A Prayer for Owen Meany
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- ISBN13: 9780679642596
- Condition: New
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Product Description
In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-ancient boys—best friends—are playing in a Small League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the additional boy’s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn’t judge in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God’s instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary and terrifying.
A Prayer for Owen Meany was first published in 1989. This Modern Library edition includes a new Introduction by the leader.Amazon.com Review
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a weird voice who accidentally kills his best acquaintances mom with a baseball and believes–accurately–that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving’s novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most well loved book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O’Connor’s work. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen’s orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school’s marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it’s all, as Highlights magazine used to place it, “fun with a purpose.” When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn’t cancel the fact that he was born to be martyred. The book’s countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy–from Vietnam to the Contras.
The book’s mystic religiosity is steeped in Robertson Davies’s Deptford trilogy, and the fatal baseball relates to the momentously misdirected grow quickly in the first Deptford novel, Fifth Business. Tiny, symbolic Owen echoes the hero of Irving’s teacher Günter lawn’s The Tin Drum–the two characters share the same initials. A rollicking entertainment, Owen Meany is also a meditation on literature, history, and God. –Tim Appelo
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This book is obscene, and unbefitting for children of any age. It uses the ‘F’ word through out the book, and features copious sex scenes involving teenagers, relatives (incest), and in one case, contemplates sex between a teenager and a married adult.
Furthermore, this book mocks and belittles Christianity, throughout … calling Christians ‘idiots,’ ’simpletons’ and ’self righteous fanatics.’ At one point, it refers to Jesus disciples, using profanity … And takes the point words of Jesus, … from his Sermon on the Mount … and says they’re untrue. It also mocks the Virgin birth of Christ, implying Jesus mother was retarded … (which seems to be a recurring theme of Irving’s books (World According to Garp also contains a virgin birth mockery.) The book also contains several Manger ’scenes’ where the ‘baby Jesus’ is depicted by an adolescent Owen Meany, –lustful and with an ‘manufacture.’
This book is technically ‘fiction’ …but in reality, it uses a fictitious theme, to attack real life characters …primarily Christians, and the Republican Party … (It refers to Ronald Reagan as a ‘young drunk,’ for example.) This book was assigned to my 15 year ancient daughter, in her ‘honors’ english class, at a public high school in Virginia. It is on the approved reading list in another school district near by. It is not anything any parent would want their child reading in school (or anywhere else for that matter). (…) (A parent will be shocked by the frequent obscenity.)
In a country where teenage pregnancy is on the rise, and HIV and additional sexually transmitted diseases rampant … we don’t need to be purposely focussing our children on such carnal desires …
Finally, this book has been characterized as ‘humorous’ by readers and critics … But, you will only find it humorous … if you don’t mind the most sacred Christian facts being mocked and belittled … I for one, am not laughing …
As a replacement for, I recommend reading: Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville; The Federalist Papers; Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith; Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis; Proverbs by Solomon; Matthew Chapter 6; 1 John (The whole book); and Sources of Our Liberties, by Perry and Cooper.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
It’s incredible how some people consider this book to be a realistic representation of faith or Owen to be Christlike. Owen is hardly a saintly figure in the book as he is a prideful egomaniac who hits on and kills John’s mother and makes all sorts of distress because of his arrogance. There are various parts where Owen really disparages what the Bible says. It’s also absurd to reflect that a name would be born just to save a random group of children decades later when so many additional people are dying in the present. Many additional people who have sacrificed themselves to save a name also haven’t been lucky enough to be proclaimed as a messiah. It seems that Owen just staged the ending so he could get his medal and prove that he is the chosen one because he could have easily establish a better way of saving the children lacking jeopardizing everyone’s lives. You’re not supposed to do excellent things just to be a hero but because it is the right thing to do. Owen only made distress for others before the ending, so he’s obviously only interested in fullfilling his grandiose destiny. Christianity is more about reaching out to others than a single staged heroic.
The narattor, John Wheelwright, who is Owen’s friend claims that Owen made him a Christian, but admits he doesn’t read the Bible. In fact he only thinks about faith in terms of how it relates to Owen. In his diary entries after Owen’s death, all he ever does is bash America and talk about what Owen would say about politics. He doesn’t have a personal life or goals. He basically states that he has no life after Owen is gone. Everything from moving to Canada, to his teaching job at an college, to serving the church is just going through the motions as he knows nothing about Canada or the Bible even after 20 years in Toronto. Amusing how anti-America people of his type reflect they’re so enlightened. One thing that gets emphasized and reflects John’s supporting role is that he is still a virgin and single as a middle aged man. By adage that he is “just a Joseph” as in the Christmas play, he really flatters himself since he is such a perfect nonentity. While the book is fantastic for entertainment purposes, all the sexual and political content seems forced and beside the point to the plot after a while. Maybe the real message in the book is that you should get your own life and not be a loser like John Wheelwright who lives through additional people and hero worship.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I find this book dull and childish …not to mention bigotted and insulting … it celebrates perversity … It is full of obscenity, and inappropriate sexual commentary involving teenagers … and it has no redeeming literary value … unless you are the most extreme left-wing liberal, who despises Christians, and Republicans like Ronald Reagan …
The book’s primary theme seems to be to mock Christians and Republicans, and is only “humourous” in a perverse way …
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
my son had 2 read this 4 school i reflect it was very dull and all over the place u cant make heads or tails where their going in this book also if schools have to seperate church & school this should not have to be read
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Heartlessness masked by a style overflowing with feeling. Just more Dung from the Church of the heart. Bring wet one’s when you go to read this because you will get all sticky.One of the more pathetic book’s I have ever read.I need a prayer for me now, to get the terrible taste out of my mouth…
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5