When I started my banned books project in September, I didn’t realize that other people have done similar things. Searching the web for information on why John Irving’s novel A Prayer for Owen Meany (review below) has been challenged so many times, I stumbled upon a very nice site called Banned Books.
Bonnie, the proprietor of that site, links to other banned book challenge sites and publishes banned book reviews — her own and those of others. She graciously invited me to come play in her yard, so in addition to posting my own banned book reviews here, I’ll be cross-posting there as well. If you have an interest in banned books, and you’d like to hear other opinions than my own, please check out Bonnie’s site.
So . . . let’s talk about John Irving:
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
Another on my banned books project list, A Prayer for Owen Meany has been the object of repeated school reading list challenges brought by worried parents. They don’t like it that the novel addresses that part of growing up commonly referred to as “sex”; they don’t like its opposition to the war in Vietnam; they don’t like its disrespectful attitude toward Saint Reagan. They don’t like the main characters’ difficult relationships with God, relationships that encompass both faith and doubt.
They don’t say it, but you know what I think they really don’t like? I think they don’t like the idea that a shrimpy little freak like Owen Meany could ever be anything but a bully’s punching bag. That’s the world these people grow up in, the only world they understand. Funny little guy? Kick him. Steal his lunch money. Yank his pants down. Fuckin’ homo.
In a way, I share their problem with that shrimpy little freak. Owen Meany isn’t just a freak, he’s fabulous. I don’t mean Oprah fabulous, I mean fabulous as in a) of the nature of a fable or myth; legendary; b) told of or celebrated in fables or legends. Owen Meany is not part of life as we know it. Everyone else in the novel is recognizably human; Owen is not. Owen is a cardboard cutout — an engaging and fascinating cardboard cutout, true — meant to represent God. Owen is, explicitly, the “instrument of God.” A Prayer for Owen Meany is a deeply Christian novel, a fable of faith.
The first half of this novel is hard going, and not just because of its religious theme (I’m a non-believer): it’s repetitive and wordy. Almost everything that will happen in the narrative is introduced in the first two or three chapters; but in the manner of those teasers they run on television news shows just before station breaks and commercials. If you want to learn more, you have to wait for it. Eventually you are rewarded, and unlike the stories they eventually get around to covering on News at Ten, richly so. Once A Prayer for Owen Meany gets its hooks in (for me that was about halfway through), it doesn’t let you go.
A Prayer for Owen Meany, for all its faults, is a great, rewarding read.