A prayer for Owen Meany: a novel
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"Don't some of you look like that-to yourselves?" I asked the class. "What do you think about when you see one of yourselves who looks like that?"
Silence. And what did they think happened at the end of the first "phase"-was Tess seduced, or was she raped? "She was sleeping soundly," Hardy writes. Does he mean that d'Urber-ville "did it" to her when she was asleep? Silence.
Before they trouble themselves to read the second "phase" of Tess, called "Maiden No More," I suggested that they trouble themselves to reread "The Maiden"-or, perhaps, read it for the first time, as the case may be!
"Pay attention," I warned them. "When Tess says, 'Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says some women may feel?'-pay attention! Pay attention to where Tess's child is buried-'in that shabby corner of God's allotment where he lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.' Ask yourself what Hardy thinks of 'God's allotment'-and what does he think of bad
luck, of coincidence, of so-called circumstances beyond our control? And does he imagine that being a virtuous character exposes you to greater or fewer liabilities as you roam the world?"
"Sir?" said Leslie Ann Grew. That was very old-fashioned of her; it's been years since anyone called me "Sir" at Bishop Strachan-unless it was a new kid. Leslie Ann Grew has been here for years. "If it's another nice day tomorrow," saidLeslie Ann, "can we have class outside?"
"No," I said; but I'm so slow-I feel so dull. I know what The Voice would have told her.
"ONLY IF IT RAINS," Owen would have said. "IF IT POURS, THEN WE CAN HAVE CLASS OUTSIDE."
At the start of the winter term of our tenth-grade year at Gravesend Academy, the school's gouty minister-the Rev. Mr. Scammon, the officiant of the academy's nondenomina-tional faith and the lackluster teacher of our Religion and Scripture classes-cracked his head on the icy steps of Kurd's Church and failed to regain consciousness. Owen was of the opinion that the Rev. Mr. Scammon never was fully conscious. For weeks after his demise, his vestments and his cane hung from the coat tree in the vestry office-as if old Mr. Scammon had journeyed no farther from this world than to the adjacent toilet. The Rev. Lewis Merrill was hired as his temporary replacement in our Religion and Scripture classes, and a Search Committee was formed to find a new school minister. Owen and I had suffered through Religion One together in our ninth-grade year: old Mr. Scammon's sweeping, Caesar-to-Eisenhower approach to the major religions of the world. We had been suffering Scammon's Scripture course-and his Religion Two-when the icy steps of Kurd's Church rose to meet him. The Rev. Mr. Merrill brought his familiar stutter and his almost-as-familiar doubts to both courses. In Scripture, he set us to work in our Bibles-to find plentiful examples of Isaiah :: "Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil." In Religion Two-a heavy-reading course in "religion and literature"-we were instructed to divine Tolstoy's meaning: "There was no solution," Tolstoy writes in Anna Karenina, "but the universal solution that life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day-that is forget oneself."
In both classes, Pastor Merrill preached his doubt-is-the-essence-of-and-not-the-opposite-of-faith philosophy; it was a point of view that interested Owen more than it had once interested him. The apparent secret was "belief without miracles"; a faith that needed a miracle was not a faith at all. Don't ask for proof-that was Mr. Merrill's routine message.
"BUT EVERYONE NEEDS A LITTLE PROOF," said Owen Meany.
"Faith itself is a miracle, Owen," said Pastor Merrill. "The first miracle that I believe in is my own faith itself."
Owen looked doubtful, but he didn't speak. Our Religion Two class-and our Scripture class, too-was an atheistic mob; except for Owen Meany, we were such a negative, anti-everything bunch of morons that we thought Jack Kerouac and Alien Ginsberg were more interesting writers than Tolstoy. And so the Rev. Lewis Merrill, with his stutter and his well-worn case of doubt, had his hands full with us. He made us read Greene's The Power and the Glory-Owen wrote his term paper on "THE WHISKEY PRIEST: A SEEDY SAINT." We also read Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Lagerkvist's Barabbas and Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov-Owen wrote my term paper on "SIN AND SMERDYAKOV: A LETHAL COMBINATION." Poor Pastor Merrill! My old Congregationalist minister was suddenly cast in the role of Christianity's defender-and even Owen argued with the terms of Mr. Merrill's defense. The class loved Sartre and Camus-the concept of "the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation" was thrilling to us teenagers. The Rev. Mr. Merrill countered humbly with Kierkegaard:' 'What no person has a right to is to delude others into the belief that faith is something of no great significance, or that it is an easy matter, whereas it is the greatest and most difficult of all things."
