FastCounter by bCentral

■ IRVING NEWS ■




 


今月は前回の『ガープの世界』のエッセイに対する読者からのメッセージです。
アーヴィング関係のサイトも掲載されています。

In this email:
Garp essays
A few good Irving links

********************

In no particular order, I present the three of my favorite short pieces on how readers feel about THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP.

********************

#1, by Kari N.
No other novel has moved me as much as The World According to Garp did when I read it three years ago. I read it over the course of a few days, mostly on trains traveling through Europe, the summer after I graduated from college. When challenged with articulating what it was about Garp that caused me to begin referring to it as the best book I ever read, I thought I would have to reread it in order to recapture the sentiments it stirred in me.

But all I had to do was read John Irving's own musings, written twenty years after he wrote the novel, to refresh my recollection of its singular charms.

As a young woman, and a child of a divorce that for all appearances happened because of another woman, I am usually offended by fictional characters that exist purely to show the innate tendency of men to stray. Usually I hate these men.

But I loved Garp. I understood him.

And when I answer for myself what the book is about, it isn't the dangers of lust, but the strength and endurance of true love. I didn't like it when Garp was sexually attracted to his babysitters, and I found it excruciating when his actions caused his family pain.

But Irving captures reality in his novel, and Garp's is a moving, truthful story, that is neither misogynistic nor simply misanthropic. Irving exposes human weaknesses, without excusing them as such.

********************

#2, by Craig S.
We could ascertain the reasons why some books stay with us for a lifetime and why others are forgotten the minute after we close them. The association between the reader and the material on the page becomes the marriage of commitment that defines the understanding of compassion and intentions of the writer. The World According To Garp confronts the many issues of inner definition and the outward expression of the human condition. How we choose to interact with one another as people can be discovered hidden in the words of Garp who we as readers witness a journey that begins by chance and ends by sudden circumstance. In many ways, this is the opportunity associated to living for us all; we have very little control over how we are born and even less control over how life leads us to the circumstances of our demise. In between, we experience life in a way that makes us all unique. In John Irving's book The World According to Garp we are shown one man's journey and yet, through the miracle of well written literature we are shown that although we have a unique experience that makes us all individuals, we are really in many ways standing on the shore line waiting for the Under Toad.

********************

#3, by Ali L.
I was eleven when I first read Garp; I can still remember the brown movie tie-in cover with the big, red letters. Although I had always been an advanced reader for my age--by second grade I was reading young adult books--Garp was my first "grown-up" book. I had little idea what I was in for. My entire worldview was changed by this alternately thrilling and shocking universe inhabited by transsexual football players, Ellen Jamesians, and foreign prostitutes. And yet I was delighted to have found in Jenny Fields a character as determinedly individualistic as myself. Her proto-feminist philosophy both reflected and shaped my own (at the age of six I had already decried as outrageous the practice of women taking their husband's names), and I immediately decided that any children I had would also have their own last names, realizing that if Jenny Fields could buck the rules of society and call her son T.S. Garp, then I could, too--and that indeed, like Jenny, I could do anything I wanted. Before I knew what feminism was, I knew I wanted to be like Jenny Fields, and before I knew I wanted to be a writer, I knew I wanted to be like T.S. Garp. And like Garp, I find myself now navigating through a curious and frightening world, full of exciting and dangerous surprises; and like Garp, I do my best to keep afloat myself and those I love, and to always beware of the Under Toad.

********************

GOOD IRVING LINKS: If you're looking for some info on the web about your favorite author, try these:
A "Written By" interview with Irving from this past February:
http://www.wga.org/WrittenBy/0200/writer.html

An article from The National Abortion Federation on why it awarded John Irving honorary membership (thanks to Orsolya in Hungary for pointing this out to me)
http://www.prochoice.org/media/irvingpress.htm

********************

See you next time!
Greg

[★高収入が可能！ＷＥＢデザインのプロになってみない？！ 自宅で仕事がしたい人必見！ ]
[ CGIレンタルサービス | 100MBの無料HPスペース | 検索エンジン登録代行サービス ]
[ 初心者でも安心なレンタルサーバー。５０MBで２５０円から。CGI・SSI・PHPが使えます。 ]

FC2		キャッシング 花	出会い　無料アクセス解析