Written as a satire on war, questioning the pieties spouted patriotically by politicians and generals to urge soldiers on to heroic fighting, this novel was based on the experiences of the author who was a bombardier in a bomber squadron based in Corsica during World War II. The anti-hero is John Yossarian, also a bombardier, whose war-time perch was lying flat in the nose of a B-25 Mitchell bomber, aiming bombs at targets while the plane was piloted over enemy targets enveloped in dangerous flak (anti-aircraft fire).
Mitchell B-25 bomber – about 10,000 were built, 40 are still flying
In another peace-time perch he could also be found naked up a tree at the air-base contemplating who was trying to kill him. He was convinced everyone, most especially the commanding officers and generals, were out to get him. The number of missions to be flown before rotating the airmen back home was continually increased to win laurels for the commanding officers.
The airman could escape the Sisyphean toil of flying ever more bombing missions if he was declared insane. But he could not ask for a mental evaluation to determine whether he was fit to fly, for such an attempt to avoid dangerous missions would prove the airman's sanity, since:
“... concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.”
That was the Catch-22, a catchphrase that has entered the English language. Catch-22 occurs at points in the novel, to explain a paradox caused by applying a rule; every such problem has a solution which is contradicted by the problem itself.
The novel has lots of repetitions and nobody will say it is elegantly written. It is a collection of episodes with no real story-line to thread its progress. All one can sense is that Yossarian is getting increasingly desperate, and more and more paranoid, seeing enemies everywhere bent on snuffing him out:
As the number of missions keep increasing Yossarian takes evasive action: he alters the line of bombing on maps; he presents himself naked at a medal ceremony; he marches backward; etc. For a generation yet to come of age during the Vietnam War, the novel made eminent sense, justifying evading the military draft, burning draft papers, and even desertion, as being superior to an immoral war. Orr with his survival technique of ditching his plane in the sea and paddling to Sweden in a life-raft with survival techniques he'd practiced becomes the active antidote to Catch-22.
Readers meeting on Zoom for the Catch-22 session
Heller Biography (taken from Wikipedia)
Early Years
Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn, New York, of poor Jewish parents. He loved to write from childhood. After finishing school in 1941, he spent a year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, and doing other odd jobs
In 1942 with WWII going on he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps at age 19. He was sent to Italy where he flew 60 combat missions as a bombardier on board the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber. When he returned home he ‘felt like a hero’ although the missions were largely milk runs, as he said, that is they involved little danger. This is reminiscent of President Kennedy, who was asked how he became a war hero. He replied: 'It was involuntary. They sank my patrol boat.'
Heller studied English on the G.I. Bill and graduated from New York University in 1948. He took an M.A. in English from Columbia University later and spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in St Catherine's College, Oxford, before landing a job teaching composition at Pennsylvania State University for two years (1950–52). He then briefly worked for Time magazine. He was first published in 1948 in The Atlantic magazine – it was a short story.
He was married to Shirley Held from 1945 to 1981 and they had two children, Erica (born 1952, later a writer herself) and Theodore (born 1956).
Catch-22
While sitting at home one morning in 1953 he began to imagine the story that became Catch-22, and invented the characters, the episodes, and the tone that the story would eventually take. In a week, he finished the first chapter and sent it to his agent. The first chapter was published in 1955 as ‘Catch-18’, in a small magazine.
Priya explained how Catch-22 worked
Heller continued adding to the plot and felt it could become his first novel. When he was one-third done with the work, his agent sent it to publishers. The work was soon bought by Simon & Schuster, who gave him US $750 and promised him an additional $750 when the full manuscript was delivered. It took Heller eight years to deliver the novel to his publisher.
In the finished novel John Yossarian, also a bombardier on B-25s, devises multiple strategies to avoid combat missions, but the military bureaucracy overwhelms him.
Just before publication, the novel's title was changed to Catch-22 and was published in hardback in 1961 to mixed reviews, with the Chicago Sun-Times calling it "the best American novel in years", while other critics derided it as "disorganized, unreadable, and crass." It sold only 30,000 hardback copies in the United States in its first year of publication.
The readers reacted very differently in Britain, where, within one week of its publication, the novel was number one on the bestseller lists. Many identified with the novel's anti-war ethos. The book went on to sell 10 million copies in the United States. The novel's title became a standard term in English and other languages for a dilemma with no easy way out. It is now considered a classic.
The movie rights to the novel were purchased in 1962; combined with his royalties from publication, it made Heller a millionaire. The film, which was directed by Mike Nichols and starred Alan Arkin, Jon Voight and Orson Welles, was released in 1970.
Other Works
Heller’s work exemplifies modern satire in the lives of members of the middle class.
Heller’s next novel was Something Happened, and while he was working on it he did scripts, screenplays and television comedies. Something Happened, was finally published in 1974.
In 1967, Heller wrote a play called We Bombed in New Haven. It delivered an anti-war message in the then topical context of the Vietnam War.
Heller wrote another five novels, each of which took him several years to complete. One of them, Closing Time, revisited many of the characters from Catch-22 as they adjusted to post-war New York. Heller could not duplicate the success of his first novel.
Teaching
Heller had a part-time academic career as an adjunct professor of creative writing at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1970s, Heller taught creative writing as a distinguished professor at the City College of New York.
Illness
Heller was diagnosed with Guillain–Barré syndrome, a debilitating syndrome that was to leave him temporarily paralyzed in Dec 1981. His illness and recovery are recounted in an autobiographical memoir, No Laughing Matter. Heller made a substantial recovery and in 1987 he married Valerie Humphries, formerly one of his nurses.
He died of a heart attack at his home in East Hampton, Long Island, in December 1999, shortly after the completion of his final novel, Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man.
New Light on the Novel
Joseph Heller denied that that his characters were based on people who served with him in the war. However, Heller's mates from the war in the 340th Bomb Group recognised the novel's characters – the hard-drinking Chief White Half Oat; young, Kid Sampson who was sliced in half by airplane blades; shrieking, frenzied Hungry Joe; Colonel Cathcart, General Dreedle, Yossarian and that entrepreneur who finds in war the supreme road to capitalist riches, Milo Minderbinder.
However in the book, The True Story of Catch 22, written and colorfully illustrated by the daughter of the commander under whom Heller flew, one encounters the real men and combat missions on which the novel was based. This 3-part book blends fact, fancy, and history with full-blown original illustrations and rare, previously unpublished photos of these daring USAAF flyers and their B-25 Mitchell medium bombers based on the island of Corsica.
The old man who argues it is better to live on one’s feet than die on one’s knees
Yossarian floats away to Goteborg 2,700 miles in a raft
Catch-22 illustrations by By Neil Packer
In this book the reader will discover that truth is indeed as fascinating as fiction. Author Patricia Chapman Meder who trained as a professional artist, has also written a full-color companion work containing her delightful original artwork and caricatures of the individuals, The True Story of Catch-22 Illustrated.
His Daughter Erica Heller's book
Erica Heller says her character was assassinated in the second novel her father wrote, Something Happened. She called it “An angry tale of one man's scorching disgust with each member of his family, none of whom was named in the book.” Bob Slocum is the protagonist of the novel and Erica and her brother Ted, are hardly disguised. She is described as “spiteful, embittered and vindictive” behind her "thin-lipped smile of calculating villainy.” However Joseph Heller did grant that the person in the novel mimicking Erica was “too smart to be dumb.”
