nostrils, the cigarette smoke was swept away from his face-dramatically exposing him as if he were a man miraculously emerging from a fire.
'IT'S TOO SOON TO TELL-WITH MOST SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLDS,' Owen said, sounding already worldly enough for any conversation he might encounter at Gravesend Academy-although we both knew that the problem with the sixteen-year-old girls who interested us was that they dated eighteen-year-olds. 'BY THE TIME WE'RE EIGHTEEN, WE'LL GET THEM BACK,' Owen said. 'AND WE'LL GET ALL THE SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLDS, TOO-THE ONES WE WANT,' he added, inhaling again and squinting into the oncoming headlights. By the fall of ', when we entered Gravesend Academy, Owen seemed very sophisticated to me; the wardrobe my grandmother had acquired for him was more stylish than anything you could buy in New Hampshire. My clothes all came from Gravesend, but Grandmother took Owen shopping in Boston; it was his first time on a train, and-since they were both smokers-they rode in the smoking coach together and shared their nearly constant (and critical) comments on the attire of their fellow passengers on the Boston & Maine, and on the comparative courtesy (or lack thereof) of the conductors. Grandmother outfitted Owen almost entirely at Filene's and Jordan Marsh, one of which had a Small Gentlemen's Department, which the other called A Small Man's Special Needs. Jordan Marsh and Filene's were pretty flashy labels by New Hampshire standards-'THIS IS NOT BARGAIN-BASEMENT STUFF!' Owen said proudly. For our first day of classes, Owen showed up looking like a small Harvard lawyer.
He was not intimidated by the bigger boys because he had always been smaller; and he was not intimidated by the older boys because he was smarter. He saw immediately a crucial difference between Gravesend, the town, and Gravesend, the academy: the town paper, The Gravesend News-Letter, reported all the news that was decent and believed that all things decent were important; the school newspaper, which was called The Grave, reported every indecency that could escape the censorship of the paper's faculty adviser and believed that all things decent were boring. Gravesend Academy embraced a cynical tone of voice, savored a criticism of everything that anyone took seriously; the students hallowed, above everyone else, that boy who saw himself as born to break the rules, as destined to change the laws. And to the students of Gravesend who thus chafed against their bonds, the only accepted tone was caustic-was biting, mordant, bitter, scathing sarcasm, the juicy vocabulary of which Owen Meany had already learned from my grandmother. He had mastered sarcasm in much the same way he had become a smoker; he was a pack-a-day man in a month. In his first fall term at Gravesend, the other boys nicknamed him 'Sarcasm Master.' In the lingo of those times, everyone was a something 'master'; Dan Needham tells me that this is one of those examples of student language that endures-at Graves-end Academy, the term is still in use. I have never heard it at Bishop Strachan. But Owen Meany was Sarcasm Master in the way that big Buster York was Barf Master, that Skipper Hilton was Zit Master, that Morris West was Nose Master, that DufFy Swain (who was prematurely bald) was Hair Master, that George Fogg (the hockey player) was Ice Master, that Horace Brigham (a lady's man) was Snatch Master. No one found a name for me. Among the editors of The Grave, in which Owen published the first essay he was assigned in English class, Owen was known as 'The Voice.' His essay was a satire on the source of food in the school dining hall-'MYSTERY MEAT,' Owen titled the essay and the unrecognizable, gray steaks we were served weekly; the essay, which was published as an editorial, described the slaughter and refrigeration of an unidentified, possibly prehistoric beast that was dragged to the underground kitchen of the school in chains, 'IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT.'
The Voice The editorial and the subsequent weekly essays that Owen published in The Grave were ascribed not to Owen Meany by name, but to 'The Voice'; and the text was printed in uniform upper-case letters. 'I'M ALWAYS GOING TO BE PUBLISHED IN CAPITALS,' Owen explained to Dan and me, 'BECAUSE IT WILL INSTANTLY GRAB THE READER'S ATTENTION, ESPECIALLY AFTER 'THE VOICE' GETS TO BE A KIND OF INSTITUTION.'
By the Christmas of , in our first year at the academy, that is what Owen Meany had become: The Voice-A KIND OF INSTITUTION. Even the Search Committee-appointed to find a new headmaster-was interested in what The Voice had to say. Applicants for the position were given a subscription to The Grave; the snide, sneering precocity of the student body was well represented in its pages-and best represented by the capitals mat commanded one's gaze to Owen Meany. There were some old curmudgeons on the faculty-and some young fuddy-duddies, too-who objected to Owen's style; and I don't mean that they objected only to his outrageous capitalization. Dan Needham told me that there'd been more than one heated debate in faculty meeting concerning the 'marginal taste' of Owen's blanket criticism of the school; granted, it was well within a long-established tradition for Gravesend students to complain about the academy, but Owen's sarcasm suggested, to some, a total and threatening irreverence. Dan defended Owen; but The Voice was a proven irritant to many of the more insecure members of the Gravesend community- including those faraway but important subscribers to The Grave: 'concerned' parents and alumni. The subject of 'concerned' parents and alumni yielded an especially lively and controversial column for The Voice.
'WHAT ARE THEY 'CONCERNED' ABOUT?' Owen pondered. 'ARE THEY 'CONCERNED' WITH OUR EDUCATION-THAT IT BE BOTH 'CLASSICAL' AND 'TIMELY'-OR ARE THEY 'CONCERNED' THAT WE MIGHT POSSIBLY LEARN MORE THAN THEY HAVE LEARNED; THAT WE MIGHT INFORM OURSELVES SUFFICIENTLY TO CHALLENGE A FEW OF THEIR MORE HARDENED AND IDIOTIC OPINIONS? ARE THEY 'CONCERNED' ABOUT THE QUALITY AND VIG-OROUSNESS OF OUR EDUCATION; OR ARE THEY MORE SUPERFICIALLY 'CONCERNED' THAT WE MIGHT FAIL TO GET INTO THE UNIVERSITY OR COLLEGE OF THEIR CHOICE?'
Then there was the column that challenged the coat-and-tie dress code, arguing that it was 'INCONSISTENT TO DRESS US LIKE GROWN-UPS AND TREAT US LIKE CHILDREN.' And there was the column about required church-attendance, arguing that 'IT RUINS THE PROPER ATMOSPHERE FOR PRAYER AND WORSHIP TO HAVE THE CHURCH-AW CHURCH-FULL OF RESTLESS ADOLESCENTS WHO WOULD RATHER BE SLEEPING LATE OR INDULGING IN SEXUAL FANTASIES OR PLAYING SQUASH.
