Has anyone else out there read this book by Joseph Heller? I had gone to the store to pick up The Great Gatsby, but somehow I came home with Catch-22 instead. I haven't been able to put it down. I don't know what I expected from it, but it's nothing like what I expected if I would have been conscious of exactly what it was I was expecting. I knew it was a war story, but I guess I was thinking it would be more along the lines of All Quiet on the Western Front. Oh no. The story does delve into the barbarities of warfare but in a satirical way. It is laugh out loud funny. The characters and dialougues crack me up. I keep going back and reading favorite passages over and over for their comedic merit. At the same time, Heller lends profound insight to such issues as ethics, metaphysics, and all the supposed "truths" that many people adhere to and how those ideas go out the window for people who are just a little too sane. I'd definitely recommend it. I'd like to hear what others who have read it think. 😀
Originally posted by Xenophileit definitely has a lot of comic shots at the stupidity and pointlessness of war (and some other endeavours) but for some reason the two things I remember most are the chocolate covered Egyptian cotton and the passage in which the antihero was in the airplane trying to fix what seemed like a superficial wound for so long and wondering why the guy kept dying (that was the most brilliant part of the novel for me for some reason; maybe because it made him into a completely human character, not some superhero who breezes through a war with his smile and throw-away lines). I also liked the medal-pinning ceremony. 🙂
Has anyone else out there read this book by Joseph Heller? I had gone to the store to pick up The Great Gatsby, but somehow I came home with Catch-22 instead. I haven't been able to put it down. I don't know what I expected from it, but it's nothing like what I expected if I would have been conscious of exactly what it was I was expecting. I knew it ...[text shortened]... e. I'd definitely recommend it. I'd like to hear what others who have read it think. 😀
Catch-22 is absolutely stunning, yeah, although if you've not yet got to the end, I'd prepare yourself for the light-hearted stuff to give way to something much, much darker. That said, even the nastiest moments are a picnic compared with Heller's second novel, Something Happened, which starts off damn depressing and ends up positively suicidal. I loved it, but I'd struggle to say that reading it was fun.
Rich.
Originally posted by XenophileIm reading the great gatsby in class just now. I couldnt be bothered reading so i watched the film 😀😀😀
Has anyone else out there read this book by Joseph Heller? I had gone to the store to pick up The Great Gatsby, but somehow I came home with Catch-22 instead. I haven't been able to put it down. I don't know what I expected from it, but it's nothing like what I expected if I would have been conscious of exactly what it was I was expecting. I knew it ...[text shortened]... e. I'd definitely recommend it. I'd like to hear what others who have read it think. 😀
David
Have to agree that Cacth-22 is a great read. Know what you mean about the expectations of the book - whatever they may have been, they were certainly met and surpassed. It felt like reading something deeply profound and dsiturbing, but at the same time it was a laugh-a-minute comic-opera. It is clear that in Catch-22 Heller arrived at the apogee of the tragi-comedy style. If you want to read something in a similar vein, try Spike Milligan's autobiographies. The dialogue is equally brilliant given that it is packed with just as many and just as witty rebounds and ripostes, and the sense of tragedy is ever present given that it is a recording of real events. Plus he draws funny little piccies and inserts the odd annotated postcard. The title of the first book of his autobiography gives a taste of the style in which he records the experience of war, and of his mordant sense of humour: "Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall". I think there are six books in total, and they are all quick and easy reads. If you didn't know, Spike Milligan was an English comedian who, besides a multitude of other achievements, formed the Goons who were the precursors to Monty Python.
Originally posted by richhoeyI really enjoyed Something Happened. Well, maybe not "enjoyed" as such, but definately couldn't stop reading if I remember rightly. However, that book is riddled with massive chunks of text in parantheses (two or three pages at a time, so that by the time you finish reading the text in the brackets you have forgotten what was going on before the author decided to go off on another track altogether. I don't remember this happening too much in Catch-22, which was a great, great read. In fact this thread has whet my apetite for re-reading it.) which makes it difficult to follow and gets really annoying after a while. 🙂
Catch-22 is absolutely stunning, yeah, although if you've not yet got to the end, I'd prepare yourself for the light-hearted stuff to give way to something much, much darker. That said, even the nastiest moments are a picnic compared with Heller's second novel, Something Happened, which starts off damn depressing and ends up positively suicidal. I loved it, but I'd struggle to say that reading it was fun.
Rich.
Couldn't agree more - - one of my top 5 books of all time and will always remain so , no matter who writes what in the future!!! I, too , take to leafing though it occasionally - - I actually chose it as a study book for English finals a few years ago - - so much to look into it was difficult to keep word-count down. My favourite quotes are memorised -
''Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them''.
Or the pervasiveness of racism throughout society - - '' Racial prejudice is a terrible thing...It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger , kike wop or spic''. It's a shame that most people who use the term Catch-22 have never read the book from which it arose.