. . . I Feel So Unclean

I finished The World According To Garp today. I liked it a lot. I did. It was funny, the characters were interesting, the story was dynamite, it had Important things to say without being too heady -- I recommend it. But, like, I need to take several literary baths.^[1] It's like I ate a bunch of pizza for lunch: I enjoyed it at the time, but now that I've completed it, I don't feel good.

Hard to believe, but a ton more stuff happens after the castration. Garp starts writing again -- a new novel, called The World According to Bensenhaver, about a crochety old investigator who deals with rape cases. Garp is dealing with some shit and he works out his demons through his writing. Irving includes the first chapter of Bensenhaver in The World According to Garp. It is gross.^[2]

The first chapter sets the stage with a man, Oren Rath, entering a woman's house with a fishing knife. Hope Standish is just chillin' with her kid and Oren's like, "I'm going to rape you now and then kill you." Hope's friend gets into the house and flees with Hope's son, but Oren takes Hope in his truck and drives her around a bit.^[3] Eventually, he's driving, and she decides that she's got to get out of this alive by any means necessary.

Hope gets Oren to pull the car over -- she can't let him drive off too far, or she'll be too hard to find later -- by putting her head in his lap^[4] and blowing on his penis through his jeans. Oren starts driving all crazy -- see, there's not enough blood in his body for his brain and his pecker -- so he pulls over to the side of the road to "have" Hope.

Oren overpowers Hope and begins raping her in his truck;^[5] they don't go out into the nearby field because Oren can't wait any longer. People drive past, but they assume it's just another people-banging-each-other-on-the-side-of-the-road-real-casual-nothing-to-see-here encounter and don't do anything. Okay, so he's raping Hope and her survival instincts kick in. Oren is absolutely going to kill her after he's finished, so something has to be done.

Hope feels around the truck a bit and finds Oren's knife. While he is still inside her, she disembowels him. He dies, but not before leaking blood and shit all over her.^[6] The police, including Bensenhaver, rescue poor shit-covered Hope. That's it. The end.

The World According to Bensenhaver is an incredible sales success despite its middling reviews. Garp goes back to Vienna at the recommendation of the book's publisher so as to avoid its inevitable backlash. Wolf (the publisher) is employing some less-than-holistic marketing -- capitalizing on his relationship to Jenny Fields and the accident that killed Walt and maimed Duncan -- so Garp gets away from that before it becomes truly unbearable. The book is also seen as both pro- and anti-feminist. Garp becomes frustrated. "It's made up!"

While Garp is in Vienna, Jenny Fields (his mother, faithful reader) is assassinated at a gathering of feminists. She starts delivering a speech and is shot by a man with a hunting rifle. The shooter is killed immediately after, but Jenny's super-dead. Garp comes home, where Jenny has a "Feminist Funeral." No men are allowed, so Garp has to dress in drag to attend his mother's funeral.^[7]

Garp and Helen have a daughter, Jenny. A few years pass and not that much happens. Garp becomes the wrestling coach at the Steering School and Helen agrees to teach there -- they're allowing girls to attend now, see. Anyway, Garp is shot and killed by Bainbridge "Pooh" Percy^[8] and then Irving provides this overlong^[9] epilogue that wraps everything in a neat little bow.

The end.

If you need some eye-bleach after reading this -- or "Guts," which you definitely should just avoid forever -- then I recommend googling "Puppy gif" or taking a trip to r/aww.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] A palate cleanser, but for books. Something inoffensive -- did Mr. Rogers^[*] write any books?↩

[2] I mean this. Children, stop reading; parents, you've been warned. Shit's about to get graphic. (You'll get that pun in a second.)↩

[3] I am skipping quite a bit here. The chapter is long and it immediately follows the castration-by-biting so really it's a lot to take in at once.↩

