TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040389/04038900.057

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 3.6 KB | 77 lines

                                                                                BOOKS, Page 80

The Message Is the Message


By R.Z. Sheppard


    A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY
    by John Irving Morrow; 543 pages; $19.95

    Accidents usually accelerate John Irving's antic plots and
keep his readers tuned for what happens next. A Prayer for Owen
Meany takes a somewhat different approach. Framed by the myth
of victim as redeemer, the book removes guesswork without
reducing expectations. One knows going in that the mischievous
author is staging a kind of "Gospel According to Charlie Brown."
But anyone familiar with Irving's mastery of narrative
technique, his dark humor and moral resolve also knows his
fiction is cute like a fox.

    Irving's inventive stamina and virtuosity scarcely disguise
his indignation about the ways of the world, particularly about
the manner in which U.S. foreign policy has been conducted in
the past 25 years. The period includes John F. Kennedy's
military intervention in Viet Nam and Ronald Reagan's
resurrection of 19th century jingoism over Central America.

    Through the miracle of literary hindsight, the mess of two
decades is foreseen by a sawed-off Christly caricature, Owen
Meany, a New Hampshire granite quarrier's son who speaks in
capital letters and believes the sacrificial arc of his life has
been plotted by God. The novel's narrator is John Wheelwright,
Meany's prep-school mate and eventually his leading apostle.

    As in hagiographies and heroic tales, faith is tested by
adversity. Wheelwright's challenge is vintage Irving, an event
that is simultaneously horrifying and absurdly funny. It occurs
during a Little League game in the summer of 1953 when Meany,
in the lineup because his diminutive strike zone draws walks,
swings away. He connects for a mighty foul ball that shoots
toward the stands and fatally strikes Wheelwright's mother on
the head. The game is suspended along with, it is hoped, the
reader's disbelief.

    Wheelwright recalls this and subsequent apocalypses from
his home in Toronto, where he has lived as an expatriate for 20
years. Assimilation is difficult; Canada is under the perpetual
influence of a hot-air mass pumped in by media from the south,
and Wheelwright is a U.S. news junkie. As one character puts
it, "Television gives good disaster."

    Irving does not let his narrator have the liveliest lines.
Wheelwright is passive by design. The vigorous Puritan
tradition of his ancestors has become thin and unsteady. His
role is to record the actions of others and canonize his
childhood friend.

    Despite its theological proppings, A Prayer for Owen Meany
is a fable of political predestination. As usual, Irving
delivers a boisterous cast, a spirited story line and a quality
of prose that is frequently underestimated, even by his
admirers. On the other hand, the novel invites trespass by
symbol hunters. One can easily imagine college sophomores
arguing over the meaning of a stuffed armadillo that has had its
claws removed, or the significance of Wheelwright's carrying his
small friend on his shoulders to slam-dunk a basketball. For
graduate students there is the fact that Meany shares more than
initials with Oskar Matzerath, the runt hero of Gunter Grass's
masterpiece, The Tin Drum. To get lost in critical rummage would
be to miss the point. Irving's litany of error and folly may
strike some as too righteous; but it is effective. His glaring
capital letters aside, Meany reminds us that, after the nostrums
of the Great Communicator, news should be more than what we did
not know yesterday and are likely to forget tomorrow.