“Vermont?” John Wolf asked.
“Yes, Vermont,” Garp said. “He becomes governor of Vermont, but he really thinks of himself as a king. More utopias, you see.”
“The King of Vermont!” John Wolf said. “That's a better title.”
“No, no,” Garp said. “That's another book. No relation. The second book, after My Father's Illusions, will be called The Death of Vermont.”
“Same cast of characters?” Helen asked.
“No, no,” Garp said. “Another story. It's about the death of Vermont.”
“Well, I like something that is what it says it is,” John Wolf said. “One year spring doesn't come,” Garp said.
“Spring never does come to Vermont, anyway,” Helen said.
“No, no,” Garp said, frowning. “This year summer doesn't come, either. Winter never stops. It warms up one day and all the buds appear. Maybe in May. One day in May there are buds on the trees, the next day there are leaves, and the next day the leaves have all turned. It's fall already. The leaves fall off the trees.”
“A short foliage season,” Helen said.
“Very funny,” Garp said. “But that's what happens. It's winter again; it will be winter forever.”
“The people die?” John Wolf asked.
“I'm not sure about the people,” Garp said. “Some leave Vermont, of course.”
“Not a bad idea,” Helen said.
“Some stay, some die. Maybe they all die,” Garp said.
“What's it mean?” John Wolf asked.
“I'll know when I get there,” Garp said. Helen laughed.
“And there's a third novel, after that?” John Wolf asked.
“It's called The Plot against the Giant,” Garp said.
“That's a poem by Wallace Stevens,” Helen said.
“Yes, of course,” Garp said, and he recited the poem for them.
The Plot against the Giant
First Girl
When this yokel comes maundering,
Whetting his hacker,
I shall run before him,
Difusing the civilest odors
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him.
Second Girl
I shall run before him,
Arching cloths besprinkled with colors
As small as fish-eggs.
The threads
Will abash him.
Third Girl
Oh, la... le pauvre!
I shall run before him,
With a curious puffing.
He will bend his ear then.
I shall whisper
Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals.
It will undo him.
“What a nice poem,” Helen said.
“The novel is in three parts,” Garp said.
“Girl One, Girl Two, Girl Three?” John Wolf asked.
“And is the giant undone?” Helen asked.
“Is he ever,” Garp said.
“Is he a real giant, in the novel?” John Wolf asked.
“I don't know, yet,” Garp said.
“Is he you?” Helen asked.
“I hope not,” Garp said.
“I hope not, too,” said Helen.
“Write that one first,” John Wolf said.
“No, write it last,” Helen said.
“The Death of Vermont seems the logical one to write last,” John Wolf said.
“No, I see The Plot against the Giant as last,” Garp said.
“Wait and write it after I'm dead,” Helen said.
Everyone laughed.
“But there are only three,” John Wolf said. “What then? What happens after the three?”
“I die,” Garp said. “That will make six novels altogether, and that's enough.”
Everyone laughed again.
“And do you also know how you die?” John Wolf asked him.
“Let's stop this,” Helen said. And to Garp she said, “If you say, “In an airplane,” I will not forgive you.” Behind the lightly drunk humor in her voice, John detected a seriousness; it made him stretch his legs. “You two better go to bed,” he said. “And get rested for your trip.”
“Don't you want to know how I die?” Garp asked them.
They didn't say anything.
“I kill myself,” Garp said, pleasantly. “In order to become fully established, that seems almost necessary. I mean it, really,” Garp said. “In the present fashion, you'll agree this is one way of recognizing a writer's seriousness? Since the art of the writing doesn't always make the writer's seriousness apparent, it's sometimes necessary to reveal the depth of one's personal anguish by other means. Killing yourself seems to mean that you were serious after all. “It's true,” Garp said, but his sarcasm was unpleasant and Helen sighed; John Wolf stretched again. “And thereafter,” Garp said, “much seriousness is suddenly revealed in the work—where it had escaped notice before.”
Garp had often remarked, irritably, that this would be his final duty as a father and provider—and he was fond of citing examples of the middling writers who were now adored and read with great avidity because of their suicides. Of those writer-suicides whom he, too—in some cases—truly admired, Garp, only hoped that, at the moment the act was accomplished, at least some of them had known about this lucky aspect of their unhappy decision. He knew perfectly well that people who really killed themselves did not romanticize suicide in the least; they did not respect the “seriousness” that the act supposedly lent to their work—a nauseating habit in the book world, Garp thought. Among readers and reviewers.
Garp also knew he was no suicide; he knew it somewhat less surely after the accident to Walt, but he knew it. He was as distant from suicide as he was from rape; he could not imagine actually doing it. But he liked to imagine the suicidal writer grinning at his successful mischief, while once more he read and revised the last message he would leave—a note aching with despair, and appropriately humorless. Garp liked to imagine that moment, bitterly: when the suicide note was perfect, the writer took the gun, the poison, the plunge—laughing hideously, and full of the knowledge that he had at last got the better of the readers and reviewers. One note he imagined was: “I have been misunderstood by you idiots for the last time.”
“What a sick idea,” Helen said.
“The perfect writer's death,” said Garp.
“It's late,” John Wolf said. “Remember your flight.”
In the guest room, where John Wolf wanted to fall asleep, he found Duncan Garp still wide-awake.
“Excited by the trip, Duncan?” Wolf asked the boy.
“My father's been to Europe before,” Duncan said. “But I haven't.”
“I know,” John Wolf said.
“Is my father going to make a lot of money?” Duncan asked.