Erica Heller wrote a memoir of her own recalling the good and the bad of living with her dad in a book, Yossarian Slept Here. Read the full interview with Erica Heller here.
Before the reading began there was some discussion of the novel. Devika said some parts of it are quite boring, and then there are others that are horrifying like the scene where Kid Sampson is dismembered by a helicopter blade. “Not my type of book,” said KumKum: “I tried to read it once before and gave up.” Devika had to get through the book by targeting so many pages a day. Saras said Heller wanted to depict war in all its gruesomeness, since he wrote it as an anti-war book. Devika thought this book was very graphic in its scenes. Nately's whore was the only sweet interlude in the book, thought KumKum. But poor Nately also dies in the end, said Devika. "Dying is okay, but not when accompanied with so much gore,” said Devika. Geeta exclaimed she had only read up to chapter 23, and nothing made sense. The others faced some of the same problems. “It jumps from one thing to another and it's so hard to keep track of,” according to Devika. But she appreciated Milo Mindbender's flying around the Mediterranean purchasing cotton from Egypt for sale elsewhere and so on.
Internet
Gopa had problems with her Internet. There are mixed reports on Jio Internet. KumKum is very happy with BSNL Fiber to Home. Devika's experience with BSNL is bad; even surrendering it is a great problem. November is the month to select novels.
Oct 23 is the date for reading poetry and the theme is Women Poets. There was an idea of jointly writing a short story, each one adding a few hundred words to keep the narrative going. Pamela wants to recite Mahadevi Verma. But we will miss the feast for there are three birthdays in October! Saras said one of the good points of KRG is that you are forced to read books that are outside your natural preferred scope.
A Zoom pic of the readers
Priya
Priya read the book a second time and felt quite enriched and enjoyed it. She first gave the summary biography above. Priya noted that Heller was born in Brooklyn and asked if there is something in the air of Brooklyn that has nurtured so many authors. Joe said many people who participated in the culture of New York lived there because of Brooklyn’s proximity to the urban delights of Manhattan, a 20-minute ride away by the underground. Yet one could live in a quiet tree-lined neighbourhood, free of congestion.
Priya read from the passage which explains the term Catch-22 from Chapter 5.
“Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.”
Gopa
The book she said is about a 19-year old turning into a hero, and the notorious Catch-22 intervenes. Toward the end of the novel he is given a chance to collaborate and make his superiors look like great leaders, and he refuses. It's a tragi-comedic narrative and jumps from one scene to another. Gopa said it was a very good book. There were some words that are unique to Catch-22, she found, but didn't mention what they were.
In the first few chapters Heller has outlined the novel and the hellish state of the hospital on the airbase, but he preferred to be there than to fly. He writes about Washington Irving whose name occurs 44 times in the novel; and finally the contradiction of the catch in Catch-22 is set forth in its beguiling simplicity. Heller is clearly laid out as an anti-hero.
Joe
Catch-22 is not so much a novel with a plot and developed characters as a series of episodes, often hallucinatory, of a bombardier who served in the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF) based on an island in the Mediterranean, and tasked with bombing enemy bases and bridges in Italy during WWII.
The bombardier, Yossarian, has only one aim: to survive the war and go home. He sees the war as an ill-disguised effort to kill him, even as the number of bombing missions he has to serve gets extended indefinitely. There is some R&R time (Rest and Recuperation) for making out with prostitutes in Rome and elsewhere on recreational outings, but mostly he wants to avoid death, his own and that of his buddies.
Though the novel is not great literature it does have some interesting references and two of them occur in Chapter 4. Joe perked up when he read the question put to superiors in an educational session:
‘Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?’
Snowden, you recall was a crew member who bled to death from the flak he copped mid-air. Yossarian cradled him while he was dying.
Later the line was translated by Yossarain for the bosses’ understanding as:
‘Où sont les Neigedens d’antan?’
This is an oblique reference to a poem of Francois Villon, celebrating famous women in history, titled Ballade des dames du temps jadis. He was a 15th century French poet who is hard to read today because it is old French, of another era. But the refrain ‘Où sont les neiges d’antan?’ (Where are the snows of yesteryear?) occurs in this poem at the end of each stanza after the poet recalls yet more famous women. It is a piteous sighing for those who are gone and has been sung by modern singers, notably Georges Brassens. I hear the echo of a line of Omar Khayyam also here:
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say,
Ah, but where leaves the Rose of yesterday?
The other literary reference is to T.S. Eliot when a superior officer, Colonel Cargill, challenges the men to name one poet who made money, and Private First Class Wintergreen answers: T.S. Eliot, whom Cargill has never heard of. I don’t know how much money TSE made before WWII from his poetry and his directorship of Faber and Faber; he got the Nobel only in 1948 and really it was his estate that came into millions after the musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on TSE’s Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats became a superhit. A terrific poet who did die a millionaire, was Ted Hughes.
Joe found this section amusing in a book which he otherwise skipped merrily whenever it got dense or seemed to wander off the track. He had fun nevertheless and thanked Thommo and Priya for selecting it.
The readers had a lot of complaints about the book, even Priya who chose it with Thommo, had reservations later on. This was the advantage of having read it years before. KumKum was determined to read it through. It was more a man's book, said Thommo. There's no love story, Priya complained. What romance could there be with nurse Duckett around, asked Thommo? Nately's whore came up again as a figure of entertainment.
Gopa asked if anyone did research into the B-25 bomber. How scary it must have been to lie prone in the nose of the plane in the bombardier's capsule. Joe recalled the heavier 4-engined bomber, the B-24, called Liberator, which served with the US Army Air Corps in the Indian theatre during WWII. After the war a number of these were reconditioned, and inducted into the Indian Air Force and became the first bombers of the IAF and were deployed in Kashmir during the war of its accession in 1948. A flight of B-24 Liberators formed the lead-in to Indian News Reels that were compulsorily shown before every feature film in India in the old days. Here's a picture:
Pamela
After reading her piece from chapter 5 describing Yossarian's expertise at evasive action, she went into why she liked the book and this particular passage.
Usually a hero would be intent in taking the most aggressive action, but Yossarian specialises in taking evasive action, and no one else was as good as him at this. Usually creativity is associated with something that is virtuous or good. But Gopa interjected that some of the world's thieves and robbers are most creative! Here it is fear that has made Yossarian creative, and perhaps his intelligence contributed to his efforts. Thommo noted that some of the most creative people remain paupers to the end of their lives. This bit about Hungry Joe in the novel – it was apparently Heller's moniker in the Air Corps.
Geeta
Geeta was shocked that all these people supposedly fighting the enemy were not loyal to each other, and did not support each other although they had a common enemy. It was shocking to Geeta; how could they win the war like this? Joe suggested that one can't confuse the actual war in which Heller flew 60 combat missions with the happenings in this novel, which is a fictional creation out of his mind to heap satire on war in general. The author can therefore write anything he wants – it does not have to correspond with the true situation on the air base in Corsica, or actual relations among the men stationed there. Fiction needs only faint pillars of reality on which to erect a work of imagination – is that a good aphorism or what? Geeta was not reconciled and could not get over the lack of camaraderie and fellowship, and lack of mutual support among the airmen. Devika threw another light on the matter by noting how upset they are when one of their colleagues dies – there is a bonding between them, it's just the way they behave.
