TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/040389/04038900.057

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 4KB | 68 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.