Wednesday, September 26, 2018

I See What You Did, There: A Prayer for Owen Meany

I not only saw what author John Irving did there but I loved it. LOVED IT. It was a long road reading this book, I don't mind saying. 617 pages, which isn't the longest thing I've ever read but certainly an investment nonetheless. I started it in July, took it with me to China, and then really, really dug into it when I got back. It took a very long time, but this is a story that takes its time and really cannot be rushed, so it worked. I read The Hotel New Hampshire last year and liked it fine, but this is infinitely more my kind of story. Clever, clever. 


A Prayer For Owen Meany
by John Irving

The back of the book quotes the first chapter's first paragraph, stating, "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."

I've struggled all week with putting together some sort of synopsis for this book, and even a little with my decision to cop out by including the above back-jacket blurb instead of coming up with my own. There are several aspects of the story that are straight-forward and quite easy to talk about but the opening passage identifies them all. There are spoilers, big ones, that I'm not touching because "arriving" at them, however fast or slow a reader you are or how deep you choose to invest yourself into a novel is your own business. The only advice you'll get from me is to pay attention, especially to the chapter titles (which, together with the events they describe elevate this story to, well, a lot more than just a story). There is something very clever, I daresay very LOST-like (well before LOST was created) about all this, which is of course why I'm singing its praises. The overall value of the Owen Meany experience is in its cleverness and its emotion, something we Americans need in our books these days.

Clever, not as in "here are a bunch of long, fancy words and metaphors that prove that I, John Irving, am well above you lowly peasants slogging through my never-ending chapters," but clever as in everything you read about, every character's experience, every current event that gets described, every bit of dialogue matters. EVERYTHING. Why is that clever? You have to get to the end.

And emotion, as in the description of feelings, thoughts, and reactions that are complicated, sad, and sometimes very strange and often quite funny. You spend so much time with the two main characters that you begin to feel for them as only someone who has spent years invested in their lives can (which basically by the end, you have and will). Some recent authors of popular books can do this well, but many cannot. You can read an entire stack of mediocre stories with flimsy characters and cheesy dialogue and have nothing in the end to show for it but a pile of conquered books that don't mean anything (and don't misunderstand, I'm all for reading no matter what the level or topic) but you can also read something that stays with you long after you're done, something that touches your heart and opens up an empathy and appreciation for writing you didn't know was possible. I loved all these characters, I loved every blasted thing that came out of their mouths, and I love John Irving for writing it all. That's emotion. I look at the book, which I keep now among my most treasured, and think of all my favorite moments big and small: the damned armadillo and dress mannequin, the pickle in the champagne, Owen's voice in ALL CAPS, the endless books and films described, Owen's newspaper articles, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Hester always drunk and vomiting, all of it, and I didn't just enjoy it, I believed it.



Listen here: 
"Although it was only two o'clock in the afternoon, Hester had already consumed several rum and Cokes: she was sound asleep in her bedroom---as oblivious to Owen's and my discussion as my mother was. 
'LET'S DRIVE TO THE GYM AND PRACTICE THE SHOT,' said Owen Meany.
'I don't feel like it,' I said.
'TOMORROW IS NEW YEAR'S DAY,' Owen reminded me. 'THE GYM WILL BE CLOSED TOMORROW.'
From Hester's bedroom---even though the door was closed---we could hear her breathing; Hester's breathing, when she'd been drinking, was something between a snore and a moan.
'Why does she drink so much?' I asked Owen.
'HESTER'S AHEAD OF HER TIME,' he said.
'What's that mean?' I asked him. 'Do we have a generation of drunks to look forward to?'
'WE HAVE A GENERATION OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ANGRY TO LOOK FORWARD TO,' Owen said. 'AND MAYBE TWO GENERATIONS OF PEOPLE WHO DON'T GIVE A SHIT,' he added.
'How do you know?' I asked him.
'I DON'T KNOW HOW I KNOW,' said Owen Meany. 'I JUST KNOW THAT I KNOW,' he said.

Even now, looking back over the pages I bookmarked, I'm smiling and enjoying the book all over again. On the strength of this, I cheated on the Great American Read booklist and grabbed myself The Cider House Rules at the library just because I wanted more of this guy (and ended up loving that just as much if not more). Read John Irving. It's a lengthy journey but you're in good hands; he knows exactly what he's doing.

I now believe that Owen remembered everything; a part of knowing everything
is remembering everything.


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