Dissatisfied nevertheless, Geeta said she was going to read a passage which shows they hated each other. It is about the Action Board. Arundhaty argued that none of the men wanted to be there; they are characters in an anti-war novel and had to demonstrate their disgust at the events that endangered their lives. Joe said this passage is trying depict a diseased mind. The Italians all call Yossarian pazzo, crazy. It's part of that craziness that Yossarian believes that everyone is personally plotting his death. He meets the flak (anti-aircraft fire) when he flies over enemy territory, he has to contend with his own colonels and generals who want to extend his tour of combat missions indefinitely – everyone is out to get him killed. He has to save his skin. This is a clear sign of Yossarian's paranoia.
Not to say the commanding officers on his base aren't crazy; everybody in this war is crazy. There is no question of making distinctions among enemies – the enemy is anyone who is trying to kill you or get you killed. If his commanding officer is forcing him to fly mission after mission after mission after he has completed his quota, then they are after him. The paranoia kicks in and you can understand it; it's not hatred for his fellow officers that is driving him, as Geeta thinks.
Why does the commanding officer keep increasing the number of missions, asked Geeta? Joe replied it is a novelistic device to drive Yossarian up the wall and give him no out from this war, and therefore magnifies his paranoia, which is what the novelist wanted to depict. And finally this drives Yossarian to a crazy ending which this novel provides, that he floats off to Goteborg, Sweden, in a life-raft!
Geeta seemed to think that what Heller was writing was real, i.e., true to Heller's experience in the war. Joe said the novel is an imaginative work, structured with bits of humour and clearly based on knowledge he had gained about bombers, their crews and life at the front, but all exaggerated suitably to convey the atmosphere of a crazy war and the mindless people who prosecute it for so-called glory, when it is really all humbug. Heller was writing a satirical novel to debunk war as a source of glory, and he embedded it in the crassness, grimness and gore of a real war, which was not pretty. Here's what John McCain, US Navy pilot shot down during the Vietnam War, and late US Senator said:
Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.
A few incidents do strike one as perhaps based on actual happenings, like being hit on the head by the high-heels of a prostitute. Thommo too drew attention to the novel being a satire, and it being an exaggerated version of what Heller may have experienced, said Priya.
Joe said the novel was published in 1961 just as President Kennedy was revving up the Vietnam War and that would have been a better fit for satire and crazy wars. In fact the popularity of the novel grew in proportion to the unpopularity of the Vietnam War. WWII was seen as something of a patriotic war to save civilisation from the Nazis. But the craziness of that war too is proved by its conclusion in the East with the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki !
What was considered a patriotic war was the war that the Soviets fought against the Nazis, which they never called WWII but The Great Patriotic War and they cannot think of that war to this day as anything but a patriotic war to save the motherland. The Russians don't think of their country as the Fatherland as the Germans do, they think of their country as the Motherland. And about 55m died in the Soviet Union, more than all the other countries' casualties put together. Western allies have a just claim to advance on the Western Front in Europe, but the Nazis were really defeated on the Eastern Front. It was the Soviets who took the full brunt of the onslaught of Hitler's panzer divisions who pushed as far East as Leningrad – the cruel Siege and the starvation over two and a half years of that city; and Stalingrad – the great Battle over 5 months which ended in the surrender of the Wehrmacht forces and two of their highest ranking generals being captured – Paulus and Heitz – with about 400,000 soldiers killed and as many who surrendered. When the Red Army struck back after the very costly morale-boosting victory in Stalingrad, Marshal Zhukov drove the Wehrmacht gradually back, culminating in the Fall of Berlin in April 1945, when Hitler committed suicide.
Thommo reminded the readers that winter played a part in the defeat of the Wehrmacht by the Red Army. There is much truth in this which you see in the war photographs of the immense lines of German soldiers captured and walking stoically in the snow, many bereft of winter clothing. It reminds one of Napoleon's defeat of 1812 in the French invasion of Russia. But there almost the entire work was done by General Winter (as Thommo put it). There was never a greater catastrophe that befell an army; Napoleon set out with 685,000 soldiers in June 1812, and made it back with barely 27,000 in November 1812.
Arundhaty
Priya noted that war has long been considered a glorious affair. Arundhaty said that although the book is a satire, you get an idea of how pathetic were the lives of the people who fly in bombers (less pathetic, though, than those on the ground where the bombs were falling). How desperate they were to survive and continue living. All the situations combined to militate against their survival, and it was a sad story also. In her passage about the bombing of Bologna, you realise how wretched the men felt. The crews are sent out and then recalled on account of rain. Everybody was relieved to find next morning that the bombing line had been moved as if to indicate Bologna had been captured – but it was Yossarian's clandestine work at night that did it and the men are saved from another hazardous, and possibly useless, bombing run.
Zakia
Zakia continued reading from chapter 12, on which is more important: winning the war, or keeping alive? ‘Am I supposed to get my ass shot off just because the colonel wants to be a general?,' Yossarian asks. Emphasising the importance of staying alive Yossarian states irrefutably: ‘It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.’ He clinches the argument by saying: ‘The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don’t you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.’
Saras noted this perennial situation that the generals who decide to send the men into combat are in the rear echelon, and never have to face the dangers to which their men are exposed.
KumKum
The passage in chapter 12 is about why Yossarian prefers to stay in the hospital, although it has its problems. ‘There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital,’ was Yossarian’s keen observation although he could not always depend on a lively young crowd for entertainment in the hospital.
Devika
Devika found it amusing to read about Yossarian's discussion in chapter 18 with Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife about God. It was a relief after all the gory stuff, she said. She was laughing as she read: ‘How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?’
It was so funny the way Yossarian brings out these things that Devika chortled with laughter as she was reading. Joe pointed out that Scheisskopf means shit head in German.
Saras
Devika's passage was her first choice too, but she chose the next chapter, 19, where Colonel Cathcart and the chaplain discuss saying prayers before the mission. Cathcart is ambitious, and aims to be a general at whatever cost. This too was a passage that had Saras, the reader in splits, as chaplain and Colonel discuss how to say a prayer without mentioning God. Cathcart finally suggests: ‘Why can’t we all pray for something good, like a tighter bomb pattern, for example? Couldn’t we pray for a tighter bomb pattern?’
The passage gets more and more hilarious as the chaplain plays the foil to Cathcart and Saras grew convulsed with the hilarity that is sprinkled liberally throughout the novel. It goes to show how removed the upper echelon of officers is from the men they command, said Saras. A nice passage full of humorous back and forth, said Joe.
Thommo
Thommo read this novel 45 years ago. On a second reading he appreciated it a lot more. Yossarian is played by Alan Arkin in the film. Saras said a lot of the book reminded her of the M*A*S*H TV series (an acronym for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital).
Saras said the book of the TV series was based on Richard Hooker's 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, also a hilarious novel.
One of the things Thommo recalled from his first reading was this discussion between the old man and Nately about how one can win by losing the war. He has his own logic for it in chapter 23. Geetha also, it turned out chose the same passage, so they decided between them to read the continuation of the same passage, chopping off a section to contain it within 700 words or so.
The argument centers on whether America with all its strengths could last as long as the empires of the past which perished (Rome, Greece, Persia, ...) and if so, could it outlast the humble frog that had been around for 500m years? Looking for help in the argument Natley wanted to appeal to his comrades in arms, but ‘Yossarian and Dunbar were busy in a far corner pawing orgiastically at four or five frolicsome girls and six bottles of red wine.’ Thommo fumbled over the word orgiastically and joked that he was stumbling like Trump !
