Catch-22 - June 2024

[Darren]

In June we will be reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller for our Comedy category - who's in?

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog]

Catch 22? That is quite a catch. I have re read this book more times than any other. Once 4 times back to back. That was mostly in my mostly misspent youth, but I can still quote large passages, almost correctly.

Not sure anyone wants this much enthusiasm, in a read, but If it comes up I can share w you things that Heller said when speaking about this book and just maybe a few other nerded out on Heller thingies.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

I read it about a year ago and it went straight to my "Favorites" list. It's too soon for a re-read but I'll gladly jump into the discussion.

[Mela]

I read it, I loved it, and it was very impressive. I want to reread it someday, but not now.

[Caroline]

Phrodrick wrote: "Not sure anyone wants this much enthusiasm, in a read, but If it comes up I can share w you things that Heller said when speaking about this book and just maybe a few other nerded out on Heller thingies.."

Please share!

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog]

Depending on what I remember and when.

Joseph Heller was a B-25 bombardier flying in the Italian Theater during WWII. He claims 60 missions, 25 was supposed to be enough to get rotated home. He also says most of his missions were "milk Runs" meaning he claims no particular hero status for himself.
When I heard him speak he was very clear that at the time he was gungho, into it and not at all like Yossarian.

the way he described it, Catch -22 was written during the Korean War, takes place in WW II and was mostly intended to be a critique of commercialism rather than anti war. It was associated with Anti Viet Nam feelings, but it first published in 1961. The US was involved in Viet Nam at that time, but it was not until after the Gulf Of Tonkin incidents in 1964 that the US had a major ground troop deployment. Anti VN activity dates to later.

Where are the Snowdens of Yesteryear is a twisted take on Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear! a line from a middle French poem, there asking us to think of times gone by.
Much of the I m Cold scene, wait for it, is from, based on or related to Shakespeare. Some from The Tempest<?> and I think King Lear. Maybe some one will have it better pegged when we get to it.

[Phil]

I'm sure you also all know that the novel was slated to be called Catch 18 until very close to publication (the first chapter was published in New Writing under that title in 1955). Difficult to think it as anything else, when the title is now so embedded in the English lexicon.

Here's the Wiki entry about the title.

The title refers to a fictional bureaucratic stipulation that embodies illogical and immoral reasoning. The opening chapter of the novel was first published, in 1955, by New World Writing as Catch-18, but Heller's agent, Candida Donadio, asked him to change the title, to avert its confusion with Leon Uris's recently published Mila 18. A reference was made to this nomenclatural history in the 2023 Netflix show Beef. The implications in Judaism of the number 18 – which refers to chai, meaning "alive", in Gematria – were relevant to Heller's somewhat greater emphasis on Jewish themes in early drafts of his novel. Heller's daughter Erica wrote that the Simon & Schuster editor, Robert Gottlieb, was the person who came up with the number 22, and Gottlieb himself stated that he did in the documentary Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb.

Parallels among a number of character exchanges in the novel suggested the doubled-one title of Catch-11, but the 1960 release of Ocean's Eleven eliminated that. Catch-17 was rejected so as not to be confused with the World War II film Stalag 17, as was Catch-14, apparently because the publisher did not believe that 14 was a "funny number". Eventually, the title came to be Catch-22, which, like 11, has a duplicated digit, with the 2 also referring to a number of déjà vu-like events common in the novel.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog]

Phil wrote: "I'm sure you also all know that the novel was slated to be called Catch 18 until very close to publication (the first chapter was published in New Writing under that title in 1955). Difficult to th..."

Heller also spoke to the many times things repeat throughout the novel. How well that plays-out if the title lacks itsown double is unclear.