Published in 1989, John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany was one of the rarest of novels at the time. In the decades that have passed, the dimensions of its rarity have only continued to grow. That which made it unique at the time and today makes it even more so has nothing to do with its content per se. It is not that Irving tells a particularly idiosyncratic or unusual story nor is it that the book breaks new ground in innovating the art of storytelling. In fact, what makes the novel stand out from the crowd is exactly the opposite of being revolutionary and pioneering.
What makes A Prayer for Owen Meany stand out from the overwhelming bulk of novels of the late 20th century—and, really, for that matter—the entirety of the century is that it is a throwback to the great big novels of the previous century. The densely layered network of incident and eccentric characters—only beginning with Owen and working its way down to some of the most incidental of the story’s vast population—makes one consider applying the term “Dickensian” to the novel. That application seems especially apt not just in the feeling of its large cast of characters seeming to come straight out of Dickens novel if he’d been writing in the 1980’s, but also due to the significance of a production of A Christmas Carol in the narrative. That said, however, there really is not much else about the book that links it specifically to that particular 19th century literary legend.
The truth of the matter is that there is really no one single author to whom one can easily compare Irving’s novel. It is within the full extent of many of its individual components such as the first person narration, the stronger than usual dependence upon symbolism, metaphor and allegory, and—above all else—the infusion of the story with explicit Christian undertones and spiritual themes that situates its very modern story squarely within another time. One would be hard-pressed to name another major novel by a major figure in American literature who has published a mainstream novel that is so very deeply embedded in its religious imagery as an essential theme and narrative device that was not written by a writer whose reputation is firmly centered within the field of Christian literature. Even if there was nothing specifically alluding to Christian motifs in the story, the novel would still seem a throwback to an earlier century based upon its size. It is a big book peopled with a large number of important characters and loaded with memorable incident. Most writers—and certainly not mainstream authors routinely on the bestseller list—do not write such expansive novels unless they are writers working within a genre. The word count and page length of the average popular mainstream novel consistently shrank over the course of the 20th century.
The main reason for this is understandable, of course: readers in 1980 hardly needed everything described to them in extensive detail to the extent that readers in 1880 did. That said, A Prayer of Owen Meany does not attain its unusual length and density by virtue of pages and pages devoted to describing every piece of furnishing in a room. The length is acquired legitimately: through dialogue, expression of thoughts and description of action. It is, in every way except for excruciatingly detailed descriptions of objects, very much an example of the 19th century theory of novel writing. Forget postmodernism or sustained irony or rejection of spiritual matters; Irving embraces the concept of what it means to write a novel not according to the expectations of his age, but according to the expectations he has always set for himself. He may not yet ever become the Dickensian novelist he has clearly set as the ultimate target of accomplishment, but with A Prayer of Owen Meany he has come as close as anyone who is at the same time writing a modern story.
