A Prayer for Owen Meany - a review

John Irving is a genius.

I picked up A Prayer for Owen Meany with some apprehension. (I am not always a fan of modern literature, for a variety of reasons, but I'll spare you that rant for now.) I had somehow managed to make it this far without ever reading Irving, and I suspected I was happier for it. Not.

Appropriately enough for a novel in which the voice of Owen Meany has such a central importance, it was the voice of the writer that drew me in. The novel opens thus:

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice--not because of his voice or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

I don't know about you, but I find it intriguing that somebody becomes a believer because of the person who was the instrument of his mother's death. And what does he mean by "instrument" anyway? More questions pop up rather promptly: who was Johnny Wheelwright's father? Why was Owen Meany so angry with his parents? You have to get almost all the way through the 672 pages to get most of these questions answered. I'll confess, I did find the journey a little long sometimes, but not too much. Irving is capable of writing laugh-out-loud scenes and the way he writes a story is so engaging, I was prepared to forgive him a few slow spots.

Apart from the story-telling voice, what most impressed me about this book was the intricate interweaving of the various elements of the story. It never felt forced, but even in 672 pages, few elements of the story are single-use, disposable items. They duck in and out of the story, significance accreting to them with each successive appearance. The way Irving accomplishes this without it ever feeling contrived had me marvelling. And you can practically feel the author winking at you when a literary allusion tips off alert readers to the answer to one of the riddles before the narrator finds out.

The political rants, while supposedly being those of the narrator, do come across as something more, which I feel weakened the book a little also. But again, I shall forgive.

This book will not make a Christian out of anybody, but neither is it a veiled attack on Christianity. It shouldn't much change the piety quotient of anybody reading it, because that really isn't the point of the book.

As a Canadian, I much appreciated that the Canadian components of the book were accurate and I wasn't much surprised to find out Irving actually has a residence in Toronto. I doubt if a non-resident American could have pulled it off quite so well, as he spends some time discussing the Canadian mindset, and nailing it. Or at least nailing what it was at the time in question. It's evolved a wee bit since.

In a way, I rather wish A Prayer for Owen Meany had not been such a good book. Then I could have crossed John Irving off of my reading list, which is insanely long. Alas, I shall be obliged to read more. Maybe even to buy some.


Technorati tags: John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

City of God: A Novel - a review

City of God is a fragmented, dissonant, self-absorbed, and self-referential piece of post-modernist twaddle. Written by someone with real talent. It was only the fact that I had publicly committed to reading the book as part of the 1% Well-Read Challenge that kept me from abandoning it fairly early on in the game, despite the talent and the beautiful language.

The book is essentially a modern cry of despair, the logical conclusion of a worldview essentially wrapped up in self. Everett, the author whose words we are supposedly reading, has this to say about himself. (Or was it his fictitious alter-ego? I forget. It's very hard to keep track of who is speaking sometimes.)

So he is lean, fit, he takes very good care of himself in that way of someone profoundly faithless. He runs, works out almost religiously, for the self-maintenance that is his due.

The main object of his attention is Tom Pemberton, a maverick Episcopal priest who is supposedly seeking to find out who God really is, but who is equally self-absorbed. Witness his take on prayer:

You should try it. As an act of self-dramatization, it can't be beat. You get a hum, a reverberant hum of the possibility of your own consequential voice.

He calls his skull his cathedral, appropriate imagery for several reasons.

The plot, if you can call it that, is highly fragmented, told from various viewpoints, all presumably written by the fictitious author, and is really a series of different stories and metaphysical ramblings, interspersed with an adult version of teen angst poetry, riffing off of some of the classic songs of the early 20th century. A few little ornithological observations are thrown in for a reason which would probably become clear if I reread the book and spent a few hours meditating on its symbolism. (And please, Mr. Doctorow, it's not Canadian geese, it's Canada geese.)

The voice is well-done. Doctorow has a deft way with the language and occasionally throws out a flash of insight that delights. But there are a large number of viewpoint characters, most speaking in the first person, and almost all of them sound alike. This is sloppy characterization and makes it even harder to fit together the shards of story that make up City of God.

All in all, I found this a highly irritating book. From the pretentious arrogance of much of the metaphysical ramblings (I get very annoyed when affirmations of opinion are presented as logical necessities, when they are anything but), to the disjointed "story-telling", to the essentially unsympathetic characters, too much of this book was designed to grate on my nerves, so that its virtues just weren't enough to win me over.

Doctorow has won plenty of awards for his work, so obviously plenty of people disagree with me. I do note, however, that City of God appears to be one of his least popular books as rated by Amazon reviewers.

Technorati tags: E.L. Doctorow, City of God

The 1% Well-Read Challenge

Book lovers of the world, unite!

Peter Boxall's book, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, is the basis of a challenge that is being thrown out by Michelle of 1morechapter.com. To accept this challenge, you commit to read 1% of the list over the next 10 months, which is one book a month. She even refers us to a nifty spreadsheet that allows you to tick off all the books you've read and get an automatic calculation of how many you need to read a month to get them all in before you die. I would have to read three a month. Not going to happen. Reading three books a month is not the issue; I just have too many books outside of that list I want to read.

But there were so many books on this list that I really wanted to read anyway, I figured I'd officially throw my hat in the ring.

The 10 books (subject to change) I have selected for this challenge are:

City of God - E.L. Doctorow
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
The Betrothed - Alessandro Manzoni


Technorati tags: Reading Challenge, 1001 Books