A Prayer for Owen Meany

by John Irving

Owen and I were eleven; we had no other way to articulate what we felt about what had happened to my mother. He gave me his baseball cards, but he really wanted them back, and I gave him my stuffed armadillo, which I certainly hoped he’d give back to me—all because it was impossible for us to say to each other how we really felt. How did it feel to hit a ball that hard—and then realize that the ball had killed your best friend’s mother?

It was Owen Meany who told me that only white men are vain enough to believe that human beings are unique because we have souls.

Mr. Merrill was most appealing because he reassured us that doubt was the essence of faith, and not faith’s opposite.