A Prayer for Owen Meany, Re-visited

 

Do you have certain novels you would like to strike off your list of should-reads or read again but realize that there are "so many books, so little time"? We have taken to listening to books as we travel in our vehicle, realizing that this may be the only way our wishful thinking will become wish fulfillment. Moby Dick was one example -- it is sooo long! 

Another novel we both enjoyed decades ago was A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, so we listened to it as well, over several months. It is about a peculiar, prophetic boy named Owen Meany, narrated by his life-long friend John Wheelright. 

I knew that the novel made me laugh out loud at several points, particularly the hilarious Christmas Pageant. I recalled that in some respects it was about the possibilities of fate and the mystery of predestination. I had forgotten entirely that the story begins with a lot of reflection about God and being a Christian and going to church. And I forgot that while the novel begins in small town New Hampshire in the early 1950s John Wheelright is telling his tale from Toronto where he is a teacher in the 1980s. In fact, many of the Toronto references are very familiar in that we lived in the same area as fictional John when I was at seminary in the city in the late 1970s.

As we listened I laughed aloud, numerous times, and with an appreciation for funny scenes I might not have enjoyed in the same way 30 years ago. Some of narrator John's observations about Americam politics and culture during the turbulent Vietnam war years are remarkably applicable to the present day with its chaos.  

What impressed me most is the depth of spiritual and religious reflections by tiny, quirky Owen as a boy and young man, along with the observations by aging John as he settles into Anglicanism while teaching at a hoighty-toighty girls school in Toronto. 

John Irving has described himself as a non-believer, yet in moment after moment he is profound in his ways of describing the spiritual wrestling and discovery by his central characters, including Owen's certitude regarding certain precepts of the Christian life.  There is a funeral scene near the end of the book in which the preacher, who lost his faith and found it again, employs scripture passages in a stirring and touching manner. 

So, here it is, dear readers. Decades on, I've experienced A Prayer for Owen Meany again, and heard it as though for the first time. Will I live long enough to reflect back on this a few years from now and ask, what was it about that novel that I appreciated so much? If you haven't read Owen Meany, get on it while you still can!