By John Irving. Our Presidents continue to pour the soothing syrup. But some of our most talented novelists see the political condition of American society as a disaster, the temper of many Americans as correspondingly dangerous. John Irving makes it all too plain, and with positive rage, that in his eyes American society has been a moral disaster since the 1960's.
Desperate conditions invite desperate remedies.
To be understood, he talks in what Mr. Irving represents as oversized capital letters. He founded a congregation in Exeter, where John Irving was born and went to school at Phillips Exeter. I have always been fascinated by the destiny of the Puritans' descendants. I remember with relish the poet John Wheelwright, who was a follower of that overconfident, unfortunate prophet Leon Trotsky and was rumored to don a tuxedo to read his poetry in the Boston streets. The narrator of ''A Prayer for Owen Meany'' is another John Wheelwright, also a descendant, but a good deal of a conscious and unapologetic wimp.