In my quest to read everything I could possibly teach a high school English student, my latest read has been Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
How to sum up the book... Perhaps like this: ironic and futile laughter in the face of inane and dangerous moot-ness.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. Catch-22 is hilarious, ironic, sad, bitter, unfair, frustrating, utterly outrageous and yet completely true. I came through the book seeing everything through this lens. I now see it in daily interactions. I see it in Mary McCarthy's Groves of Academe. At work. On the bus. Everywhere.
Ahh, the sign of a quality book - just like a quality man - that you instantly insert it (him) into your life.
I must say that I do not like it. I don't like the conclusion. I don't like the truth of the conclusion. I don't like that there seems to be no way to escape the circular conclusions.
Me.
No.
Likey.
And hence, I think the book is genius.
"It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all."
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller
I need to read this again thoroughly enjoyed it in high school, but havent read it since.
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ReplyDeleteI haven't read this, but there's a line from it that regularly cracks up my entire family: when the chaplain asks one of the soldiers whether he reads the bible, he replies 'Every goddamned day'. Woot!
ReplyDeleteAms - you really should!
ReplyDeleteJennifer - hahahaha, seriously it is so ridiculous!