On not Re-Reading
I will never re-read A Prayer for Owen Meany. I have only fond memories of my bony eighth-grader’s hands turning the thin pages, taking in every word, every scene, every 1950s cultural reference I didn’t understand. In the immediate aftermath of reading it, for at least a few months, I told anyone who asked that it was my favorite book. I read about the film adaptation, Simon Birch, and decided without watching it that it wasn’t as good as the book was and I would not give it the time of day. I told myself that I should really read other John Irving books, but I never did. It has now been more than five years since I read it – half a decade – and I’ve never even been tempted to return to it, despite my habit of returning to much worse novels, which will remain nameless, over and over. Why? Because I know those books, the worn copies of fantasy series I first read at six years old, are not so good. But when I was twelve or thirteen and I sank my teeth into A Prayer for Owen Meany, I was convinced I was reading The Great American Novel. I’d already read Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, and Slaughterhouse-Five, but I would have burned every copy of them to ensure Owen Meany’s status as a canonical classic.
In the cold light of adulthood, I can see that Owen Meany is, in its way, not so different from those fantasy books for grade-schoolers. They all concern young men who have been chosen by higher powers for a purpose greater than they ever expected. That was probably why I liked Owen Meany; I was only a few years out from the time when I was obsessed with those series, even though I fancied myself much smarter than the nine-year-old I had been. Here is the passage that sticks with me most, years after reading the book: "GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM
GOD'S INSTRUMENT." The words are in all caps because everything Owen Meany says is in all caps. (This is the sort of thing I am worried would bother me if I re-read it now.) Anyway, the idea of one’s hands being the instrument of God was really compelling to me at whatever age I read the book. It’s hard to remember why exactly, looking back, but I know that I remember the quote now. That means something. If I’m being completely frank, I’m not sure there was a deeper meaning to my connection with the quote; I think I just felt smart for reading a book with
honest-to-god metaphors in it. And still this line about the hands of Owen Meany, and in a sense the hands of God – in whom I do not believe – stays with me after five years. For the sake of my 13-year-old self’s ego, I cannot re-read A Prayer for Owen Meany, I cannot flip through its pages with my (ever-so-slightly) calloused adult fingers, because if it is not the The Great American Novel, that 13-year-old would be utterly betrayed.