Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Hooked & Caught
Stumped for well over a week with this One Book Meme thing, I’m resorting to the true measure of self-deluded importance by tracking the Dad, you’ve told us this ,(insert one of the following :"story", "advice", "tale of caution", "Book/cd/album", "Old family saying", here),before pontifications.
While there were many worthy candidates, Blood of the Lamb, East of Eden, Good Soldier Svejk, Joshua, Then & Now, Slaughterhouse 5, Running in the Family, and even On War, the one coffin of a tome I’d been repeatedly nailing with my kids was Catch -22. Yes, I even attached that clichéd tag “Life Changing (complete with 3 or 4 ) !!!!" to my seemingly eternal pronouncement.
One of the kids even read it! Who sez you can’t wear down the stone of teenagedom? And he enjoyed it! Huuzzah.
I was a punkish boulevardier (to borrow Mr. de Vries’ description of a teenaged boy) living in a ‘burb town on the tracks to NYC. Yes, I was Verging on Pertinence, even then. While bicycling around town one sticky Jersey summer day, I ditched the transportation into some bushes and loped into the town’s library, seeking some free a/c. No need to buy a drink or a magazine or comic here to just hang out in the 70 degree weather. I simply needed to appear library-like; scrunch up the uni-brow and then proceed to eye the stacks with the perceived intention of reading.
Perusal always gets me somewhere and where it led me this fateful day was to the "Military" section of the library. I was in the transitional years of teenagedom; still interested in blood & guts but not willing to surrender to the comic book/illustrated version. Like Norman Mailer’s interest in Jack Abbott, I was toying with something dangerous and beyond my comfortable black and white moral understanding. Slowly looking across the shelves and then elevatoring my stare upwards at the end of one shelf, Catch-22 appeared. I’m sure that it was a misfiling on a staff’s part. Why else put such an anti-war novel in the non-fiction military section? The title was the first attraction to the book; I thought it some shorthand for a secret military organization, say M-1.
I pulled the book out, slumped in the aisle, and started reading. Joseph Heller’s picture was on the back of the book. He looked like a man with a secret he’d be willing to share with whoever jumped into his collection of words. After the first page, I knew I’d crossed over into an unfamiliar world. After the first chapter, I closed the book, scooped up another book from the WW II section and proceeded to check-out. "Catch-22" was an adult book, I thought. They wouldn’t let me take it out right? I slipped the other book over it, to hide my intent. Two people in front of me; I started sweating. Would she reprimand me for even thinking of leaving the library with this book? Soon, I was next. Gave her my library card. She took out the book cards from both books, stamping a return date quickly on the first and then hesitating on the second.
With the date stamp hanging over her head, she gave me the librarian’s once-over.
"Do I let this cretin out of my sight with this book or do I deny him this adult pleasure?"
I mumbled something about research, military, how orderly her books were laid out. The usual Eddie Haskell drivel a teenaged boy would have laid out to oil the action. She smiled. Crookedly. Then she stamped "Catch 22" and I was off! The book was on a 2 week parole with yours truly.
I read and re-read the book 3 times during those 2 weeks. The timeline was confusing at first. The characters were neither noble nor worth emulating. The version of the war was not an event involving good, evil, or the triumph of one over the other. Everything was a mess. The moral bowling pins I’d crafted, each one separate, each one able to stand on its own were repeatedly knocked down. Everything was seemingly thrown into doubt.
My first reading left me confused. What was happening when Snowden repeatedly died the same nauseating death? Who was Milo Minderbinder working for? What was he fighting for? Was this the real World War II that I wasn’t seeing in the war movies?
The second reading left me laughing. Everything was a joke; nothing should be taken seriously. Rules were meant to be re-written. Over and over again.
The third reading left me mildly depressed, though it was a depression evidenced by a goofy smile. How had Heller done it? How had he taken a tragedy of global proportions, minimized the heroism, and concocted a premonition of the mind-set of the post World War II era? And then, thrown in a B-25’s worth of humor to coax you through the horrors?
Catch-22 was my tipping point, the demarcation from being a flighty head-in-the-perpetually-blue-sky teenager to the perpetually overhanging clouds of adulthood. It was a mega-dose of cynicism that I’m still digesting.
For more interesting takes on One Book Memes:
Whisky Prajer
Searchie
Texas Trifles
Bleak Mouse
(I'e dubbed it such...)Stephenesque
Lost in the Grooves
Mindspinner, who had tagged Searchie and had the (non-literal) cajones to tag Outer Life. We are holding our collective breath about the latter.
Comments:
<< Home Verging on Pertinence Just some more disposable thoughts clogging up the hinterlands
you may dub it whatever you like, for I thank you for sparing me the one book meme.
# opined by 
: 9:24 PM, September 05, 2006
: 9:24 PM, September 05, 2006
I think a similar turning point from teen to adult, for me, was Portnoy's Complaint. Wowza. The passage about the raw steak just about made me go "eeeww" out loud.
Catch-22 is an excellent choice - and I love your history of the first read!
Catch-22 is an excellent choice - and I love your history of the first read!
Stephenesque,
I prefer to dub you in the Rub-a-Dub style but I was left only with one non-Rub-a-Dub choice form your fine postings.
CP, As usual, thanks for the kind words. Your mention of Portnoy's Complaint are quite the interesting thing. I always thought the book's appeal was to:
1) Teenage Boys or other such nebbishes
2) Jewish teenage boys and their mothers
I prefer to dub you in the Rub-a-Dub style but I was left only with one non-Rub-a-Dub choice form your fine postings.
CP, As usual, thanks for the kind words. Your mention of Portnoy's Complaint are quite the interesting thing. I always thought the book's appeal was to:
1) Teenage Boys or other such nebbishes
2) Jewish teenage boys and their mothers
Joseph Heller said that if it weren’t for his having read The Good Soldier Švejk he would never had written his American novel Catch 22.
There is a new English translation of Svejk underway. Book One is out as a paperback, Books One and Two have been published as an e-book. Books Three and Four are being edited for publication. To learn more and to buy follow the links below. :-)
Get "svejked" [shvaked] at www.zenny.com
Visit the Svejk Central pilot site at www.SvejkCentral.com
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There is a new English translation of Svejk underway. Book One is out as a paperback, Books One and Two have been published as an e-book. Books Three and Four are being edited for publication. To learn more and to buy follow the links below. :-)
Get "svejked" [shvaked] at www.zenny.com
Visit the Svejk Central pilot site at www.SvejkCentral.com
<< Home Verging on Pertinence Just some more disposable thoughts clogging up the hinterlands
