Inspiration by John Irving
Sharing some of my favorite words by one of my favorite authors
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If David Sedaris’s writing makes me laugh the most, John Irving’s is up there for making me laugh the hardest.
I’ve been writing and rewriting a personal essay for you that I don’t like at all. It’s forced and cumbersome, and the more I try to make it less so, the more so it becomes. How else would it go?
I remember that this is supposed to be fun, and my writing has taken itself far too seriously this week. I don’t want to impose that upon you, so instead I’m going to share some writing that’s bringing me a lot of joy right now — excerpts from John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany.
My husband’s least favorite thing about me is that I’ll underline any book I read.1 (Because I’m perfect.)
He says that when he tries to read anything after me, he already knows what’s important, so he just reads those bits and skips all the rest.
So, here’s the story of A Prayer for Owen Meany, as read by my husband.2
Enjoy!
I am living proof that the waters of Loveless Lake are potable because I swallowed half the lake every summer while waterskiing with my cousins. (56)
He radiated a burly good health, and despite how little time he spent “in the field,” there was always sawdust in his bushy hair, wood chips wedged between the laces of his boots, and a few fragrant pine needles ground into the knees of his blue jeans. Possibly he kept the pine needles, the wood chips, and the sawdust in his office desk drawer. (58)
In exasperation with my unresponsive cousins, I looked up from the sewing machine and saw Owen standing there. with his hands clasped behind his back, he looked as armless as Watahantowet, and in that blaze of sunlight he looked like a gnome plucked fresh from a fire, with his ears still aflame. I drew in my breath, and Hester — with her raging mouth full of purple thread — looked up at that instant and saw Owen, too. She screamed. (72)
One night at 80 Front Street, when Owen lay in the other twin bed in my room, we were a long while falling asleep because — down the hall — Lydia had a cough. Just when we thought she was over a particular fit, or she had died, she would start up again. When Owen woke me up, I had not been asleep for very long; I was in the grips of such a deep and recent sleep that I couldn’t make myself move — I felt as if I were lying in an extremely plush coffin and my pallbearers were holding my down, although I was doing my best to rise from the dead. (103)
My grandmother, dripping wet — her usually flowing nightgown plastered to her gaunt, hunched body, her hair arrayed in its nightly curlers, her face thickly creamed the lifeless color of the moon — burst into my mother’s room. It was days before Owen could tell me what he thought: when you scare off the Angel of Death, the Divine Plan calls for the kind of angels you can’t scare away; they even call you by name.
“Tabitha!” my grandmother said.
“AAAAAAHHHHHH!”
Owen Meany screamed so terribly that my grandmother could not catch her breath. Beside my mother on the bed, she saw a tiny demon spring bolt upright — propelled by such a sudden and unreal force that my grandmother imagined the little creature was preparing to fly. My mother appeared to levitate beside him. (107)
When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time — the way mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes — when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever — there comes another day, and another specifically missing part. (139)
She possessed the nonspecific clumsiness of someone who makes such a constant effort to be inconspicuous that she is creatively awkward — without meaning to, Germaine hoarded attention to herself; her almost electric nervousness disturbed the atmosphere surrounding her. (192)
I think now that she was just collecting her thoughts concerning where she would take the dishes. Germaine was also clearing — the way a crippled swallow might swoop down for a crumb off your plate at a picnic. (194)
It took a full five minutes for her to be comfortably seated — her mink off, but positioned over her shoulders; her scarf loosened, but covering the back of her neck from drafts (which were known to approach from the rear); her hat on, despite the fact that no one seated behind her could see over it (graciously, the gentleman so seated moved). (239)
Some of those made me laugh out loud, and one in particular hit me in the gut. I love to find and to share inspiration like this, so if you enjoyed any of these bits and have favorites (books, authors, quotations) you’d like to pass along as well — please share below!!
Sending lots of love to you all ❤️
Just realized this is not true! The only genre I have never touched, and possibly never will, is cookbooks. There’s something so sacred about a gorgeous cookbook that I don’t want to ruin with my ink. But this is probably the type of book most worth annotating, given how often my husband and I wish we could remember what recipes we enjoyed…
All quotations pulled from Irving, John. A Prayer for Owen Meany. HarperCollins, 2012.
Loved that book!