John Irving Quote

Because of A Prayer for Owen Meany, many of my readers assume I am religious. I go to church only occasionally—like a lot of people, I believe in God in times of crisis. But I have had no religious experience; I’ve never been a witness to a miracle. The reason A Prayer for Owen Meany has a first-person narrator is that you can’t have a religious experience or witness a miracle except through the eyes of a believer. And the believer I chose, Johnny Wheelwright, has been so tormented by what happens to his best friend that he is more than a little crazy—as I expect most witnesses to so-called miracles are. Both Johnny Wheelwright’s anger and his craziness are inseparable from what he saw. The other religious question I am asked about the novel—second only to Are you a believer?—is Do the capital letters mark Owen Meany as a Christ figure, sort of like those red-letter editions of the Bible? Sort of, yes. To have Owen speak in red letters might have been too expensive for my publishers, but I also thought the capitals would be more irritating than red letters. Owen’s voice is irritating, not only because of how it sounds but because of how right he is. People