Geetha
The passage Thommo read poses a ridiculous gap in the age and background of Nately and the old Italian man. She read it with great animation bringing out every exchange articulately. It was a treat to listen to. The clincher in the conversation is this:
‘Anything worth living for,’ said Nately, ‘is worth dying for.’
‘And anything worth dying for,’ answered the sacrilegious old man, ‘is certainly worth living for.
A little further on the old man inverts another old saying, originally attributed to the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata who said, “I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.” When Nately quotes the dictum the old man retorts, ‘But I’m afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on one’s feet than die on one’s knees. That is the way the saying goes.’
Shoba
She read a passage where Snowden's funeral has taken place and Milo joins Yossarian who is sitting on a tree with no clothes. Milo is contemplating his great loss because he can't sell the fine Egyptian cotton he's purchased – the market has gone south. Yossarian suggests eating it with a chocolate coating as chocolate flavoured cotton-candy. But it's indigestible. The passage ends on the idea of bribing someone in government to buy the cotton so as to turn a profit; the profit would make the bribery lawful, since profit is lawful.
There's a Major Major character in the novel. Thommo narrated a story about his mother teaching in Calcutta Girls School. She had a principal whose name was Miss Major ! Priya asked why was Yossarian sitting naked in the tree; it was because he was feeling so bad about the death of Snowden. People are losing their senses, they are no longer in their right mind.
♦♦♦
KumKum repeated the announcement that the next session would be on Women Poets on October 23; you can read poems in any original language so long as there is an English translation provided. October is a month of birthdays, and we had a feast last time at Devika's place, but the blasted coronavirus precludes our assembling. We can have a virtual birthday party, said Saras. Devika and Joe share a birthday on the 12th and Kavita's is on the 24th of October. The next novel for November is the last for the year, Disgrace, by Coetzee. Joe said his choice of next year's novel for Nov 2021 is by Elena Ferrante, the first one in her Neapolitan trilogy, My Brilliant Friend.
The readers all enjoyed the reading today, in spite of the many hesitations expressed. The points we miss when we read it in solitary mode are brought out and the readers all have reasons for choosing their passages that bring out things we might gloss over, or not delve into sufficiently, when reading alone and hurriedly. This was Arundhaty's thought. It was like passing out of a post-graduate exam on the novel. We got fun out of such boring book said Geeta laughing at the end:
So were all the others laughing:
The Reading Passages
Gopa Ch 1
Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn’t quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn’t become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused them.
Each morning they came around, three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes, accompanied by brisk and serious Nurse Duckett, one the ward nurses who didn’t like Yossarian. They read the chart at the foot of the bed and asked impatiently about the pain. They seemed irritated when he told them it was exactly the same.
‘Still no movement?’ the full colonel demanded.
The doctor exchanged a look when he shook his head.
‘Give him another pill.’
Nurse Duckett made a note to give Yossarian another pi, and the four of them moved along to the next bed. None of the nurses liked Yossarian. Actually the pain in his liver had gone away, but Yossarian didn’t say anything and the doctors never suspected. They just suspected that he had been moving his bowels and not telling anyone.
Yossarian had everything he wanted in the hospital. The food wasn’t too bad, and his meals were brought to him in bed. Apart from the doctors and nurses, no one ever disturbed him. For a little while in the morning he had to censor letters, but he was free after that to spend the rest of each day lying around idly with a clear conscience.
All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted men patients, who were kept in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. After the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he backed out everything in the letters but a, an and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutations ‘Der Mary’ from a letter, and at the bottom he wrote, ‘I yearn for you tragically. R.O Shipman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.’ R.O Shipman was the group chaplain’s name.
When he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters, he began attacking the names and addresses on the envelope, obliterating whole homes and streets. Annihilating entire metropolises with careless flicks of his writs as though he were God. Catch-22 required that each censored letter bear the censoring officer’s name. Most letters he didn’t read at all. On those he didn’t read at all he wrote his own name. on those he did read he wrote, ‘Irving Washington.’ Censoring the envelopes had serious repercussions, produced a ripple of anxiety on some ethereal military echelon that floated a C.I.D. man back into the ward posing as a patient. They all knew he was a C.I.D. man because he kept enquiring about an officer named Irving or Washington and because after his first day there he wouldn’t censor letters. He found them too monotonous.
Joe Ch 4 – Some literary references
Yossarian attended the educational sessions because he wanted to find out why so many people were working so hard to kill him. A handful of other men were also interested, and the questions were many and good when Clevinger and the subversive corporal finished and made the mistake of asking if there were any.
‘Who is Spain?’
‘Why is Hitler?’
‘When is right?’
‘Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke down?’
‘How was trump at Munich?’
‘Ho-ho beriberi.’ and ‘Balls!’ all rang out in rapid succession, and then there was Yossarian with the question that had no answer: ‘Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?’ The question upset them, because Snowden had been killed over Avignon when Dobbs went crazy in mid-air and seized the controls away from Huple.
The corporal played it dumb. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’
‘Où sont les Neigedens d’antan?’ Yossarian said to make it easier for him.
‘Parlez en anglais, for Christ’s sake,’ said the corporal. ‘Je ne parle pas français.’
‘Neither do I,’ answered Yossarian, who was ready to pursue him through all the words in the world to wring the knowledge from him if he could, but Clevinger intervened, pale, thin, and laboring for breath, a humid coating of tears already glistening in his undernourished eyes.
Group Headquarters was alarmed, for there was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to. Colonel Cathcart sent Colonel Korn to stop it, and Colonel Korn succeeded with a rule governing the asking of questions. Colonel Korn’s rule was a stroke of genius, … Under Colonel Korn’s rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did. Soon the only people attending were those who never asked questions, and the sessions were discontinued altogether, since Clevinger, the corporal and Colonel Korn agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.
Colonel Cathcart and Lieutenant Colonel Korn lived and worked in the Group Headquarters building, as did all the members of the headquarters staff, with the exception of the chaplain. … Behind the building was the modern skeet-shooting range that had been constructed by Colonel Cathcart for the exclusive recreation of the officers at Group and at which every officer and enlisted man on combat status now, thanks to General Dreedle, had to spend a minimum of eight hours a month.
Yossarian shot skeet, but never hit any. Appleby shot skeet and never missed. Yossarian was as bad at shooting skeet as he was at gambling. He could never win money gambling 22 either. Even when he cheated he couldn’t win, because the people he cheated against were always better at cheating too. These were two disappointments to which he had resigned himself: he would never be a skeet shooter, and he would never make money.
‘It takes brains not to make money,’ Colonel Cargill wrote in one of the homiletic memoranda he regularly prepared for circulation over General Peckem’s signature. ‘Any fool can make money these days and most of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money.’
‘T. S. Eliot,’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen said in his mail-sorting cubicle at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters, and slammed down the telephone without identifying himself.
Colonel Cargill, in Rome, was perplexed.
‘Who was it?’ asked General Peckem.
‘I don’t know,’ Colonel Cargill replied.
‘What did he want?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, what did he say?’
‘"T. S. Eliot",’ Colonel Cargill informed him.
‘What’s that?’
‘"T. S. Eliot",’ Colonel Cargill repeated.
Priya Ch 5 – Catch-22 explicated in different situations
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
‘That’s some catch, that Catch-22,’ he observed.
‘It’s the best there is,’ Doc Daneeka agreed.
