![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Today I've read no less than 100 pages of Irving's prayer for Owen Meany. Irving is Dickens reincarnated. While I'm occasionally charmed by his anecdotes chock full o' character development, I am a disobedient reader. Irving wants me to love Owen Meany and little Johnny Wheelwright. Johnny bores me like that main kid in The Wonder Years bored me- all curly brown hair and no insight into life beyond cheesy Lifetime-esque reflections. Owen, while occasionally so precocious and remote you cannot help but look on him with tenderness, can be an arrogant ass.
The occasional homophobic, sexist remarks thrown out by the two characters grate on me, while the scenes where the book cuts to the 1980's rambling of a depressed Johnny (who seems to become the complete vehicle for the author, ripping away my fourth wall and leaving me in a mess of literary nuts, bolts and broken boards) irritate me with their single minded bitterness, self-absorption and naivete. I hate Regan to, I'm on his side on almost all counts, still don't like the character, just on attitude alone. Who died and made Johnny exiled sage of American current events? He hides in Canada, shaking his head at ridiculous Americans who fail to know what part of Canada is French Speaking and what isn't, pronouncing words wrong when they ask him for directions, and is absolutely scandalized by the current state of the political world.
It's just symptomatic of a larger delusion on the part of many- that previous generations were less corrupt, filled with politicians without frequently exercised penises and scandal filled pasts. Am I the only one who remembers the plot of An Ideal Husband, by Wilde? Even in London in the 1890's, prime ministers Did Dirty Deeds. Johnny's moral indignation over Regan's doings in the Iran-Contra affair is, while deserved, like the irritating prattling of a child who cannot reconcile her moral instructions with hearing her mother tell a little white lie to make someone else feel better- a child who doesn't understand that, while generally, not lying is a grand philosophy worth teaching, her mother's behavior is what it is because this is the way the world has always worked; because frankly, it works better this way- some lying is always needed to get things to run smoothly.
And while Dickens, the man Irving claims literary descent from and whom I rather detest, deviated from his plot into long, arduous, paid-by-the-word tangents, At page 387 out of 617 Irving has yet to reveal a real plot. It's a giant amalgamation of bits of two boys childhood. Occasionally this is interesting and yields valuable insights into the human experience, but this length is beyond proportional to the materiel of substance so far conveyed. While Dickens rambled about the plight of the poor, Irving rambles about the plight of upper class, socially well placed New Hampshire residents. Missouri girl that I am, I am able to place myself in and understand diverse environments if the writer has the skills to help me bridge the gap between two human souls. I don't feel Irving's making with the bridge, here.
The occasional homophobic, sexist remarks thrown out by the two characters grate on me, while the scenes where the book cuts to the 1980's rambling of a depressed Johnny (who seems to become the complete vehicle for the author, ripping away my fourth wall and leaving me in a mess of literary nuts, bolts and broken boards) irritate me with their single minded bitterness, self-absorption and naivete. I hate Regan to, I'm on his side on almost all counts, still don't like the character, just on attitude alone. Who died and made Johnny exiled sage of American current events? He hides in Canada, shaking his head at ridiculous Americans who fail to know what part of Canada is French Speaking and what isn't, pronouncing words wrong when they ask him for directions, and is absolutely scandalized by the current state of the political world.
It's just symptomatic of a larger delusion on the part of many- that previous generations were less corrupt, filled with politicians without frequently exercised penises and scandal filled pasts. Am I the only one who remembers the plot of An Ideal Husband, by Wilde? Even in London in the 1890's, prime ministers Did Dirty Deeds. Johnny's moral indignation over Regan's doings in the Iran-Contra affair is, while deserved, like the irritating prattling of a child who cannot reconcile her moral instructions with hearing her mother tell a little white lie to make someone else feel better- a child who doesn't understand that, while generally, not lying is a grand philosophy worth teaching, her mother's behavior is what it is because this is the way the world has always worked; because frankly, it works better this way- some lying is always needed to get things to run smoothly.
And while Dickens, the man Irving claims literary descent from and whom I rather detest, deviated from his plot into long, arduous, paid-by-the-word tangents, At page 387 out of 617 Irving has yet to reveal a real plot. It's a giant amalgamation of bits of two boys childhood. Occasionally this is interesting and yields valuable insights into the human experience, but this length is beyond proportional to the materiel of substance so far conveyed. While Dickens rambled about the plight of the poor, Irving rambles about the plight of upper class, socially well placed New Hampshire residents. Missouri girl that I am, I am able to place myself in and understand diverse environments if the writer has the skills to help me bridge the gap between two human souls. I don't feel Irving's making with the bridge, here.
