One Text, Multiple Authors: A Metafictional Reading of Irving’s the World According to Garp

Metafiction as a form of writing makes the reader aware of the process of creating fiction. It explicitly shows the reader the fictional quality of a novel and celebrates the power of creative imagination along with self-consciousness about language. John Irving's The World According to Garp is an exemplary metafiction which includes multiple narratives within its scope and accommodates more than one author in the same. John Irving might be the technical author of the text but there are, if not more, at least three other authors viz., T. S. Garp, Jenny Fields (two aspiring authors within the text) and the reader who complete the meaning of the text. This paper intends to subvert the role of the reader into a co-author along with Irving and the fictional authors and understand the dynamics of interpretation within the text. This paper would closely study the metafictional tendencies of the novel highlighting the reader's point of view and would try to uncover the layered meanings within the narrative.