Owen, who'd had his doubts about Pastor Merrill, found himself in the role of the minister's defender. "JUST BECAUSE A BUNCH OF ATHEISTS ARE BETTER WRITERS THAN THE GUYS WHO WROTE THE BIBLE DOESN'T NECESSARILY MAKE THEM RIGHT!" he said crossly. "LOOK AT THOSE WEIRDO TV MIRACLE-WORKERS- THEY'RE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO BELIEVE IN MAGIC! BUT THE REAL MIRACLES AREN'T ANYTHING YOU CAN SEE-THEY'RE THINGS YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE WITHOUT SEEING. IF SOME PREACHER'S AN
ASSHOLE, THAT'S NOT PROOF THAT GOD DOESN'T EXIST!"
"Yes, but let's not say 'asshole' in class, Owen," Pastor Merrill said. And in our Scripture class, Owen said, "IT'S TRUE THAT THE DISCIPLES ARE STUPID-THEY NEVER UNDERSTAND WHAT JESUS MEANS, THEY'RE A BUNCH OF BUNGLERS, THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD AS MUCH AS THEY WANT TO BELIEVE, AND THEY EVEN BETRAY JESUS. THE POINT IS, GOD DOESN'T LOVE US BECAUSE WE'RE SMART OR BECAUSE WE'RE GOOD. WE'RE STUPID AND WE'RE BAD AND GOD LOVES US ANYWAY-JESUS ALREADY TOLD THE DUMB-SHIT DISCIPLES WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. 'THE SON OF MAN WILL BE DELIVERED INTO THE HANDS OF MEN, AND THEY WILL KILL HIM . . .' REMEMBER? THAT WAS IN MARK-RIGHT?"
"Yes, but let's not say 'dumb-shit disciples' in class, Owen," Mr. Merrill said; but although he struggled to defend God's Holy Word, Lewis Merrill-for the first time, in my memory-appeared to be enjoying himself. To have his faith assailed perked him up; he was livelier and less meek.
"I DON'T THINK THE CQNGREGATIONALISTS EVER TALK TO HIM," Owen suggested. "I THINK HE'S LONELY FOR CONVERSATION; EVEN IF ALL HE GETS IS AN ARGUMENT, AT LEAST WE'RE TALKING TO HIM."
"I see no evidence that his wife ever talks to him," Dan Needham observed. And the monosyllabic utterances of Pastor MerriU's surly children were not of the engaging tones that invited conversation.
"WHY DOES THE SCHOOL WASTE ITS TIME WITH TWO SEARCH COMMITTEES?" asked The Voice in The Grave. "FIND A HEADMASTER-WE NEED A HEADMASTER-BUT WE DON'T NEED A SCHOOL MINISTER. WITH NO DISRESPECT FOR THE DEAD, THE REV. LEWIS MERRILL IS A MORE-THAN-ADEQUATE REPLACEMENT FOR THE LATE MR. SCAMMON: FRANKLY, MR. MERRILL IS AN IMPROVEMENT IN THE CLASSROOM. AND THE SCHOOL THINKS WELL ENOUGH OF HIS POWERS IN THE PULPIT TO HAVE ALREADY INVITED HIM TO BE THE GUEST PREACHER AT KURD'S CHURCH-ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. THE REV. MR. MERRILL WOULD BE A GOOD SCHOOL MINISTER. WE SHOULD FIND OUT WHAT THE CON-GREGATIONALISTS ARE PAYING HIM AND OFFER HIM MORE."
