2010.08.03
Book Four in Top 100 Banned Books Goal
A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY.
By John Irving.
Ballantine Books.
619 pages.
$7.99
By Heather Brush
If you are following my Top 100 Banned Books Goal progress, you might wonder what happened to book four. I fully admit failure to complete this read. Some may say I’m childish or flighty; some would say I’m smart. I read a bit more than half of the book, probably two thirds. And I just couldn’t go any further. Irving jumps around so, he gave me a headache in trying to follow him. The lack of deep storyline disturbed my sleep. Why is it on the ALA Top 100 Banned and Challenged Books list of the past decade? Not for the reasons I stopped reading it…according to the ALA, complaints include objectionable language (perhaps the complainant has never witnessed a group of teenagers who are speaking) and vulgarity. Hmm.
A friend of mine who did read the entire book has posted her own review, towards her own 100 book challenge, of a slightly different sort. She’s given me permission to share. Jeanna Duerscherl says this:
”Oh Owen Meany…how I hated this book. If this is what all of John Irving’s books are like I’ll take a pass.
The book starts off with a little bit of excitement, but then you spend 350 pages reading a lot of text that just seems bizarre and keeps you pretty much an arms length away from the characters. By the time you get to the last 100 pages you find out all the secrets of the book, but you could basically care less because you are just trying to finish. Not to mention the fact that since you have no emotional attachment to the characters learning the surprises is mere payback for having to read all those painful pages.
A co-worker of mine was reading this book at the same time as I did. I say WAS reading because she couldn’t take reading it anymore!
The only good thing that came out of this book for me is that one of my favorite quotes popped up in it. I had no idea that it was from this book, although I knew it was by John Irving.
’If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.’”
Thanks Jeanna! I certainly hope the courage to live isn’t the vulgarity that some people want to ban.
We read this in Northside High School senior English and I LOVED it. I think it did help that we were talking about it as we read it, and picked it apart literally page by page with our teacher (the wonderful Ms. Moseley) guiding our discussions, and I picked up on a lot of things that I otherwise would have skimmed over. There is a crap-ton of symbolism in this book. However, this is one of my favorite books of all time, but to tell the truth, I only read it the once. It is long!
I had a different experience with the characters – I did feel an emotional attachment. I think that a lot of the things you are supposed to understand about the characters are not said directly – they are alluded to with symbolic references. This is definitely not a light beach read.
There are a few strange and possibly vulgar scenes, but they do have a purpose – to understand why the character thinks the way they do. If banning it makes more people try to read it, I think it’s a great idea!
The movie (Simon Birch) is so loosely based on the book that it only has material from about two scenes. I thought the movie was a waste of time.
Comment by Michelle W. — August 4, 2010 @ 7:19 am
Excellent comment! I wish I had read this in school. A teacher guiding me through it is exactly what I needed. Ah well. I’m very glad to hear it is being taught in class.
Comment by Heather Brush — August 4, 2010 @ 7:53 am