Word: owen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving (Morrow; $19.95). In this inventive, indignant novel, a boisterous cast and a spirited story line propel a sawed- off Christly caricature through two decades of U.S. foreign policy debacles...
...what college students all over the country do all the time: he has made a judgment based on ignorance. In so doing, he and The Crimson, despite his protestations to the contrary, have tarred Duke University. This may be common and expedient journalism, but it's bad journalism. John Owen (Duke...
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...
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...
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...