+++
Rome was in ruins, he saw, when the plane was down. The airdrome had been bombed eight months before, and knobby slabs of white stone rubble had been bulldozed into flat-topped heaps on both sides of the entrance through the wire fence surrounding the field. The Colosseum was a dilapidated shell, and the Arch of Constantine had fallen. Nately’s whore’s apartment was a shambles. The girls were gone, and the only one there was the old woman. The windows in the apartment had been smashed. She was bundled up in sweaters and skirts and wore a dark shawl about her head. She sat on a wooden chair near an electric hot plate, her arms folded, boiling water in a battered aluminum pot. She was talking aloud to herself when Yossarian entered and began moaning as soon as she saw him.
‘Gone,’ she moaned before he could even inquire. Holding her elbows, she rocked back and forth mournfully on her creaking chair. ‘Gone.’
‘Who?’
‘All. All the poor young girls.’
‘Where?’
‘Away. Chased away into the street. All of them gone. All the poor young girls.’
‘Chased away by who? Who did it?’
‘The mean tall soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. And by our carabinieri. They came with their clubs and chased them away. They would not even let them take their coats. The poor things. They just chased them away into the cold.’
‘Did they arrest them?’
‘They chased them away. They just chased them away.’
‘Then why did they do it if they didn’t arrest them?’
‘I don’t know,’ sobbed the old woman. ‘I don’t know. Who will take care of me? Who will take care of me now that all the poor young girls are gone? Who will take care of me?’ ‘There must have been a reason,’ Yossarian persisted, pounding his fist into his hand. ‘They couldn’t just barge in here and chase everyone out.’
‘No reason,’ wailed the old woman. ‘No reason.’
‘What right did they have?’
‘Catch-22.’
‘What?’ Yossarian froze in his tracks with fear and alarm and felt his whole body begin to tingle. ‘What did you say?’
‘Catch-22’ the old woman repeated, rocking her head up and down. ‘Catch-22. Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. ‘How did you know it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?’ ‘The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. "Did we do anything wrong?" they said. The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. "Then why are you chasing us out?" the girls said. "Catch-22," the men said. "What right do you have?" the girls said. "Catch-22," the men said. All they kept saying was "Catch-22, Catch-22." What does it mean, Catch-22? What is Catch-22?’
Pamela Ch 5 – Yossarian's expertise at evasive action.
Aarfy had been no use to Yossarian as a navigator or as anything else, and Yossarian drove him back from the nose vehemently each time so that they would not clutter up each other’s way if they had to scramble suddenly for safety. Once Yossarian had driven him back from the nose, Aarfy was free to cower on the floor where Yossarian longed to cower, but he stood bolt upright instead with his stumpy arms resting comfortably on the backs of the pilot’s and co-pilot’s seats, pipe in hand, making affable small talk to McWatt and whoever happened to be co-pilot and pointing out amusing trivia in the sky to the two men, who were too busy to be interested. McWatt was too busy responding at the controls to Yossarian’s strident instructions as Yossarian slipped the plane in on the bomb run and then whipped them all away violently around the ravenous pillars of exploding shells with curt, shrill, obscene commands to McWatt that were much like the anguished, entreating nightmare yelpings of Hungry Joe in the dark. Aarfy would puff reflectively on his pipe throughout the whole chaotic clash, gazing with unruffled curiosity at the war through McWatt’s window as though it were a remote disturbance that could not affect him. Aarfy was a dedicated fraternity man who loved cheerleading and class reunions and did not have brains enough to be afraid. Yossarian did have brains enough and was, and the only thing that stopped him from abandoning his post under fire and scurrying back through the crawlway like a yellow-bellied rat was his unwillingness to entrust the evasive action out of the target area to anybody else. There was nobody else in the world he would honor with so great a responsibility. There was nobody else he knew who was as big a coward. Yossarian was the best man in the group at evasive action, but had no idea why.
There was no established procedure for evasive action. All you needed was fear, and Yossarian had plenty of that, more fear than Orr or Hungry Joe, more fear than Dunbar, who had resigned himself submissively to the idea that he must die someday. Yossarian had not resigned himself to that idea, and he bolted for his life wildly on each mission the instant his bombs were away, hollering, ‘Hard, hard, hard, hard, you bastard, hard!’ at McWatt and hating McWatt viciously all the time as though McWatt were to blame for their being up there at all to be rubbed out by strangers, and everybody else in the plane kept off the intercom, except for the pitiful time of the mess on the mission to Avignon when Dobbs went crazy in mid-air and began weeping pathetically for help.
‘Help him, help him,’ Dobbs sobbed. ‘Help him, help him.’
‘Help who? Help who?’ called back Yossarian, once he had plugged his headset back into the intercom system, after it had been jerked out when Dobbs wrested the controls away from Huple and hurled them all down suddenly into the deafening, paralyzing, horrifying dive which had plastered Yossarian helplessly to the ceiling of the plane by the top of his head and from which Huple had rescued them just in time by seizing the controls back from Dobbs and leveling the ship out almost as suddenly right back in the middle of the buffeting layer of cacophonous flak from which they had escaped successfully only a moment before. Oh, God! Oh, God, oh, God, Yossarian had been pleading wordlessly as he dangled from the ceiling of the nose of the ship by the top of his head, unable to move.
‘The bombardier, the bombardier,’ Dobbs answered in a cry when Yossarian spoke. ‘He doesn’t answer, he doesn’t answer. Help the bombardier, help the bombardier.
‘I’m the bombardier,’ Yossarian cried back at him. ‘I’m the bombardier. I’m all right. I’m all right.’
‘Then help him, help him,’ Dobbs begged. ‘Help him, help him.’ And Snowden lay dying in back.
Geeta Ch 8 – Strange hatred of men of the Action Board
Clevinger was guilty, of course, or he would not have been accused, and since the only way to prove it was to find him guilty, it was their patriotic duty to do so. He was sentenced to walk fifty-seven punishment tours. Popinjay was locked up to be taught a lesson, and Major Metcalf was shipped to the Solomon Islands to bury bodies. A punishment tour for Clevinger was fifty minutes of a weekend hour spent pacing back and forth before the provost marshal’s building with a ton of an unloaded rifle on his shoulder.
It was all very confusing to Clevinger. There were many strange things taking place, but the strangest of all, to Clevinger, was the hatred, the brutal, uncloaked, inexorable hatred of the members of the Action Board, glazing their unforgiving expressions with a hard, vindictive surface, glowing in their narrowed eyes malignantly like inextinguishable coals. Clevinger was stunned to discover it. They would have lynched him if they could. They were three grown men and he was a boy, and they hated him and wished him dead. They had hated him before he came, hated him while he was there, hated him after he left, carried their hatred for him away malignantly like some pampered treasure after they separated from each other and went to their solitude.
Yossarian had done his best to warn him the night before. ‘You haven’t got a chance, kid,’ he told him glumly. ‘They hate Jews.’
‘But I’m not Jewish,’ answered Clevinger.
‘It will make no difference,’ Yossarian promised, and Yossarian was right. ‘They’re after everybody.’ Clevinger recoiled from their hatred as though from a blinding light. These three men who hated him spoke his language and wore his uniform, but he saw their loveless faces set immutably into cramped, mean lines of hostility and understood instantly that nowhere in the world, not in all the fascist tanks or planes or submarines, not in the bunkers behind the machine guns or mortars or behind the blowing flame throwers, not even among all the expert gunners of the crack Hermann Goering Antiaircraft Division or among the grisly connivers in all the beer halls in Munich and everywhere else, were there men who hated him more.
