“The World According to Garp is, to me, the best-written example of whatever elusive literary quality makes a human being capable of sobbing and laughing simultaneously. Those are each extraordinarily difficult emotions to elicit; to do so in tandem is remarkable, but requires the kind of evocation that critics might call outright provocation instead. They wouldn’t be wrong, really, but such is the way of both writers at play in The World According to Garp.”

Terra Arnone writes about Garp’s 40th anniversary in The National Post.