[4] ARE YOU SEEING THE PARALLELS TO THE AFOREMENTIONED CASTRATION SCENE?↩

[5] I'll spare you the big description of this, but rest assured it's very detailed. This whole scene actually made me very uncomfortable, not unlike Chuck Palahniuk's "Guts"^[+] short story.↩

[6] Would you believe I'm actually sparing you? I've trimmed this down from the nearly page-long description and I've not mentioned what happens with his dick at all, so, like, you're welcome.↩

[7] This is one of the more overtly-political parts of the book. Jenny explicitly told Garp that she did not want any sort of big funeral: give her body to science, be done with it. Instead, because she's a Feminist Icon, her wishes are tossed aside by people who at best want to mourn together and at worst want to use her. It's probably more about the Hivemind absorbing people who define their ethos more than feminism explicitly, but w/e.↩

[8] Did I establish who this was? Ugh. Okay. Back in his school years, Garp made fuck with a girl named Cushie, who was Pooh's older sister. Cushie died years later in childbirth, but Pooh was convinced -- somehow -- that Garp had fornicated her to death. She held on to this grudge for like 15 years and eventually kills him.↩

[9] And out of place, frankly.↩

[*] "You've made today special for everyone who knows you just by being you. No one in the entire world is exactly like you. I like you just the way you are."↩

[+] Don't even read that, honestly. Just don't. I had to do it in two sittings -- not because it's too long to read all at once, but because I physically had to step away from it for a while. It is the single most graphic, squirm-inducing thing I have ever read. It's to Mr. Palahniuk's credit that it's so effective, but -- I'm serious -- don't go into that expecting to not pace around your room for a while afterwards.↩

The World According to ME! ME! ONLY ME!

First, some things about how this blog is going:^[1] I'm working on the god damn footnotes. C., over at his blog, has started doing footnotes "right." He links between them, so the footnote in the text^[2] links to the bottom of the page and the neat little icon (↩, which I stole) links back up to the text. I will now do this.

I had started moving this blog over to github so I could write code for the footnotes and make them fancy -- I am a Professional Rails Developer, after all^[3] -- but maintaining both sites is just ridiculous. The github looks like trash, too, since there's no styling; it's just raw text. This right here is what I was doing with the footnotes, for those who want an example. Mouse over them. Fancy, right?^[4]

"Enough of this uninteresting garbage," you say.

I've recently acquired three new books:^[5] The Jefferson Bible by Thomas Jefferson, The Sirens Of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, and The Gospel Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster as revealed to Bobby Henderson.^[6]

His Noodly Appendage has risen.

I haven't started reading any of those -- gimme a sec -- but I do recommend The Jefferson Bible. It's a Bible that Jefferson put together himself. Effectively, he went through a few translations of the New Testament, removed all of the miracles / angels / demons / supernatural elements, and pasted verses together chronologically. What's left is "the good parts," or -- what I suppose, as I haven't read it yet -- a 100% human Jesus telling people to stop being assholes to one another. I like my magic tricks, don't get me wrong, but I'm interested to read a more grounded-in-reality Bible.

"Woah, this is still pretty boring," you moan. "And they're not magic tricks, jackass."

I'm reading The World According To Garp^[7] by John Irving. Ahem. If you'll just allow me --

I am about halfway done. This book is fucked up.^[8] It's thoroughly good, though. I don't like it quite as much as AHWOSG but it's definitely up near Cat's Cradle-level quality.

Warning: spoilers for the first half of the book below

"Garp" is a book about a woman, Jenny Fields, the Mother of Feminism. She hates men and their "lust," and one day she decides she wants to have a child. She won't get married or even go through with a "traditional" courtship process^[9] but she's lucky enough to be a nurse during wartime. A man known only as Garp is shot down in an airplane, and he's mentally incapacitated by the event. He regresses to childhood, going backwards through mental development, eventually only being able to say his name. He does get fairly constant erections, though.^[10]

Jenny decides to have a sexual relationship with Garp. He's unable to speak or comprehend much of anything, but she -- erm -- "relieves" him^[11] when he gets his boners. Jenny decides she wants a child around the same time Garp can only say "Aaa," having lost the other sounds of his name. Before Garp dies from his wounds, he gets an erection again, and Jenny rapes him.^[12]

Jenny conceives a child from this liason; she gives birth to the boy and names him "T.S. Garp" -- you see, papa Garp was a Technical Sergeant. Garp gets a slot in a prep school in which his mother works as a nurse. He graduates with a focus in writing^[13] and he soon moves to Vienna with Jenny in an effort to see an "artsy" part of Europe.