Arundhaty Ch 12 – Bombing of Bologna
Nothing could save the men in Pianosa from the mission to Bologna. They were trapped.
Their only hope was that it would never stop raining, and they had no hope because they all knew it would. When it did stop raining in Pianosa, it rained in Bologna. When it stopped raining in Bologna, it began again in Pianosa. If there was no rain at all, there were freakish, inexplicable phenomena like the epidemic of diarrhea or the bomb line that moved. Four times during the first six days they were assembled and briefed and then sent back. Once, they took off and were flying in formation when the control tower summoned them down.
The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining. All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars. All through the day, they looked at the bomb line on the big, wobbling easel map of Italy that blew over in the wind and was dragged in under the awning of the intelligence tent every time the rain began. The bomb line was a scarlet band of narrow satin ribbon that delineated the forwardmost position of the Allied ground forces in every sector of the Italian mainland.
The morning after Hungry Joe’s fist fight with Huple’s cat, the rain stopped falling in both places. The landing strip began to dry. It would take a full twenty-four hours to harden; but the sky remained cloudless. The resentments incubating in each man hatched into hatred. First they hated the infantrymen on the mainland because they had failed to capture Bologna. Then they began to hate the bomb line itself. For hours they stared relentlessly at the scarlet ribbon on the map and hated it because it would not move up high enough to encompass the city. When night fell, they congregated in the darkness with flashlights, continuing their macabre vigil at the bomb line in brooding entreaty as though hoping to move the ribbon up by the collective weight of their sullen prayers.
‘I really can’t believe it,’ Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice rising and falling in protest and wonder. ‘It’s a complete reversion to primitive superstition. They’re confusing cause and effect. It makes as much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really believe that we wouldn’t have to fly that mission tomorrow if someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the only rational ones left.’ In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over Bologna.
Corporal Kolodny tiptoed stealthily into Captain Black’s tent early the next morning, reached inside the mosquito net and gently shook the moist shoulder-blade he found there until Captain Black opened his eyes.
‘What are you waking me up for?’ whimpered Captain Black.
‘They captured Bologna, sir,’ said Corporal Kolodny. ‘I thought you’d want to know. Is the mission canceled?’ Captain Black tugged himself erect and began scratching his scrawny long thighs methodically. In a little while he dressed and emerged from his tent, squinting, cross and unshaven. The sky was clear and warm. He peered without emotion at the map. Sure enough, they had captured Bologna. Inside the intelligence tent, Corporal Kolodny was already removing the maps of Bologna from the navigation kits. Captain Black seated himself with a loud yawn, lifted his feet to the top of his desk and phoned Colonel Korn. ‘What are you waking me up for?’ whimpered Colonel Korn.
‘They captured Bologna during the night, sir. Is the mission canceled?’
‘What are you talking about, Black?’ Colonel Korn growled. ‘Why should the mission be canceled?’
‘Because they captured Bologna, sir. Isn’t the mission canceled?’
‘Of course the mission is canceled. Do you think we’re bombing our own troops now?’
Zakia Ch 12 – Which is more important: winning the war, or keeping alive?
But I’m going to be killed at Bologna,’ Yossarian pleaded. ‘We’re all going to be killed.’
‘Then you’ll just have to be killed,’ replied ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen. ‘Why can’t you be a fatalist about it the way I am? If I’m destined to unload these lighters at a profit and pick up some Egyptian cotton cheap from Milo, then that’s what I’m going to do. And if you’re destined to be killed over Bologna, then you’re going to be killed, so you might just as well go out and die like a man. I hate to say this, Yossarian, but you’re turning into a chronic complainer.’ Clevinger agreed with ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen that it was Yossarian’s job to get killed over Bologna and was livid with condemnation when Yossarian confessed that it was he who had moved the bomb line and caused the mission to be canceled.
‘Why the hell not?’ Yossarian snarled, arguing all the more vehemently because he suspected he was wrong. ‘Am I supposed to get my ass shot off just because the colonel wants to be a general?’
‘What about the men on the mainland?’ Clevinger demanded with just as much emotion. ‘Are they supposed to get their asses shot off just because you don’t want to go? Those men are entitled to air support!’
‘But not necessarily by me. Look, they don’t care who knocks out those ammunition dumps. The only reason we’re going is because that bastard Cathcart volunteered us.’
‘Oh, I know all that,’ Clevinger assured him, his gaunt face pale and his agitated brown eyes swimming in sincerity. ‘But the fact remains that those ammunition dumps are still standing. You know very well that I don’t approve of Colonel Cathcart any more than you do.’ Clevinger paused for emphasis, his mouth quivering, and then beat his fist down softly against his sleeping-bag. ‘But it’s not for us to determine what targets must be destroyed or who’s to destroy them or—’
‘Or who gets killed doing it? And why?’
‘Yes, even that. We have no right to question—’
‘You’re insane!’ ‘—no right to question—’
‘Do you really mean that it’s not my business how or why I get killed and that it is Colonel Cathcart’s? Do you really mean that?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Clevinger insisted, seeming unsure. ‘There are men entrusted with winning the war who are in a much better position than we are to decide what targets have to be bombed.’
‘We are talking about two different things,’ Yossarian answered with exaggerated weariness. ‘You are talking about the relationship of the Air Corps to the infantry, and I am talking about the relationship of me to Colonel Cathcart. You are talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive.’
‘Exactly,’ Clevinger snapped smugly. ‘And which do you think is more important?’
‘To whom?’ Yossarian shot back. ‘Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.’ Clevinger sat for a moment as though he’d been slapped. ‘Congratulations!’ he exclaimed bitterly, the thinnest milk-white line enclosing his lips tightly in a bloodless, squeezing ring. ‘I can’t think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy.’
‘The enemy,’ retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, ‘is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don’t you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.’
KumKum Ch 17 – Yossarian preferred the hospital, even though it had its faults
Being in the hospital was better than being over Bologna or flying over Avignon with Huple and Dobbs at the controls and Snowden dying in back. There were usually not nearly as many sick people inside the hospital as Yossarian saw outside the hospital, and there were generally fewer people inside the hospital who were seriously sick. There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater, more orderly job of it. They couldn’t dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners. They couldn’t keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady. People gave up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying that was so common outside the hospital. They did not blow up in mid-air like Kraft or the dead man in Yossarian’s tent, or freeze to death in the blazing summertime the way Snowden had frozen to death after spilling his secret to Yossarian in the back of the plane.
‘I’m cold,’ Snowden had whimpered. ‘I’m cold.’
‘There, there,’ Yossarian had tried to comfort him. ‘There, there.’ They didn’t take it on the lam weirdly inside a cloud the way Clevinger had done. They didn’t explode into blood and clotted matter. They didn’t drown or get struck by lightning, mangled by machinery or crushed in landslides. They didn’t get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children or die summarily by some other act of God. Nobody choked to death. People bled to death like gentlemen in an operating room or expired without comment in an oxygen tent. There was none of that tricky now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t business so much in vogue outside the hospital, none of that now-I-am-and-now-I-ain’t. There were no famines or floods. Children didn’t suffocate in cradles or iceboxes or fall under trucks. No one was beaten to death. People didn’t stick their heads into ovens with the gas on, jump in front of subway trains or come plummeting like dead weights out of hotel windows with a whoosh!, accelerating at the rate of sixteen feet per second to land with a hideous plop! on the sidewalk and die disgustingly there in public like an alpaca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream, bleeding, pink toes awry.
