The World According to Garp

Her name was Jillsy Sloper, and John Wolf marveled to note that there was not one Sloper with even the first initial of J. in the New York phone directory. Apparently Jillsy didn't like phone calls any more than she liked books. John Wolf made a note to apologize to Jillsy the first thing Monday morning. He spent the rest of a miserable weekend trying to phrase to himself exactly how he would tell T. S. Garp that he believed it was in his own best interests, and certainly in the best interests of the publishing house, NOT to publish The World According to Bensenhaver.

It was a hard weekend for him, because John Wolf liked Garp and he believed in Garp, and he also knew that Garp had no friends who could advise him against embarrassing himself—which is one of the valuable things friends are for. There was only Alice Fletcher, who so loved Garp that she would love, indiscriminately, everything he uttered—or else she would be silent. And there was Roberta Muldoon, whose literary judgment, John Wolf suspected, was even more newfound and awkward (if existent at all) than her adopted sex. And Helen wouldn't read it. And Jenny Fields, John Wolf knew, was not biased toward her son in the way a mother is usually biased; she had demonstrated the dubious taste to dislike some of the better things her son had written. The problem with Jenny, John Wolf knew, was one of subject matter. A book about an important subject was, to Jenny Fields, an important book. And Jenny Fields thought that Garp's new book was all about the stupid male anxieties that women are asked to suffer and endure. How a book was written never mattered to Jenny.

That was one thread that interested John Wolf in publishing the book. If Jenny Fields liked The World According to Bensenhaver, it was at least a potentially controversial book. But John Wolf, like Garp, knew that Jenny's status as a political figure was due largely to a general, hazy misunderstanding of Jenny.

Wolf thought and thought about it, all weekend, and he completely forgot to apologize to Jillsy Sloper the first thing Monday morning. Suddenly there was Jillsy, red-eyed and twitching like a squirrel, the ratted manuscript pages of The World According to Bensenhaver held fast in her rough brown hands.

“Lawd,” Jillsy said. She rolled her eyes; she shook the manuscript in her hands.

“Oh, Jillsy,” John Wolf said. “I'm sorry.”

“Lawd!” Jillsy crowed. “I never had a worse weekend. I got no sleep, I got no food, I got no trips to the cemetery to see my family and my friends.”

The pattern of Jillsy Sloper's weekend seemed strange to John Wolf but he said nothing; he just listened to her, as he had listened to her for more than a dozen years.

“This man's crazy,” Jillsy said. “Nobody sane ever wrote a book like this.”

“I shouldn't have given it to you, Jillsy,” John Wolf said. “I should have remembered that first chapter.”

“First chapter ain't so bad,” Jillsy said. “That first chapter ain't nothin'. It's that nineteenth chapter that got me,” Jillsy said. “Lawd, Lawd!” she crowed.

“You read nineteen chapters?” John Wolf asked.

“You didn't give me no more than nineteen chapters,” Jillsy said. “Jesus Lawd, is there another chapter? Do it keep goin' on?”

“No, no,” John Wolf said. “That's the end of it. That's all there is.”

“I should hope so,” Jillsy said. “Ain't nothin' left to go on with. Got that crazy old cop where he belongs—at long last—and that crazy husband with his head blowed off. That's the only proper state for that husband's head, if you ask me: blowed off.”

“You read it?” John Wolf said.

“Lawd!” Jills screamed. “You'd think it was him who got raped, the way he went on and on. If you ask me,” Jillsy said, “that's just like men: rape you half to death one minute and the next minute go crazy fussin' over who you're givin' it to—of your own free will! It's not their damn business, either way, is it?” Jillsy asked.

“I'm not sure,” said John Wolf, who sat bewildered at his desk. “You didn't like the book.”

“Like it?” Jillsy cawed. “There's nothin' to like about it,” she said.

“But you read it,” John Wolf said. “Why'd you read it?”

“Lawd,” Jillsy said, as if she were sorry for John Wolf—that he was so hopelessly stupid. “I sometimes wonder if you know the first thing about all these books you're makin',” she said; she shook her head. “I sometimes wonder why you're the one who's makin' the books and I'm the one who's cleanin' the bathrooms. Except I'd rather clean the bathrooms than read most of them,” Jillsy said. “Lawd, Lawd.”

“If you hated it, why'd you read it, Jillsy?” John Wolf asked her.

“Same reason I read anythin' for,” Jillsy said. “To find out what happens.”

John Wolf stared at her.

“Most books you know nothin's gonna happen,” Jillsy said. “Lawd, you know that. Other books,” she said, “you know just what's gonna happen, so you don't have to read them, either. But this book,” Jillsy said, “this book's so sick you know somethin's gonna happen, but you can't imagine what. You got to be sick yourself to imagine what happens in this book,” Jillsy said.

“So you read it to find out?” John Wolf said.

“There surely ain't no other reason to read a book, is there?” Jillsy Sloper said. She put the manuscript heavily (for it was large) on John Wolf's desk and hitched up the long extension cord (for the vacuum cleaner) which Jillsy wore on Mondays like a belt around her broad middle. “When it's a book,” she said, pointing to the manuscript, “I'd be happy if I could have a copy of my own. If it's okay,” she added.

“You want a copy?” John Wolf asked.

“If it's no trouble,” Jillsy said.

“Now that you know what happens,” John Wolf said, “what would you want to read it again for?”

“Well,” Jillsy said. She looked confused; John Wolf had never seen Jillsy Sloper look confused before—only sleepy. “Well, I might lend it,” she said. “There might be someone I know who needs to be reminded what men in this world is like,” she said.

“Would you ever read it again yourself?” John Wolf asked.

“Well,” Jillsy said. “Not all of it, I imagine. At least not all at once, or not right away.” Again, she looked confused. “Well,” she said, sheepishly, “I guess I mean there's parts of it I wouldn't mind readin' again.”

“Why?” John Wolf asked.

“Lawd,” Jillsy said, tiredly, as if she were finally impatient with him. “It feels so true,” she crooned, making the word true cry like a loon over a lake at night.

“It feels so true,” John Wolf repeated.

“Lawd, don't you know it is?” Jillsy asked him. “If you don't know when a book's true,” Jillsy sang to him, “we really ought to trade jobs.” She laughed now, the stout three-pronged plug for the vacuum-cleaner cord clutched like a gun in her fist. “I do wonder, Mr. Wolf,” she said, sweetly, “if you'd know when a bathroom was clean.” She went over and peered in his wastebasket. “Or when a wastebasket was empty,” she said. “A book feels true when it feels true,” she said to him, impatiently. “A book's true when you can say, “Yeah! That's just how damn people behave all the time.” Then you know it's true,” Jillsy said.

Leaning over the wastebasket, she seized the one scrap of paper lying alone on the bottom of the basket; she stuffed it into her cleaning apron. It was the crumpled-up first page of the letter John Wolf had tried to compose to Garp.

Months later, when The World According to Bensenhaver was going to the printers, Garp complained to John Wolf that there was no one to dedicate the book to. He would not have it in memory of Walt, because Garp hated that kind of thing: “that cheap capitalizing,” as he called it, “on one's autobiographical accidents—to try to hook the reader into thinking you're a more serious