A Prayer for Owen Meany is a book I was ashamed not to have read. I picked it up several times, started it, and did not continue with it. I've read a great deal of Irving's work, and so my seeming inability to read this particular story I found both embarrassing and puzzling.
So, finally, I just read the damn thing.
And of course I liked it a great deal.
Perhaps most problematic was that I knew too much about the plot and characters prior to reading the novel. Everyone (as in every reader) I know has read it--LOVED IT--has imitated Owen's voice for me--and then has lamented the pain that he/she felt at Owen's untimely death. Sometimes people have even felt the need to tell me where they were when they read the book--as if it was such a seminal, pivotal, profound book that it warranted such remembrance.
Perhaps it was my previous knowledge of the book, then, and my knowledge as to how much it has moved other readers, that caused me to remain so very unmoved as I read the book. I knew Owen would die--of course I did--and not simply because so many people had already told me he died. Irving puts his death out there practically on the first page, and you simply wait out the novel until he finally does die. I knew he would die in a way that the book didn't quite foreshadow (as in in Arizona in an airport bathroom as opposed to in a village in Vietnam). It was the only amount of unpredictability that the book had left to offer.
It seems to me that the worth of Owen Meany lies in how it grapples with the issue of faith and purpose. My problem--I have little faith, and I struggle daily with having purpose. Maybe, then, this should be the book for me. Except I'm too jaded for it to be the book for me. Owen's faith is ... stupid.
Okay. I said it. Stupid! And sure, there are reasons for his unshakeable and fatalistic belief. But I thought his intelligence at odds with this faith. Owen was psychic. I'm not sure why that also makes him a believer.
I did enjoy the novel. But I did not love it like I thought I would; like countless others have said I would. I have never read reviews of the book, and when I did, after finishing it, what a surprise to realize the book was NOT in fact, reviewed well at all! A few A-s... but mostly pans. Interesting. And yet it is considered a modern classic, isn't it? Why did I think this? Can I even count this book toward my Classics goal?
Ah well... I will anyway. One down. 99 to go.
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