All things considered, Yossarian often preferred the hospital, even though it had its faults. The help tended to be officious, the rules, if heeded, restrictive, and the management meddlesome. Since sick people were apt to be present, he could not always depend on a lively young crowd in the same ward with him, and the entertainment was not always good. He was forced to admit that the hospitals had altered steadily for the worse as the war continued and one moved closer to the battlefront, the deterioration in the quality of the guests becoming most marked within the combat zone itself where the effects of booming wartime conditions were apt to make themselves conspicuous immediately. The people got sicker and sicker the deeper he moved into combat, until finally in the hospital that last time there had been the soldier in white, who could not have been any sicker without being dead, and he soon was.
Devika Ch 18 – Yossarian concludes God is a colossal, immortal, blunderer
‘And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways,’ Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. ‘There’s nothing so mysterious about it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about—a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?’ ‘Pain?’ Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife pounced upon the word victoriously. ‘Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.’
‘And who created the dangers?’ Yossarian demanded. He laughed caustically. ‘Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! Why couldn’t He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person’s forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn’t He?’
‘People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes in the middle of their foreheads.’
‘They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony or stupefied with morphine, don’t they? What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. It’s obvious He never met a payroll. Why, no self-respecting businessman would hire a bungler like Him as even a shipping clerk!’
Saras Chapter 19 – Colonel Cathcart and the chaplain discuss saying prayers before the mission.
Then we’ll begin with this afternoon’s mission.’ The colonel’s hostility softened gradually as he applied himself to details. ‘Now, I want you to give a lot of thought to the kind of prayers we’re going to say. I don’t want anything heavy or sad. I’d like you to keep it light and snappy, something that will send the boys out feeling pretty good. Do you know what I mean? I don’t want any of this Kingdom of God or Valley of Death stuff. That’s all too negative. What are you making such a sour face for?’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the chaplain stammered. ‘I happened to be thinking of the Twenty-third Psalm just as you said that.’
‘How does that one go?’
‘That’s the one you were just referring to, sir. "The Lord is my shepherd; I —" ‘
‘That’s the one I was just referring to. It’s out. What else have you got?’
‘ "Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto &mash;" ‘
‘No waters,’ the colonel decided, blowing ruggedly into his cigarette holder after flipping the butt down into his combed-brass ash tray. ‘Why don’t we try something musical? How about the harps on the willows?’
‘That has the rivers of Babylon in it, sir,’ the chaplain replied. ‘ "…there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion." ‘
‘ Zion? Let’s forget about that one right now. I’d like to know how that one even got in there. Haven’t you got anything humorous that stays away from waters and valleys and God? I’d like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can.’ The chaplain was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but just about all the prayers I know are rather somber in tone and make at least some passing reference to God.’
‘Then let’s get some new ones. The men are already doing enough bitching about the missions I send them on without our rubbing it in with any sermons about God or death or Paradise. Why can’t we take a more positive approach? Why can’t we all pray for something good, like a tighter bomb pattern, for example? Couldn’t we pray for a tighter bomb pattern?’
+++
We’ll allocate about a minute and a half for you in the schedule. Will a minute and a half be enough?’
‘Yes, sir. If it doesn’t include the time necessary to excuse the atheists from the room and admit the enlisted men.’ Colonel Cathcart stopped in his tracks. ‘What atheists?’ he bellowed defensively, his whole manner changing in a flash to one of virtuous and belligerent denial.
‘There are no atheists in my outfit! Atheism is against the law, isn’t it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It isn’t?’ The colonel was surprised. ‘Then it’s un-American, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not sure, sir,’ answered the chaplain.
‘Well, I am!’ the colonel declared. ‘I’m not going to disrupt our religious services just to accommodate a bunch of lousy atheists. They’re getting no special privileges fr om me. They can stay right where they are and pray with the rest of us. And what’s all this about enlisted men? Just how the hell do they get into this act?’ The chaplain felt his face flush. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I just assumed you would want the enlisted men to be present, since they would be going along on the same mission.’
‘Well, I don’t. They’ve got a God and a chaplain of their own, haven’t they?’
‘No, sir.’
‘What are you talking about? You mean they pray to the same God we do?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And He listens?’
‘I think so, sir.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ remarked the colonel, and he snorted to himself in quizzical amusement. His spirits drooped suddenly a moment later, and he ran his hand nervously over his short, black, graying curls. ‘Do you really think it’s a good idea to let the enlisted men in?’ he asked with concern.
‘I should think it only proper, sir.’
‘I’d like to keep them out,’ confided the colonel, and began cracking his knuckles savagely as he wandered back and forth. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, Chaplain. It isn’t that I think the enlisted men are dirty, common and inferior. It’s that we just don’t have enough room. Frankly, though, I’d just as soon the officers and enlisted men didn’t fraternize in the briefing room. They see enough of each other during the mission, it seems to me. Some of my very best friends are enlisted men, you understand, but that’s about as close as I care to let them come. Honestly now, Chaplain, you wouldn’t want your sister to marry an enlisted man, would you?’
‘My sister is an enlisted man, sir,’ the chaplain replied.
Thommo Ch 23 – Italy will survive this war, long after your own country has been destroyed
Nately reacted on sight with bristling enmity to this wicked, depraved and unpatriotic old man who was old enough to remind him of his father and who made disparaging jokes about America. ‘America,’ he said, ‘will lose the war. And Italy will win it.’
‘America is the strongest and most prosperous nation on earth,’ Nately informed him with lofty fervor and dignity. ‘And the American fighting man is second to none.’
‘Exactly,’ agreed the old man pleasantly, with a hint of taunting amusement. ‘ Italy, on the other hand, is one of the least prosperous nations on earth. And the Italian fighting man is probably second to all. And that’s exactly why my country is doing so well in this war while your country is doing so poorly.’ Nately guffawed with surprise, then blushed apologetically for his impoliteness. ‘I’m sorry I laughed at you,’ he said sincerely, and he continued in a tone of respectful condescension. ‘But Italy was occupied by the Germans and is now being occupied by us. You don’t call that doing very well, do you?’
‘But of course I do,’ exclaimed the old man cheerfully. ‘The Germans are being driven out, and we are still here. In a few years you will be gone, too, and we will still be here. You see, Italy is really a very poor and weak country, and that’s what makes us so strong. Italian soldiers are not dying any more. But American and German soldiers are. I call that doing extremely well. Yes, I am quite certain that Italy will survive this war and still be in existence long after your own country has been destroyed.’ Nately could scarcely believe his ears. He had never heard such shocking blasphemies before, and he wondered with instinctive logic why G-men did not appear to lock the traitorous old man up. ‘ America is not going to be destroyed!’ he shouted passionately.
‘Never?’ prodded the old man softly.
‘Well…’ Nately faltered.
The old man laughed indulgently, holding in check a deeper, more explosive delight. His goading remained gentle. ‘ Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so.’ Nately squirmed uncomfortably. ‘Well, forever is a long time, I guess.’
