What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Joseph Heller

Almost a month since my last post, but here's my excuse: I got engaged! After dating on and off for years, and after Tyler has served a mission for our church, we are finally going to get married. The planning has taken over my life, and what free time I have I give to a manuscript I'm editing.

Tyler and me

I haven't even been able to read. I checked out a book and after renewing it once and still not finding time to read more than the first two or three pages, I decided to return it. The good news is that I have found a venue and a dress, we figured out the menu, and we have a florist, photographer, and my hairdresser all lined up. Things are calming down a little bit, so I have time to write this post.

The other good news is that while I haven't been reading, I still have to commute to work and I was able to listen to Joseph Heller's Catch-22 while I drove. So no, I wasn't completely deprived.

Besides my usual reason of wanting to be well read, I decided to listen to Catch 22 because nothing else at that particular library looked good and because I've never completely understood "Catch-22" as a phrase. It's a phrase used regularly in English, and I only had a hazy idea what it meant. So I guess you could say I listened to this book to improve my English fluency.

Turns out this is what a Catch-22 is.
The world makes sense again.

I was listening to one CD from this book for a while before I looked over at the player and saw that it was set to random and I had been listening to it out of order. That's something you would normally realize straight off, but the fact that it took me so long lets you know just how random this book is. I didn't feel out of the loop, and I had been getting the story out of order. Another time, I thought it must be set on random, because I was a bit confused, but it wasn't. I turned it back a track and kept an eye on it and sure enough, I hadn't missed anything.

For that reason, and because it is written in vignette style--think episodes--I think this may just be a book that is better for listening than reading. I haven't read it, though, so I can't really say. I just know that it was an excellent commuter book because I was getting it in snippets and it was written in snippets.

Catch-22 reminds me of the sitcom M*A*S*H*. In the same way that Hawkeye is the main character of the sitcom, a man named Yossarian is the main character. What I mean by that: While the entire book isn't focused on him, he gets our attention more than the other characters.

It's a book set in WWII, with the regular cast of characters all belonging to an American bombing squadron. There are scenes where the characters are bombing various locations, there are scenes with them in Rome for some R&R, there are scenes in the hospital, and there are scenes out and about the squadron's base. If you like M*A*S*H*, I'd give this book a try. From what I remember, they are similar in content, interpretation of military bureaucracy and personnel, and sense of humor. Also, Yossarian reminds me of Klinger, minus the cross-dressing.

The characters are what stand out the most about this book. They are Dickens-like in that Heller took quirks and blew them up to create entire characters, making them more caricatures than realistic; yet somehow we buy it as being true to the world they exist in. Plus, this is the military and we are given to understand that everyone is a bit crazy. Character example: Colonel Cathcart, whose main attribute is his ambition without self-confidence. He is constantly concerned with whether an idea or event is a "feather in his cap" or a "black eye." Those phrases are used over and over again.

Early on, I could tell this book would have a unique ending. It couldn't be totally happy, because that wouldn't fit the tone of the book, but it couldn't be serious either, for the same reason. It would be a bizarre ending that somehow made sense. I wasn't disappointed, and that's all I'll say on that, because I really do recommend this as a commuter book (but perhaps not with kids in the car, because R&R means a lot of time with prostitutes).

As I said, though, I don't know if I would recommend this for reading. It would probably try your patience and you'd have to read it in short periods instead of sitting down for a good couple hours to read. The style is disjointed and the plot itself isn't clear until near the end.