I have taken up John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel
It packed a huge punch back then and I cried when it was over. Not little treacly girlie tears but a BURST of stormy sobs at the end… My response had to do with the book, yes, which is very moving, but it was also so tied up with what was going on in my life when I first read it. I couldn’t re-read Owen Meany for years, because every time I even looked at the book all I saw was my porch in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and the greenery at the end of the street, and the waving tree branches out the window, and the black and white tile in the kitchen. That may sound like a nice image to you, but I assure you, it was bleak. And so it was in that context that I first read Irving’s magical book. My surroundings somehow seeped into the book itself.
But now I’m reading it again. I remember a couple of the set-pieces of the book, and that’s pretty much it. I remember the foul-ball, I remember Owen Meany’s voice, I remember the Christmas pageant (probably one of the funniest things I have ever read in my life), I remember Hester the Molester … and I KIND of remember the end. But not really. Anyway, I’m having a blast reading the book again. Laughing so hard I cry.
And whaddya know – time has done its work. As I read the book, I don’t see that old quiet porch in Germantown anymore. I don’t see the black and white tiles. The memory is gone, it can’t haunt me anymore. It’s over, in the past.
