Finished Catch-22 last week. If you read this blog you knew I was reading it based on this post about déjà vu. Also if you read this blog you’ll know that my book reviews aren’t book reviews per se where I recommend reading or not reading the book, or discuss it’s strengths and weakness. I might do that, but in general, my aim is to pick out the words, phrases and passages that catch my eye and mark them down so I can better remember them. That being said; Catch-22 is a terrific book to read in terms of vocabulary. The below are just a small sampling:
Infundibuliform - shaped like a funnel
Denudate – to lay bare by erosion
Otiose- producing no useful result; futile
Argosies - a fleet of ships; a rich supply
Fustian - a strong cotton and linen fabric; a class of cotton fabrics usually having a pile face and twill weave; high-flown or affected writing or speech; broadly; anything high-flown or affected in style
Callipygous- having shapely buttocks
And, perhaps the most apropos word in Catch-22 as it so elegantly states the Yosarian’s nature in one word:
Captious- marked by an often ill-natured inclination to stress faults and raise objections ;calculated to confuse, entrap, or entangle in argument
As I said in my previous post, I remembered many of the lines and the same is true of the vocabulary words. I recall asking my grandfather about the word fustian. He didn’t know the definition. I believe he made me go look it up.
I also remember several passages, including this one about one of my favorite characters, Major Major Major Major:
“Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieved mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.”
When describing Doc Daneeka, Heller writes:
“He was like a man who had grown frozen with horror once and had never come completely unthawed”
My question, shouldn’t it be “thawed?” I mean unthawed is frozen, right? You thaw a steak to make it not frozen?
Finally, a rather significant scene occurs when a naked Yossarian is sitting up in a tree watching Snowden’s funeral. Milo comes to hang out with him and the following passage appears:
“Milo was stung and made no effort to disguise his wounded feelings. It was a muggy, moonlit night filled with gnats, moths, and mosquitos. Milo lifted his arm suddenly and pointed toward the open-air theater, where the milky dust-filled beam bursting horizontally from the projector slashed a conelike swath in the blackness and draped in a fluorescent membrane of light the audience titled on the seats in hypnotic sages, their faces focused upward toward the aluminized move screen. Milio’s eyes were liquid with integrity, and his artless uncorrupted face was lustrous with a shining mixture of sweat and insect repellant.”
I liked it for those final two words. Writing “insect repellant” seems to thrown the whole passage off kilter. Makes the reader wonder why it was used at all.
“The floor swayed like the floating raft at the beach and the stitches on the inside of his thigh bit into his flesh like fine set of fish teeth as he limped across the aisle.”
Great simile that…..like fine set of fish teeth. Perfectly describes stitches.
The final passage was used when Yossarian had to deal with a new group of young roommates.
“He could not make the shut up; they were worse then women, they had not brains enough to be introverted and repressed.”
What I find the most interesting part about this book, and other Heller books is the way in which the ending is revealed at the beginning of the book. For the entire book the reader knows that Yossarian is struggling with Snowden’s death. The reader even knows how and when it happened. The final reveal is minor but significant in putting the entire puzzle together. It’s similar to most of Heller’s other books I feel, particularly “Something Happened.” But, it has helped me. I’ve been having trouble dealing with a similar aspect in my own manuscrip, On Edge. Perhaps I should take a cue from Heller. Instead of hiding it from the reader, just let them know a good part of it right up front, let a detail or two fall throughout the story, then reveal the entirety at the end.
Nevertheless, fun to read if you like long, run on sentences, confusing arguments, and words like callipygous.
