of different because though what they were doing seemed a little greedy, it wasn’t morally reprehensible. Plus, you can’t take the most extreme example. I’m sure that if Hitler had written the Cat in the Hat it would have seen a pretty sharp decline in sales in the mid 1940’s, spiking somewhere around the release of American History X, and then falling back into the red.

Here’s the big difference I see, however:

Garp, in the book, is a writer, and if you do a little digging you’ll find that the writing paths taken by Garp and Irving are pretty similar. Whether or not the book is autobiographical, and I hate to confuse the author with the narrator, it sure as hell FEELS autobiographical, which I think is no accident. Now, that in and of itself isn’t an issue, but let me pose this:

As an 18 year-old kid I went with a buddy to Chicago ComiCon. This has a point, I swear. Among the things to do at ComiCon, such as meeting Lou Ferrigno or being very saddened when the original Green Lantern artist is trotted out as a symbol of the way comic companies screwed creators, you can meet some of the big writers and artists of the day.

At the time, I was enjoying the hell out of a title called 100 Bullets by Brian Azarello. He has become a pretty big name in the meantime, but at that time he wasn’t one of the people with a long line waiting to see him.

I wanted to bring books for him to sign, but because I was traveling from Colorado to Chicago, I figured I’d leave my comics at home. So when I got to Brian Azarello, I just asked for his autograph on a blank piece of paper in a journal. He looked up at me like I was a fucking idiot and said, “Just sign this?” He sighed, signed, and handed it back without saying anything else.

I understand that it’s not the best thing to go to a signing and not bring the proper book. But I came so far, was a genuine fan, was only 18, and I was pretty saddened by the whole thing. It was so depressing that I tore the page out of the journal and threw it away, hoping that I would forget the whole thing. That was…coming up on 10 years ago, so obviously I didn’t forget.

After that, it was tough to read his stuff. I knew that I shouldn’t let it bother me, but I didn’t want to support someone who treated me like shit. I haven’t bought an Azarello book since.

Contrast that with James Kolchalka, who not only signed, but even drew his signature elf character in my book without me so much as asking. Since then, I’ve followed his work, and have recommended American Elf to anyone with even a subtle interest in comics.

I’m not saying that the one encounter turned the tide for Azarello, or Kolchalka for that matter. But hey, if you have 100 interactions like that, and someone else across the convention floor is having 100 positive interactions, you’re putting yourself in a bad place.

And to authors and artists who do signings and whatnot: If you don’t want to be there, we don’t want you there. Period. I’d rather miss out on seeing you entirely than have a bad experience that taints all your future work.

Let’s bring it back to Garp.

Garp felt autobiographical, and I heard from a trusted source that Irving was an ass. It made it really hard to not read it as the main character being Irving, which made it hard to get through. Which is why I put it down for a solid month.

But, bolstered by the fact that I had made a vow to try some long books this year, and further bolstered by the fact that this was only number 2, I pressed on.

Based on the two books by Irving that I’ve read, I can say a couple things about them. They can be long, and they can be a bit of a slog, but they often pay off in a lot of ways. I’m not an ending guy, and flipping to the end of a book has never been a satisfying experience for me, but the endings of Irving’s books always seem to happen in the right place and at the right time.

It’s also notable that his books tend to be pretty long. What I was looking for in reading long books this year was that sort of cumulative effect, the emotion that was heightened by spending what amounted to three times as long with a set of characters. And for me, it worked.

If you like Irving, you like him. If you pick this up and get 200 pages in, you will finish. If you’re not a fan, I’m certainly not the person to convert you.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Things that are for kids are not for me, with the exceptions of Life cereal and anything from a 25-cent machine with a crank.

So it was with a lot of fear that I tried out the Wimpy Kid books.

Honestly, there's a weird throwback, nostalgia thing that people about my age seem very into at this point, and it's not working for me. I can't really get into Finding Nemo. It's not because I think there's no way to hit those emotional points in animation, but because when the emotional low-point is blunted by an elephant hitting a camel with a surfboard, it's pretty hard for me to take seriously. If you took a good sad movie, like the Wrestler, and added in five seconds where he meets a little kid who runs up and punches him in the nuts for comic relief, it would kill the entire movie. But if a cartoon old man's wife has a miscarriage, it's somehow still okay to watch him use a flamingo as a sword.

Movies, TV, books, anything that is intended for children is almost always unsatisfying for me.

Calvin and Hobbes was always an exception. That never felt like it was for kids, to me. It felt like it captured what it was like to BE a kid, something that had been done before, but usually in a schmaltzy way like a dumb little kid asking his mom a question about whether or not god has a better beard than Santa.

Maybe it had something to do with the kind of kid it captured. Maybe there were kids out there who liked going to school and who played baseball b choice. But that wasn't me.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid definitely pushes those same buttons for me, too. It makes you laugh a little, the drawings are funny, and it's doesn't sound like someone speaking to a child and explaining everything.

Also, and this is a big one today, it doesn't take itself too seriously. We don't have to learn a life lesson along with the main character every time. Sometimes he pulls off a stunt and gets away without consequences, sometimes not. The main character can be a complete asshole sometimes, and he's not tied in to modeling perfect behavior all the time.
And you know what? He's right. Maybe it's not good for kids to play a prank on one classmate where they all pretend he's invisible, but if that's the behavior kids are modeling, oh well. I think we'll be fine.

Notes for Publishers of Cookbooks

Far be it from me to tell anyone their business* but some of these cookbooks are shit. I'm sorry, but they are. I have a few pieces of advice for you that might help sales a little bit.

1. Pictures, motherfuckers!
I don't know if you've noticed, but people have two eyeballs. One brain, one mouth, one penis or vagina or combination of the two, but TWO eyeballs. This should give you a hint that something important is going on with this whole vision thing.
I need the pictures. How else are you supposed to know if your shit turned out right? Okay, I know what a chocolate chip cookie is supposed to look like. But pozole? I wouldn't be able to pick that out from the center of a lineup unless the item on the right was chocolate chip cookies and the item of the left of it was chocolate chunk cookies.
Give me some hints. If children's books can waste page after page on pictures of some dope kid figuring out that he's not an idiot and just needs glasses, then you can spare the ink.


2. Multi-Use ingredients.
If only one of your 50 recipes uses Marjoram, then skip it. I don't want to spend five bucks on some bottle of crap that I'm only using once. Make it worth my while. They all look like either crushed up green shit or powdery brown shit, so throw me a bone and put the same ingredients in a handful of recipes.


3. Tell me the amounts the way they are at the store.
Don't tell me how many ounces of garlic. Tell me how many cloves. Don't say 4 cups of chopped carrots. Tell me about how many large carrots I need. I'm not a chemist. I don't even know what a "kg" is. Just pretend like you're at the store and tell me based on that. You're supposed to be the expert, so when you tell me "2 Cups Milk" feel free to add which size carton is cool.


4. Bullet Point Procedures
None of this paragraph bullshit. Save the flowery prose for your novel about a chef who solves murders. Just give me the basic steps. If there's something important, put it in a paragraph at the top of the page and if I skip it it's my own fault.


5. Don't get too specific
I like burgers, but I don't need a 90-page cookbook on how to make burgers, especially when most of the variations consist of putting different shit on top of the same kind of burger. A mushroom and swiss burger is not an entirely different recipe from the same meat with onion and lettuce on top.
















*Note, when I typed "anyone" I accidentally typed "Antone." I would tell someone named Antone his business, which would either be a name change or putting out a record immediately.