A Prayer for Owen Meany

I found my most recent copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany this year in the used book section at Boswell Bookshop. It’s perhaps the sixth copy I’ve owned since it was published in 1989 because I keep giving it to friends, but only those who appreciate fine literature. None of the loaned copies were returned. The aforementioned book is beside me. On the sepia and gold-toned cover, is the image of a dressmaker’s dummy. A dummy tells no tales.

The author begins thusly:

“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”

The book is dedicated to John Irving’s mother and father. You’d be right if you guessed the dressmaker dummy represents his mother, but let’s be fair, she’s a strong silent presence on which the tale wraps itself. Suffice it to say, she was no dummy.

The heart and soul of the book is what great writers always write about, i.e. “the meaning of life, and the struggle between good and evil.” Dickens did it, Updike too, and Joyce Carol Oates, my favorite writers all. In 1989, the images of Vietnam had all but faded from memory, and while Irving doesn’t write about that horrific war per se, it floats through my 543 pages. I say “my” because my relationship to the work is very personal. It speaks to me and my time as an American who has long sought and continues to seek meaning. Time is running out. I’ve been on earth for seven plus decades. What’s the end game I wonder?

But let’s lighten up, okay? I mean, Owen Meany would have wanted us to. Just because he was so small as to hardly be of any consequence, he was one fun guy. You’ll get the drift if you pay attention. Whenever Owen speaks, Irving uses big BOLD TYPE, as if Owen was shouting (which he rarely does). It’s a highly political novel from a highly political time, not unlike 2011, with war and politics sharing a dance macabre.

“I KNOW THREE THINGS. I KNOW THAT MY VOICE DOESN’T CHANGE, AND I KNOW WHEN I’M GOING TO DIE. I WISH I KNEW WHY MY VOICE NEVER CHANGES, I WISH I KNEW HOW I WAS GOING TO DIE; BUT GOD HAS ALLOWED ME TO KNOW MORE THAN MOST PEOPLE KNOW…”

What a glorious book. Owen Meany is a miracle maker, a kind of dashboard Jesus. Stick with the tale. The end game is perhaps the greatest wrap-up ever writ. Should I call the final pages a tear-jerker ending? No, though I do cry whenever I re-read it. But I cry not for the sentimentality of it, but rather for the power of truth.

Irving is still living. And writing. Thank you God.