And so they hired him away from the Congregationalists; once more, The Voice did not go unheard. Toronto: May , -a sunny, cool day, a good day to mow a lawn. The smell of freshly cut grass all along Russell Hill Road reflects how widespread is my neighbors' interest in lawnmowing. Mrs. Brocklebank-whose daughter, Heather, is in my Grade English class-took a slightly different approach to her lawn; I found her ripping her dandelions out by their roots.
"You'd better do the same thing," she said to me. "Pull them out, don't mow them under. If you chop them up with the mower, you'll just make more of them."
"Like starfish," I said; I should have known better-it's never a good idea to introduce Mrs. Brocklebank to a new subject, not unless you have time to kill. If I'd assigned "The Maiden" to Mrs. Brocklebank, she would have gotten everything right-the first time.
"What do you know about starfish?" she asked.
"So what about starfish?" Mrs. Brocklebank asked.
"You cut them up, they grow more starfish," I said.
"Is that in a book?" asked Mrs. Brocklebank. I assured her that it was. I even have a book that describes the life of the starfish, although Owen and I knew not to chop them up long before we read about them; every kid in Gravesend learned all about starfish at the beach at Little Boar's Head. I remember my mother telling Owen and me not to cut them up; starfish are very destructive, and their powers of reproduction are not encouraged in New Hampshire. Mrs. Brocklebank is persistent regarding new information; she goes after everything as aggressively as she attacks her dandelions. "I'd like to see that book," she announced. And so I began again with what has become a fairly routine labor: discouraging Mrs. Brocklebank from reading another book-I work as hard at discouraging her, and with as little
success, as I sometimes latx>r to encourage those BSS girls to read their assignments.
"It's not a very good book," I said. "It's written by an amateur, it's published by a vanity press."
"So what's wrong with an amateur writing a book?" Mrs. Brocklebank wanted to know. She is probably writing one of her own, it occurs to me now. "So what's wrong with a 'vanity press'?" she asked. The book that tells the truth about the starfish is called The Life of the Tidepool by Archibald Thorndike. Old Thorny was an amateur naturalist and an amateur diarist, and after he retired from Gravesend Academy, he spent two years scrutinizing a tidepool in Rye Harbor; at his own expense, he published a book about it and sold autographed copies of the book every Alumni Day. He parked his station wagon by the tennis courts and sold his books off the tailgate, chatting with all the alumni who wanted to talk to him; since he was a very popular headmaster-and since he was replaced by a particularly unpopular headmaster-almost all the alumni wanted to talk to old Thorny. I suppose he sold a lot of copies of The Life of the Tidepool; he might even have made money. Maybe he wasn't such an amateur, after all. He knew how to handle The Voice-by not handling him. And The Voice would prove to be the undoing of the new headmaster, in the end. In the end, I yielded to Mrs. Brocklebank's frenzy to educate herself; I said I'd lend her my copy ofThe Life of the Tidepool.
"Be sure to remind Heather to reread the first 'phase' of Tess," I told Mrs. Brocklebank.
"Heather's not reading her assignments?" Mrs. Brocklebank asked in alarm.
"It's spring," I reminded her. "All the girls aren't reading their assignments. Heather's doing just fine." Indeed, Heather Brocklebank is one of my better students; she has inherited her mother's ardor-while, at the same time, her imagination ranges far beyond dandelions. In a flash, I think of giving my Grade English class a sneak quiz; if they gave the first "phase" of Tess such a sloppy reading, I'll bet they skipped the Introduction altogether-and I had assigned the Introduction, too; I don't always do that, but there's an Introduction by Robert B. Heilman that's especially helpful to first readers of Hardy. I know a really nasty quiz question! I think-looking at Mrs. Brocklebank, clutching her murdered dandelions.
