Owen's story is told, in flashbacks to the 1950's and 60's, by his nondescript best friend, John Wheelwright. Irving uses even for Owen's most trivial dialogue: '' 'TURN ON THE LIGHT!' said Owen Meany.'' Throughout his life, he keeps his unnaturally high-pitched voice, its squeals suggested by the capital letters Mr. At age 11, he is the size of a 5-year-old. The story follows Owen Meany's marginal growth from a boy to a man. Irving's constant theme: life is miraculous, fraught with meaning and loaded with booby traps. Irving's seventh novel does not have the astounding narrative power and playfulness of ''Garp.'' It takes its own eccentric approach to Mr. More than any of his novels since ''Garp,'' more than the raucous but shallow ''Hotel New Hampshire'' and the somber ''Cider House Rules,'' ''A Prayer for Owen Meany'' embraces those 19th-century qualities. Irving matches Dickens's greatness - a silly comparison - to credit him with the serious ambition of carrying the 19th-century novel into our literary age. He is a Populist, determined to keep alive the Dickensian tradition that revels in colorful set pieces, blubbers with sentimentality, finds depth in cartoonish characters and teaches moral lessons. Irving has often been snobbishly and mistakenly dismissed as merely popular. When the film version of John Irving's ''World According to Garp'' appeared, people who hoped to be intellectually fashionable sniffed and claimed, ''I never liked the book in the first place.'' Since the huge commercial success of the novel, in 1978, Mr.
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