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The book exists in roughly two halves and the first - the time before Bastian arrives in Fantastica - is finished. The way his story weaves with the “book”‘s narrative is very clever and I loved the bit where the Childlike Empress had a showdown with the Old Man of Wandering Mountain.

I don’t know if I ever saw The Neverending Story in full. I know that I have seen scenes but I have no idea how close any of this is to the movie. But I realize now that some of my ideas about how a few of these characters look are wholly derived from how they were rendered in the movie, which is somewhat disappointing considering they are the few differences that I can actually pick out.

Yossarian’s journey through Rome seeing myriad brutal abuses of power gets at the true point of Catch-22 and the uncomfortable point of view of those who know how awful it all is but are terrified of placing themselves at the mercy of those powers in order to protect those without power. This is horrifically sobering.

After spending so long being hilariously absurd and on the cusp of a nervous breakdown, the novel is beginning to show the depression and anxiety that the laughably depressing bureaucracy had previously edged out. The deaths of Orr, Kid Sampson, and McWatt - and Yossarian’s slow acknowledgement of horrors previously seen, like Snowden’s death - imply how intimate Yossarian is becoming with his desperation.

As I read I am impressed upon the idea that Heller has made this novel a series of connected character studies with each person serving to show through their interconnections how discombobulated and disheartening war actually is and while it is funny it is darkly, morosely disturbing.

Finished: Visions of the End.

Mixed tales. Some appear to be informed by the Judeo-Christian flood. More contemporary stories have cultural heroes relate the imminent coming of the white man or more depressingly have actual accounts of Native American slaughters.

The Appendix has small tribal histories for those whose tales are included in the book and it is a massive, sobering obituary for Native American culture.

Finished: Ghosts and the Spirit World

Lots of common cultural elements in here. There are taboos that ruin potential resurrections and one of the stories I swear I also read as a more or less cowboy ghost story in the Wild West tales. This lot is mostly not spooky and outlines what beliefs existed in the second life.

Next: Visions of the End

Finished: Stories of Animals and Other People

Some fun tales with human - spirit animal interactions. The nebulous nature of what differentiates animals from humans is a fascinating aspect of these stories.

Next: Ghosts and the Spirit World

Finished: Trickster Tales

Some of these stories have overlap with other sections. There are a few particularly ribald offerings that have the pacing of long, dirty jokes. The trickster stories are all pretty funny. The way that “Coyote Gets Rich Off the White Men” is written is genius in how obvious Coyote is in what he is about.

Next: Stories of Animals and Other People