a word containing only geez
An illogical mind would find euphoria when reading Catch 22. To my supreme misfortune, I am not illogical and, frankly, prefer things that make only perfect sense. Thus, Catch 22 is the prime book for me, because making perfect sense is about the most illogical thing to occur, ever.
The flow of the book is tattered with setting jumps and time lapses that have an impeccable sense for creating surreal mental disorder in the reader’s head. I’ve covered nearly half of the text and am still confused about who is who. And this is fabulous! It is fabulous because I haven’t burnt so many brain cells out in attempts to understand a book in a significant amount of time. Generally, books use a very linear plot, often breaking into sub-plots with a few settings; this set-up is easy to follow and lets you glean the most from the literature. Catch 22 is not linear - it’s skewed, it’s crooked, it’s messed up.
Some people, upon reaching these levels of disorder and bewildering, literary distress would just faint and give up. Even though I admit to my struggles as well, I really like what Heller is doing. I won’t even assume that the novel “comes together” in the end because that is incredibly superficial and undermining of such a fantastically perturbed book.
Books are fun. And somewhat anti-social. But fun. Very fun.
April 19th, 2005 at 11:04 pm
My favorite part in Catch is when the narrator says the following in regard to ‘The Great Gatsby:’
“Old Bean. Old Sport. That $h*t kills me.”
Don’t ask me why, but that made me laugh out loud.