Catching 22

Last July i bought Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.I'd heard quite a lot about this one,and was eager to lay my hands on it.Starting immediately,i encountered a few hiccups as i crawled upto page 249.Then i got engrossed with other books,and by the time I picked up Catch 22 again,I'd lost track of the storyline.
A couple of days back I started off again,and this time around-the book makes more sense.Firstly,i realised why i stopped at 249.While i was reading it for the first time,I'd skipped a few pages on my way to 249.So,I started off the 2nd time,while friends were impressed with my patience.And Im doing quite well,although I cant digest more than 30 pages at once.Any eccentric conversations that I come across,I share it with my friends who cant help convulsing into fits of laughter.
Just to give you a dose of it,here's a paragraph.Its about Yossarian,one of the book's main character,and his obsession that the entire world is plotting to murder him.

There were too many dangers for Yossarian to keep track of. There was Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, for example, and they were all out to kill him. There was Lieutenant Scheisskopf with his fanaticism for parades and there was the bloated colonel with his big fat mustache and his fanaticism for retribution, and they wanted to kill him, too. There was Appleby, Havermeyer, Black and Korn. There was Nurse Cramer and Nurse Duckett, who he was almost certain wanted him dead, and there was the Texan and the C.I.D. man, about whom he had no doubt. There were bartenders, bricklayers and bus conductors all over the world who wanted him dead, landlords and tenants, traitors and patriots, lynchers, leeches and lackeys, and they were all out to bump him off. That was the secret Snowden had spilled to him on the mission to Avignon - they were out to get him; and Snowden had spilled it all over the back of the plane.
There were lymph glands that might do him in. There were kidneys, nerve sheaths and corpuscles. There were tumors of the brain. There was Hodgkin's disease, leukemia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. There were fertile red meadows of epithelial tissue to catch and coddle a cancer cell. There were diseases of the skin, diseases of the bone, diseases of the lung, diseases of the stomach, diseases of the heart, blood and arteries. There were diseases of the head, diseases of the neck, diseases of the chest, diseases of the intestines, diseases of the crotch. There even were diseases of the feet. There were billions of conscientious body cells oxidating away day and night like dumb animals at their complicated job of keeping him alive and healthy, and every one was a potential traitor and foe.


The last sentence happened to be Rubs favourite....

Comments

Vishwas Krishna said…
Ha ha ha ha. I can understand your plight in reading that book. I somehow never managed to completely read this one. Tried several times. And just when I started making some headway, I had to return the book to its owner. Its almost two years. Now, if I have to start it, I'll have to again read it from the beginning. Hopefully, someday I'll complete that book.
Anusha said…
I knew I'd get tied up if I had to borrow it from somebody.Thats why i bought it.I plan to finish it by March.The book has been rewarding my patience quite well so far.
rubs said…
amazingly rhetoric!!!an absolute delight for the reader am sure...
Nisha said…
Reading first 50 or so pages required a lot of will power and quite some patience but few pages more and it all seemed worth it :).You start getting a hang of it and understand the author's peculiar viewpoint.The irony,logic,sarcasm and the philosophical undertone is brilliant.Without doubt, the most hilarious book i have come across.

I loved this line : They couldn't dominate death inside the hospital,but they certainly made her behave.
also :I owe my lack of success to nobody.

Do finish it :)
Anusha said…
@Nisha

I did finish it a week ago.I simply loved every bit of it.The last couple of pages keep you hooked on.Seriously,i could not find any book deserving to be read post-Catch 22

Popular Posts