While in Europe, Jenny writes her memoir, A Sexual Suspect. It is hailed as the first feminist text: Jenny is not afraid of being an asexual-except-that-time-she-raped-a-handicapped-dying-guy-so-she-could-steal-a-baby-from-him, independent woman. A cadre of women adopt Jenny as their role model / leader and she becomes incredibly wealthy. This wealth allows Garp to work on his own writing; he completes his first work, "The Pension Grillparzer,"^[14] in Vienna.

Upon completion of "The Pension Grillparzer," Garp proposes -- via letter -- to a girl he knew from his days at Steering, Helen. She accepts^[15] and moves in with Garp upon his return to New England. They "learn to love each other" and make a baby.

I cannot write any more here's a list of shit that happens after all that or even before that, depending:

1. Garp repeatedly sees an older prostitute in Vienna, Rachel. She gets syphillis and dies.
2. Garp catches the clap from a whore in Vienna. He's treated for it and considers hitting on the doctor's daughter, but then he's all, "Dude, her dad treated by diseased dick, there's just no way."
3. Garp cheats on Helen with a few babysitters.
4. Garp and Helen get into an open marriage / swinging scenario with another couple because the man -- a co-professor at a university with Helen -- is sleeping with a student. The idea is to get him to want Helen instead (or something) which is somehow more acceptable to all parties. Helen calls it off after a while.
5. Garp runs down a child molester in some sort of park while he's running. He becomes a bit of a local hero as a result.
6. Garp and Helen have another kid.
7. Helen appears to be developing feelings for a graduate student of her own, Michael Milton. I predict a scandal.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] This is going to be pretty boring and I'm just complaining about shit I do voluntarily, so you can skip this part.↩

[2] Are you bored yet? Move along. I won't be offended.↩

[3] This is funny because I'm really not very good at computer science.↩

[4] I don't think I'm going to continue on the github unless one of you wants to style my site with your super-duper (dooper?) CSS skills. Holla @ cha boi.↩

[5] YAY! Ian ♥ reading!↩

[6] My Mom, who sent me to CCD every Monday night^[*] from K-8 and then a Catholic high school, bought this for me for my birthday. Shout out to Moms.↩

[7] Recommended / given to me by J. Yes, I do prioritize her recommendations. Fight me. NOT YO BLOG NOT YO RULEZ.↩

[8] Compared to what I usually read, which is to say it's more controversial than books about child wizards and talking animals.↩

[9] This means "date for a while before committing to raising children," or at the very least, "not rape."↩

[10] Parents, take your children out of the room.↩

[11] HANDJOBS. I CAN'T NOT SAY IT, OKAY. HANDJOBS.↩

[12] It's rape. Yes, she's only capable of doing it because she's a Strong Female Character, but it's still totally 100% rape.↩

[13] I've here skipped a good chunk of the book that deals with Garp's time at the Steering School. It involves Garp fighting a dog, wrestling, and getting a blowie-jay by cannons filled with used condoms.↩

[14] This is a short story involving a family who visits hotels and restaurants to classify them, giving them rankings. The eponymous pension features a bear that rides a unicycle. Irving includes a large portion of it in a book-within-a-book framing device.↩

[15] The portion of the book I skipped makes this seem not totally out of left field, though it's still strange.↩

[*] Admittedly, we would listen to blink-182 sometimes. It wasn't all bad.↩