‘A million years?’ persisted the jeering old man with keen, sadistic zest. ‘A half million? The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, and with its standard of living that is the highest in the world, will last as long as… the frog?’ Nately wanted to smash his leering face. He looked about imploringly for help in defending his country’s future against the obnoxious calumnies of this sly and sinful assailant. He was disappointed. Yossarian and Dunbar were busy in a far corner pawing orgiastically at four or five frolicsome girls and six bottles of red wine, and Hungry Joe had long since tramped away down one of the mystic hallways, propelling before him like a ravening despot as many of the broadest-hipped young prostitutes as he could contain in his frail wind-milling arms and cram into one double bed.
Nately felt himself at an embarrassing loss.
Geetha Ch 23 – Imagine a man risking what little life he has left for something so absurd as a country
‘But it’s perfectly true. When the Germans marched into the city, I danced in the streets like a youthful ballerina and shouted, "Heil Hitler!" until my lungs were hoarse. I even waved a small Nazi flag that I snatched away from a beautiful little girl while her mother was looking the other way. When the Germans left the city, I rushed out to welcome the Americans with a bottle of excellent brandy and a basket of flowers. The brandy was for myself, of course, and the flowers were to sprinkle upon our liberators. There was a very stiff and stuffy old major riding in the first car, and I hit him squarely in the eye with a red rose. A marvelous shot! You should have seen him wince.’ Nately gasped and was on his feet with amazement, the blood draining from his cheeks. ‘Major—de Coverley!’ he cried.
‘Do you know him?’ inquired the old man with delight. ‘What a charming coincidence!’ Nately was too astounded even to hear him. ‘So you’re the one who wounded Major – de Coverley!’ he exclaimed in horrified indignation. ‘How could you do such a thing?’ The fiendish old man was unperturbed. ‘How could I resist, you mean. You should have seen the arrogant old bore, sitting there so sternly in that car like the Almighty Himself, with his big, rigid head and his foolish, solemn face. What a tempting target he made! I got him in the eye with an American Beauty rose. I thought that was most appropriate. Don’t you?’
‘That was a terrible thing to do!’ Nately shouted at him reproachfully. ‘A vicious and criminal thing! Major—de Coverley is our squadron executive officer!’
‘Is he?’ teased the unregenerate old man, pinching his pointy jaw gravely in a parody of repentance. ‘In that case, you must give me credit for being impartial. When the Germans rode in, I almost stabbed a robust young Oberleutnant to death with a sprig of edelweiss.’ Nately was appalled and bewildered by the abominable old man’s inability to perceive the enormity of his offence. ‘Don’t you realize what you’ve done?’ he scolded vehemently. ‘Major—de Coverley is a noble and wonderful person, and everyone admires him.’ ‘He’s a silly old fool who really has no right acting like a silly young fool. Where is he today? Dead?’ Nately answered softly with somber awe. ‘Nobody knows. He seems to have disappeared.’
‘You see? Imagine a man his age risking what little life he has left for something so absurd as a country.’ Nately was instantly up in arms again. ‘There is nothing so absurd about risking your life for your country!’ he declared.
‘Isn’t there?’ asked the old man. ‘What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can’t all be worth dying for.’
‘Anything worth living for,’ said Nately, ‘is worth dying for.’
‘And anything worth dying for,’ answered the sacrilegious old man, ‘is certainly worth living for. You know, you’re such a pure and naive young man that I almost feel sorry for you. How old are you? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?’
‘Nineteen,’ said Nately. ‘I’ll be twenty in January.’
‘If you live.’ The old man shook his head, wearing, for a moment, the same touchy, meditating frown of the fretful and disapproving old woman. ‘They are going to kill you if you don’t watch out, and I can see now that you are not going to watch out. Why don’t you use some sense and try to be more like me? You might live to be a hundred and seven, too.’ ‘Because it’s better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees,’ Nately retorted with triumphant and lofty conviction. ‘I guess you’ve heard that saying before.’
‘Yes, I certainly have,’ mused the treacherous old man, smiling again. ‘But I’m afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on one’s feet than die on one’s knees. That is the way the saying goes.’
Shoba Ch 24 – Eating chocolate-covered cotton supplied by Milo
‘I can’t watch it,’ he cried, turning away in anguish. ‘I just can’t sit here and watch while those mess halls let my syndicate die.’ He gnashed his teeth and shook his head with bitter woe and resentment. ‘If they had any loyalty, they would buy my cotton till it hurts so that they can keep right on buying my cotton till it hurts them some more. They would build fires and burn up their underwear and summer uniforms just to create bigger demand. But they won’t do a thing. Yossarian, try eating the rest of this chocolate-covered cotton for me. Maybe it will taste delicious now.’ Yossarian pushed his hand away. ‘Give up, Milo. People can’t eat cotton.’ Milo’s face narrowed cunningly. ‘It isn’t really cotton,’ he coaxed. ‘I was joking. It’s really cotton candy, delicious cotton candy. Try it and see.’
‘Now you’re lying.’
‘I never lie!’ Milo rejoindered with proud dignity.
‘You’re lying now.’
‘I only lie when it’s necessary,’ Milo explained defensively, averting his eyes for a moment and blinking his lashes winningly. ‘This stuff is better than cotton candy, really it is. It’s made out of real cotton. Yossarian, you’ve got to help me make the men eat it. Egyptian cotton is the finest cotton in the world.’
‘But it’s indigestible,’ Yossarian emphasized. ‘It will make them sick, don’t you understand? Why don’t you try living on it yourself if you don’t believe me?’ ‘I did try,’ admitted Milo gloomily. ‘And it made me sick.’ The graveyard was yellow as hay and green as cooked cabbage. In a little while the chaplain stepped back, and the beige crescent of human forms began to break up sluggishly, like flotsam. The men drifted without haste or sound to the vehicles parked along the side of the bumpy dirt road. With their heads down disconsolately, the chaplain, Major Major and Major Danby moved toward their jeeps in an ostracized group, each holding himself friendlessly several feet away from the other two.
‘It’s all over,’ observed Yossarian.
‘It’s the end,’ Milo agreed despondently. ‘There’s no hope left. And all because I left them free to make their own decisions. That should teach me a lesson about discipline the next time I try something like this.’
‘Why don’t you sell your cotton to the government?’ Yossarian suggested casually, as he watched the four men in streaked fatigues shoveling heaping bladefuls of the copper-red earth back down inside the grave.
Milo vetoed the idea brusquely. ‘It’s a matter of principle,’ he explained firmly. ‘The government has no business in business, and I would be the last person in the world to ever try to involve the government in a business of mine. But the business of government is business,’ he remembered alertly, and continued with elation. ‘Calvin Coolidge said that, and Calvin Coolidge was a President, so it must be true. And the government does have the responsibility of buying all the Egyptian cotton I’ve got that no one else wants so that I can make a profit, doesn’t it?’ Milo’s face clouded almost as abruptly, and his spirits descended into a state of sad anxiety. ‘But how will I get the government to do it?’
‘Bribe it,’ Yossarian said.
‘Bribe it!’ Milo was outraged and almost lost his balance and broke his neck again. ‘Shame on you!’ he scolded severely, breathing virtuous fire down and upward into his rusty mustache through his billowing nostrils and prim lips. ‘Bribery is against the law, and you know it. But it’s not against the law to make a profit, is it? So it can’t be against the law for me to bribe someone in order to make a fair profit, can it? No, of course not!’ He fell to brooding again, with a meek, almost pitiable distress. ‘But how will I know who to bribe?’
Enjoyed the Blogpost, Joe.
ReplyDeleteAmazing, how the readers found so many examples in the book to laugh out loud. This was not an easy book to read.