SOURCE: Wood, Michael. “Nothing Sacred.” New York Review of Books 25, no. 6 (20 April 1978): 9.

In the following excerpt, Wood asserts that The World according to Garp is an intelligent and amusing novel, commenting on Irving's unique treatment of a writer's perceptions of reality.

“It's everywhere” is an appropriate sentiment for The World According to Garp, except that there the phrase would refer not to a changed historical situation but to something like the condition of the universe, a place of casual overkill and uncanny bad luck. Injury time is a fairly relevant notion too, since John Irving's impressive score is three rapes, two assassinations, two accidental deaths, the loss of an eye, the loss of an arm, a penis bitten off, and a whole society of women with amputated tongues. Irving is very deft at moving from grotesque, even cruel, humor to amiable realism and back, and his novel is...