"What was Thomas Hardy's earlier title for TessT' Ha! It's nothing they could ever guess; if they'd read the Introduction, they'd know it was Too Late Beloved-they'd at least remember the "too late" part. Then I remembered that Hardy had written a story-before Tess-called ' 'The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid"; I wondered if I could throw in that title, to confuse them. Then I remembered that Mrs. Brocklebank was standing on the sidewalk with her handful of dandelions, waiting for me to fetch her The Life of the Tidepool. And last of all I remembered that Owen Meany and I first read Tess of the d'Urbervilles in our tenth-grade year at Gravesend Academy; we were in Mr. Early's English class-it was the winter term of -and I was struggling with Thomas Hardy to the point of tears. Mr. Early was a fool to try Tess on tenth graders. At Bishop Strachan, I have long argued with my colleagues that we should teach Hardy in Grade -even Grade is too soon! Even The Brothers Karamazov is easier than Tess!
"I can't read this!" I remember saying to Owen. He tried to help me; he helped me with everything else, but Tess was simply too difficult. "I can't read about milking cows!" I screamed.
"IT'S NOT ABOUT MILKING COWS," Owen said crossly.
"I don't care what it's about; I hate it," I said.
"THAT'S A TRULY INTELLIGENT ATTITUDE," Owen said. "IF YOU CAN'T READ IT, DO YOU WANT ME TO READ IT ALOUD TO YOU?"
I am so ashamed of myself to remember this: that he would do even that for me-that he would read Tess of the d'Urbervilles aloud to me! At the time, the thought of hearing that whole novel in his voice was staggering.
"I can't read it and I can't listen to it, either," I said.
"FINE," Owen said. "THEN YOU TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO. I CAN TELL YOU THE WHOLE STORY, I CAN WRITE YOUR TERM PAPER-AND IF THERE'S AN EXAM, YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO BULLSHIT AS WELL AS YOU CAN: IF I TELL YOU THE WHOLE STORY, MAYBE YOU'LL ACTUALLY REMEMBER SOME OF IT. THE POINT IS, I CAN DO YOUR HOMEWORK FOR YOU-IT'S NOT HARD FOR ME AND I DON'T MIND DOING IT-OR I CAN TEACH YOU HOW TO DO YOUR OWN HOMEWORK. THAT WOULD BE A
LITTLE HARDER-FOR BOTH OF US-BUT IT MIGHT TURN OUT TO BE USEFUL FOR YOU TO BE ABLE TO DO YOUR OWN WORK. I MEAN, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO-AFTER I'M GONE?"
"What do you mean, after you're goneT' I asked him.
"LOOK AT IT ANOTHER WAY," he said patiently. "ARE YOU GOING TO GET A JOB? AFTER YOU'RE THROUGH WITH SCHOOL, I MEAN-ARE YOU GOING TO WORK? ARE YOU GOING TO A UNIVERSITY? ARE WE GOING TO GO TO THE SAME UNIVERSITY? AM I GOING TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK THERE, TOO? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO MAJOR IN?"
"What are you going to major in?" I asked him; my feelings were hurt-but I knew what he was driving at, and he was right.
"GEOLOGY," he said. "I'M IN THE GRANITE BUSINESS."
"That's crazy!" I said. "It's not your business. You can study anything you want, you don't have to study rocks!"
"ROCKS ARE INTERESTING," Owen said stubbornly. "GEOLOGY IS THE HISTORY OF THE EARTH."
"I can't read Tess of the d'Urbervillesl" I cried. "It's too hard!"
"YOU MEAN IT'S HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF READ IT, YOU MEAN IT'S HARD TO MAKE YOURSELF PAY ATTENTION," he said. "BUT IT'S NOT TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES THAT'S HARD. THOMAS HARDY MAY BORE YOU BUT HE'S VERY EASY TO UNDERSTAND- HE'S OBVIOUS, HE TELLS YOU EVERYTHING YOU HA VETO KNOW."
"He tells me more than I want to know!" I cried.
