system'-what could be more important than that! Listen to this: 'Black holes are concentrations of matter so dense they have collapsed upon themselves. Nothing, not even light, can escape their intense gravitational pull.' Imagine mat! Not even light-my God! I announced this news to the Keeling family; but one of the middle children-a sort of science-prize student-responded to me rather rudely.
'Yeah,' he said, 'but all the black holes are about two million light-years away from Earth.'
And I thought: That is about as far away from Earth as Owen Meany is; that is about as far away from Earth as I would like to be. And where is JFK today? How far away is he? On November , , Owen Meany and I were in my room at Front Street, studying for a Geology exam. I was angry with Owen for manipulating me into taking Geology, the true nature of which was concealed-at the University of New Hampshire-in the curriculum catalog under the hippie-inspired title of Earth Science. Owen had misled me into thinking that the course would be an easy means of satisfying a part of our science requirement-he knew all about rocks, he assured me, and the rest of the course would concern itself with fossils. 'IT'LL BE NEAT TO KNOW ALL ABOUT THE DINOSAURS!' Owen had said; he seduced me. We spent less than a week with the dinosaurs-and far less time with fossils than we spent learning the horrible names of the ages of the earth. And it turned out that Owen Meany didn't know a metamorphic schist from an igneous intrusion-unless the latter was granite. On November , , had just confused the Paleocene epoch with the Pleistocene, and I was further confused by the difference between an epoch and an era.
'The Cenozoic is an era, right?' I asked him.
'WHO CARES?' said Owen Meany. 'YOU CAN FORGET THAT PART. AND YOU CAN FORGET ABOUT ANYTHING AS BROAD AS THE TERTIARY OR THE QUATERNARY-THAT'S TOO BROAD, TOO. WHAT YOU'VE GOT TO KNOW IS MORE SPECIFIC, YOU'VE GOT TO KNOW WHAT CHARACTERIZED AN EPOCH- FOR EXAMPLE, WHICH EPOCH IS CHARACTERIZED BY THE TRIUMPH OF BIRDS AND PLACENTAL MAMMALS?'
'Jesus, how'd I ever let you talk me into this?' I said.
'PAY ATTENTION,' said Owen Meany. 'THERE ARE WAYS TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING. THE WAY TO REMEMBER PLEISTOCENE IS TO REMEMBER THAT THIS EPOCH WAS CHARACTERIZED BY THE APPEARANCE OF MAN AND WIDESPREAD GLACIAL ICE-REMEMBER THE ICE, IT RHYMES WITH PLEIS IN PLEISTOCENE.'
'Jesus Christ!' I said.
'I'M JUST TRYING TO HELP YOU REMEMBER,' Owen said. 'IF YOU'RE CONFUSING THE BLOSSOMING OF BIRDS AND PLACENTAL MAMMALS WITH THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF MAN, YOU'RE ABOUT SIXTY MILLION YEARS OFF-YOU'RE MAKING A PRETTY BIG MISTAKE!'
'The biggest mistake I made was to take Geology!' I said. Suddenly, Ethel was in my room; we hadn't heard her knock or open the door-I don't remember ever seeing Ethel in my room before (or since).
'Your grandmother wishes to see you in the TV room,' Ethel said.
'IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE TV?' Owen asked her.
'Something is wrong with the president,' Ethel said. When we found out what was wrong with Kennedy-when we saw him shot, and, later, when we learned he was dead-
Owen Meany said, 'IF WE FIRST APPEAR IN THE PLEISTOCENE, I THINK THIS IS WHEN WE DISAPPEAR-I GUESS A MILLION YEARS OF MAN IS ENOUGH.'
What we witnessed with the death of Kennedy was the triumph of television; what we saw with his assassination, and with his funeral, was the beginning of television's dominance of our culture-for television is at its most solemnly self-serving and at its mesmerizing best when it is depicting the untimely deaths of the chosen and the golden. It is as witness to the butchery of heroes in their prime-and of all holy-seeming innocents-that television achieves its deplorable greatness. The blood on Mrs. Kennedy's clothes and her wrecked face under her veil; the fatherless children; LBJ taking the oath of office; and brother Bobby-looking so very much the next in line.
'IF BOBBY WAS NEXT IN LINE FOR MARILYN MONROE, WHAT ELSE IS HE NEXT IN LINE FOR?' said Owen Meany. Not even five years later, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, Hester would say, 'Television gives good disaster.' I suppose this was nothing but a more vernacular version of my grandmother's observation of the effect of TV on old people: that watching it would hasten their deaths. If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something-just by staying alive. At Front Street, that November of ', my grandmother and Owen Meany and I watched the president be killed for hours; for days we watched him be killed and re-killed, again and again.
'I GET THE POINT,' said Owen Meany. 'IF SOME MANIAC MURDERS YOU, YOU'RE AN INSTANT HERO-EVEN IF ALL YOU WERE DOING IS RIDING IN A MOTORCADE!'
'I wish some maniac would murder me,' my grandmother said.
'MISSUS WHEELWRIGHT! WHAT DO YOU MEAN?' Owen said.
'I mean, why can't some maniac murder someone old-like
