Sherwood Forest

The World According to Garp.

One of the great things about being a kid in the 70s was getting to see so many great careers from the very beginning. I have followed the two big Steves in my life since "Carrie" and ""Jaws". I got to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger go from a body builder to an actor, saw John Travolta as a Sweat hog, Tom Hanks was a Bosom Buddy, and Robin Williams was a Mork.

I would have to say that the greatest of these actors was Williams. Looking back now Mork from Orc was the real moment that Happy Days jumped the shark, but as a kid I thought he was hilarious. When I heard that Mork and Mindy lived in Boulder, Colorado I asked my aunt that lived there to get his autograph for me. I wouldn't find out until later that it was actually filmed in LA.

His two best movies would come out while I was in highschool. The first was Survivors, which is still one of my favorite comedies, and relevant now more than ever. I have loved Walter Matthau since the Odd Couple. I thought his deadpan delivery was perfect against Williams's manic energy.

The second movie to come out was The World According to Garp, his first attempt at drama. I loved this movie so much I would get the book by John Irving. It would become my favorite book outside of King. It became my high school blueprint for being a writer, and the proper way a book should be written.

What impressed me the most about Irving was the pace of his work; he took his time. As a product of the 80s I wanted my entertainment quick and to the point. Irving taught me to go slow and tell the full story, something that has always been difficult for me to do.

I have always said, Irving taught me the rules to writing, and King taught me how to break them.

King and Irving would be my two favorite writers for the next decade, until Pearl Buck briefly took the title with her amazing Good Earth, and Missouri girl Laura Ingles Wilder would catch me with with her Little House series.

But I always go back to Irving and King.

In my twenties I stopped reading fiction, preferring biographies and educational work. But I have read every book Irving wrote up to The Door in the Floor, and every one of them is a masterpiece in its own way; each one uniquely Irving. All of my reading friends in highschool preferred The Hotel New Hampshire, and almost everyone that I knew read and loved the Cider House Rules when it came out in 85.

But Garp would always be my favorite.

I have about twenty books that I have read every couple of years since I was a teen. The majority of them are early King. The others are the Exorcist, Flowers for Algernon, Helter Skelter, the novel for M*A*S*H, and Garp. I have read them all about twenty times each.

I would say Salem's Lot and the World According to Garp tie for the most reads.

But unquestionably the one book that has the biggest impact on my writing and my life would be Garp.

Because Garp went to Vienna to learn to write, I spent the best week of my life in Amsterdam when I was 25, and met the second love of my life on the plane getting there.

But that's another story.