"YOUR BOREDOM IS YOUR PROBLEM," said Owen Meany. "IT'S YOUR LACK OF IMAGINATION THAT BORES YOU. HARDY HAS THE WORLD FIGURED OUT. TESS IS DOOMED. FATE HAS IT IN FOR HER. SHE'S A VICTIM; IF YOU'RE A VICTIM, THE WORLD WILL USE YOU. WHY SHOULD SOMEONE WHO'S GOT SUCH A WORKED-OUT WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD BORE YOU? WHY SHOULDN'T YOU BE INTERESTED IN SOMEONE WHO'S WORKED OUT A WAY TO SEE THE WORLD? THAT'S WHAT MAKES WRITERS INTERESTING! MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR. AT LEAST, YOU GET TO READ STUFF THAT'S WRIT- TEN BY PEOPLE WHO CAN WRITE I YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON'T NEED ANY SPECIAL TALENT, YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SEE-TO WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ANGRIEST, OR THE MOST EXCITED IN SOME OTHER WAY. IT'S SO EASY; I THINK THAT'S WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ENGLISH MAJORS."
"It's not easy for me!" I cried. "I hate reading this book!"
"DO YOU HATE TO READ MOST BOOKS?" Owen asked me.
"Yes!" I said.
"DO YOU SEE THAT THE PROBLEM IS NOT TESST' he asked me.
"Yes," I admitted.
"NOW WE'RE GETTING SOMEWHERE," said Owen Meany-my friend, my teacher. Standing on the sidewalk with Mrs. Brocklebank, I felt the tears start to come.
"Do you have allergies?" Mrs. Brocklebank asked me; I shook my head. I feel so ashamed of myself that-even for a moment-I could consider zapping my Grade girls with a nasty quiz on Tess of the d' Urbervilles. Remembering how I suffered as a student, remembering how much I neede
d Owen's help, how could I even think of being a sneaky teacher?
"I think you do have an allergy," Mrs. Brocklebank concluded from my tears. "Lots of people have allergies and don't even know; I've read about that."
"It must be the dandelions," I said; and Mrs. Brocklebank glared at the pestilential weeds with a fresh hatred. Every spring there are dandelions; they always remind me of the spring term of -the burgeoning of that old decade that once seemed so new to Owen Meany and me. That was the spring when the Search Committee found a new headmaster. That was the decade that would defeat us. Randolph White had been the headmaster of a small private day school in Lake Forest, Illinois; I'm told that is a super-rich and exclusively WASP community that does its utmost to pretend it is not a suburb of Chicago-but that may be unfair; I've never been there. Several Gravesend students came from there, and they unanimously groaned to hear the announcement of Randolph White's appointment as headmaster at the acad-
envy; apparently, the idea that anyone from Lake Forest had followed them to New Hampshire depressed them. At the time, Owen and I knew a kid from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and he told us that Bloomfield Hills was to Detroit what Lake Forest was to Chicago, and that-in his view- Bloomfield Hills "sucked"; he offered a story about Bloom-field Hills as an example of what he meant-it was a story about a black family that moved there, and they were forced to sell and move out because their neighbors kept burning crosses on their lawn. This shocked Owen and me; in New Hampshire, we thought such things happened only in the South-but a black kid from Atlanta informed us that we knew "shit" about the problem; they burned crosses all over the country, the black kid said, and we weren't exactly "overwhelmed by a sea of black faces" at Gravesend Academy, were we? No, Owen and I agreed; we were not. Then another kid from Michigan said that Grosse Pointe was more to Detroit what Lake Forest was to Chicago-that Bloomfield Hills wasn't a proper analogy-and some other kid argued that Shaker Heights was more to Cleveland what Lake Forest was to Chicago . . . and so forth. Owen and I were not very knowledgeable of the geography of the country's rich and exclusive; when a Jewish kid from Highland Park, Illinois, told us that there were "no Jews allowed" in Lake Forest, Owen and I began to wonder what ominous kind of small private day school in Lake Forest our new headmaster had come from. Owen had another reason to be suspicious of Randolph White. Of all the candidates whom the Search Committee dragged through the school in our tenth-grade year, only Randolph White had not accepted the invitation for A PRIVATE AUDIENCE with The Voice. Owen had met Mr. White outside Archie Thorndike's office; Thorny introduced the candidate to The Voice and told them he would, as usual, vacate his office in order for them to be alone for Owen's interview.