A Study Guide for John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany
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A Study Guide for John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany - Gale
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A Prayer for Owen Meany
John Irving
1989
Introduction
John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, published by Ballantine in 1989, is a long, sprawling novel in the tradition of Charles Dickens and other nineteenth-century novelists. John Wheelwright, a former American who is now a Canadian citizen living in Toronto, tells the story. John recalls growing up in a small town in New Hampshire with a very unusual best friend, a tiny boy with a high voice named Owen Meany. Despite his strange appearance and voice, Owen is a boy with a strong personality, intellectual gifts, and an air of authority that enables him to take charge of a situation. Owen also possesses a strong religious faith and an uncanny knowledge of future events in his life—including the exact time and circumstances of his own tragic but heroic death. It is through Owen Meany that John becomes a religious believer.
A Prayer for Owen Meany is Irving's seventh novel. Compellingly readable, it contains a large cast of idiosyncratic small-town characters and has many hilarious scenes and episodes. It also contains serious political and religious themes, exploring issues such as faith and doubt, predestination, the Vietnam War, and the wider issue of American foreign policy from the 1960s to the 1980s. The book is also a mine of information about American social history, from the advent of television in the 1950s to the rock videos of the 1980s.
Author Biography
John Winslow Irving was born on March 2, 1942, in Exeter, New Hampshire, the son of Colin F. N. (a teacher) and Frances (Winslow) Irving. In 1961, he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, where he excelled at wrestling, and decided to become a writer. From 1961 to 1962, Irving was at the University of Pittsburgh because of its wrestling program, and from 1963 to 1964 he attended the Institute of European Studies, University of Vienna.
In 1965, Irving graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from the University of New Hampshire, and in 1967, he received a masters in fine arts from the University of Iowa. The following year, he became assistant professor of English at Windham College and published his first novel, Setting Free the Bears. More novels soon followed: The Water-Method Man (1972) and The 158-Pound Marriage (1974).
During the 1970s, Irving taught at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, and Brandeis University and was a writer in residence at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. In 1978, he published a family saga, The World According to Garp, which was his first big commercial success. The book sold 120,000 hardback copies