Dan suggested that the headmaster’s remark was more anti-Semitic than any remark attributed to Owen Meany.
And so he was spared; he was put on disciplinary probation—for the remainder of the winter term—with the warning, understood by all, that any offense of any kind would be considered “grounds for dismissal”; in such a case, he would be judged by the Executive Committee and none of his friends on the faculty could save him.
The headmaster proposed—in addition to Owen’s probation—that he be removed from his position as editor-in-chief of The Grave, or that The Voice should be silenced until the end of the winter term; or both. But this was not approved by the faculty.
In truth, Mrs. Lish’s charge of anti-Semitism had backfired with a number of the faculty, who were quite belligerently anti-Semitic themselves. As for Randy White: Dan and Owen and I suspected that the headmaster was about as anti-Semitic as anyone we knew.
And so the incident rested with Owen Meany receiving the punishment of disciplinary probation for the duration of the winter term; aside from the jeopardy this put him in—in regard to any other trouble he might get into—disciplinary probation was no great imposition, especially for a day boy. Basically, he lost the senior privilege to go to Boston on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons; if he’d been a boarder, he would have lost the right to spend any weekend away from school, but since he was a day boy, he spent every weekend at home—or with me—anyway.
Yet Owen was not grateful for the leniency shown to him by the school; he was outraged that he had been punished at all. His hostility, in turn, was not appreciated by the faculty—including many of his supporters. They wanted to be congratulated for their generosity, and for standing up to the headmaster; instead, Owen cut them dead on the quadrangle paths. He greeted no one; he wouldn’t even look up. He wouldn’t speak—not even in class!—unless spoken to; and when forced to speak, his responses were uncharacteristically brief. As for his duties as editor-in-chief of The Grave, he simply stopped contributing the column that had given The Voice his name and his fame.
“What’s happened to The Voice, Owen?” Mr. Early asked him.
“THE VOICE HAS LEARNED TO KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT,” Owen said.
“Owen,” Dan Needham said, “don’t piss off your friends.”
“THE VOICE HAS BEEN CENSORED,” said Owen Meany. “JUST TELL THE FACULTY AND THE HEADMASTER THAT THE VOICE IS BUSY—REVISING HIS VALEDICTORY! I GUESS NO ONE CAN THROW ME OUT OF SCHOOL FOR WHAT I SAY AT COMMENCEMENT!”
Thus did Owen Meany respond to his punishment, by threatening the headmaster and the faculty with The Voice—only momentarily silenced, we all knew; but full of rage, we all were sure.
It was that numbskull from Zürich, Dr. Dolder, who proposed to the faculty that Owen Meany should be required to talk with him.
“Such hostility!” Dr. Dolder said. “He has a talent for speaking out—yes? And now he is withholding his talent from us, he is denying himself the pleasure of speaking his mind—why? Without expression, his hostility will only increase—no?” Dr. Dolder said. “Better I should give him the opportunity to vent his hostility—on me!” the doctor said. “After all, we would not want a repeated incident with another older woman. Maybe this time, it’s a faculty wife—yes?” he said.
And so they told Owen Meany that he had to see the school psychiatrist.
“‘FATHER, FORGIVE THEM; FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO,’” he said.
Toronto: July 14, 1987—still waiting for my invitation to Georgian Bay; it can’t come soon enough. The New York Times appears to have reduced the Iran-contra affair to the single issue of whether or not President Reagan “knew” that profits from the secret arms sales to Iran were being diverted to support the Nicaraguan contras. Jesus Christ! Isn’t it enough to “know” that the president wanted and intended to continue his support of the contras after Congress told him what was enough?
It makes me sick to hear the lectures delivered to Lt. Col. Oliver North. What are they lecturing him for? The colonel wants to support the contras—“for the love of God and for the love of country”; he’s already testified that he’d do anything his commander-in-chief wanted him to do. And now we get to listen to the senators and the representatives who are running for office again; they tell the colonel all he doesn’t know about the U.S. Constitution; they point out to him that patriotism is not necessarily defined as blind devotion to a president’s particular agenda—and that to dispute a presidential policy is not necessarily anti-American. They might add that God is not a proven right-winger! Why are they pontificating the obvious to Colonel North? Why don’t they have the balls to say this to their blessed commander-in-chief?
If Hester has been paying attention to any of this, I’ll bet she’s throwing up; I’ll bet she’s barfing her brains out. She would remember, of course, those charmless bumper stickers from the Vietnam era—those cunning American flags and the red, white, and blue lettering of the name of our beloved nation. I’ll bet Colonel North remembers them.
AMERICA!
said the bumper stickers.
LOVE IT OR
LEAVE IT!
That made a lot of sense, didn’t it? Remember that?
And now we have to hear a civics lecture—t
he country’s elected officials are instructing a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps on the subject that love of country and love of God (and hatred of communism) can conceivably be represented, in a democracy, by differing points of view. The colonel shows no signs of being converted; why are these pillars of self-righteousness wasting their breath on him? I doubt that President Reagan could be converted to democracy, either.
I know what my grandmother used to say, whenever she saw or read anything that was just a lot of bullshit. Owen picked up the phrase from her; he was quite lethal in its application, our senior year at Gravesend. Whenever anyone said anything that was a lot of bullshit to him, Owen Meany used to say, “YOU KNOW WHAT THAT IS? THAT’S MADE FOR TELEVISION—THAT’S WHAT THAT IS.” And that’s what Owen would have said about the Iran-contra hearings—concerning what President Reagan did or didn’t “know.”
“MADE FOR TELEVISION,” he would have said.
That’s how he referred to his sessions with Dr. Dolder; the school made him see Dr. Dolder twice a week, and when I asked him to describe his dialogue with the Swiss idiot, Owen said, “MADE FOR TELEVISION.” He wouldn’t tell me much else about the sessions, but he liked to mock some of the questions Dr. Dolder had asked him by exaggerating the doctor’s accent.
“ZO! YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO ZE OLDER VIMMEN—VY IS DAT?”
I wondered if he answered by saying he’d always been fond of my mother—maybe, he’d even been in love with her. That would have caused Dr. Dolder great excitement, I’m sure.