There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.The first time I read this book of lies I thought it was really very funny and laughed. Unwitting and in bliss, the dark sap of the book seeped between the pores of my brain and dripped down through my various vessels and nerves into the safe of my soul. But of course, I wasn't paying any attention to any of this, so I only laughed and wondered if the movie was as good as the book. This isn't to say there aren't a good deal of wonderfully emotional points in Catch-22. It's a book that brings me closer to crying than many other more serious volumes.
John Milton threw open whole new vistas filled with charming, inexhaustible possibilities that promised to ward off monotony forever. Major Major went back to Washington Irving when John Milton grew monotonous.
He was never without misery, and never without hope.
Yossarian thought he knew why Nately's whore held him responsible for Nately's death and wanted to kill him. Why the hell shouldn't she? It was a man's world, and she and everyone younger had every right to blame him and everyone older for ever unnatural tragedy that befell them; just as she, even in her grief, was to blame for every man-made misery that landed on her kid sister and on all other children behind her. Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to imperiling them all.
But then I read it a second time and discovered that I could feel the sap within me clinging and sucking and pulling at me. This book, though full of many fingerprints and freckles and moles--the signs of the true recognition of humanity--this book is too full of desperation to escape. Heller throws all life to the winds as he scrabbles up the steep ditch sides of his dirt pit prison. Only such a lusting after freedom could bring with it the wild and genius twists of mental contortionism that so mark Catch-22. When the truths you trust are paraded before you and as things to trust and suddenly pulled away with faceful accusations before once again being turned into pillars of trust, but this time only because Heller tells you to trust them, and then once more they are removed, but again this time because of a contradiction seemingly born out of the very truth you once trusted--well, the soul hasn't much of a wall left anymore.
By the end of it all, you'll wonder if there is any point at all to this strange dance. And when Heller finally gets around to giving you some hope, it isn't hope in life, it's hope in death. Hope that in death he can finally conquer life. Hell rises out of the earth, off the page and walks around you through the last few chapters of Catch-22, bring your sword, your special blanket that you used to suck on as a child, your favorite teddy-bear, your subcompact 9mm and everything else you might have that gives you a feeling of safety. You'll need them all.
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