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"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 Wolf 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."