The World According to Garp
1978 novel by John Irving
The World According to Garp is a 1978 novel by John Irving, his fourth. It follows T. S. Garp, who is conceived when his mother, Jenny Fields, a nurse, rapes a severely brain-damaged soldier in her care, and who grows up to become a novelist. The book was a bestseller for several years. It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1979, and its first paperback edition won the award the following year.
Synopsis
Jenny Fields is a strong-willed nurse who wants a child but not a husband. A dying ball turret gunner known only as Technical Sergeant Garp, who was severely brain damaged in combat, is admitted to the ICU where Jenny works. She nurses Garp, observing his infantile state and frequent erections. Unconstrained by convention and driven by her desire for a child, Jenny impregnates herself by raping the brain-damaged soldier, and names the bastard son "T. S." (derived from "Technical Sergeant"). Jenny raises young Garp alone, taking a position as the live-in nurse at an all-boys preparatory school in New England.
Garp grows up, becoming interested in sex, wrestling, and writing fiction—three topics in which his mother has little interest.
The public source identifies “The World According to Garp” as 1978 novel by John Irving. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around World, According and Garp.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2507282. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1978 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “The World According to Garp” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.