Joseph Heller S/D

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I'm reading Something Happened right now. Thoughts on Mr. Heller?

― ben welsh (benwelsh), Monday, 7 July 2003 03:31 (twenty-two years ago)

The only one of his that I love is the proverbial Catch-22 - I[ve tried several of his other works, but not made it through or made it through and remembered nothing, sadly.

On the other hand, I can quote parts of Yossarian's better lines when intoxicated and challenged to do so. Sorry I am not more help.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Monday, 7 July 2003 03:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I've also read Good As Gold. I liked that one a lot. Heller is a very funny writer but he has a sort of redundant style of humor that I don't think is for everybody. He really works his material to its limits.

― ben welsh (benwelsh), Monday, 7 July 2003 04:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm glad you said that this early in the thread so I will feel less obliged to defend this:

I started catch-22 once and it was so so so painfully unfunny, and obvious about it.

― Josh (Josh), Monday, 7 July 2003 04:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmm. I think the baldfaced obviousness is part of its charm. The absurdity of it all. What is the absurd is reality? Is it still funny?

It certainly isn't for everybody.

― ben welsh (benwelsh), Monday, 7 July 2003 04:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Catch-22 makes my Top 10 list - can't pin down why, exactly - and I pretty much loathe everything that occurs in Rome. But the absurdity rings a bell for me - and I find it refreshing to see someone else pointing out odd things and making me see them in a new way.

Then again, maybe I am just lusting after the dead man in Yossarian's tent or something.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Monday, 7 July 2003 04:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Something Happened was well on its way to becoming my favourite novel ever before choking on its own bile for the entire second half. Be warned.

I'm reading Catch-22 and loving it.

― gazuga (gazuga), Monday, 7 July 2003 06:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I was very impressed with Something Happened because of the big switch, personally - I was finding it rather subdued early on. I think Heller is terrific - I've read all his work, I think. Even the co-written thing about his spell with Guillaume-Barre Syndrome (sp?).

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 7 July 2003 11:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I can only really do Catch-22 and Something Happened, but they are both big favourites. Agree with Martin re the ending, it motors along on being relatively easy reading and with goodwill for Catch 22, and then the jaw drops. Very, very sad book.

― Pete (Pete), Monday, 7 July 2003 11:56 (twenty-two years ago)

You're a clever bloke, Josh, why d'you give up so quickly? Catch-22 starts slowly, but gets better and better, including every subsequent time you read it. Best book ever, pretty much.

― Mark C (Mark C), Monday, 7 July 2003 12:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Did anyone read the short story in the Guardian on Saturday? I haven't yet. I found Something Happened almost unbearable to read, but kind of great because of that. Or vice versa maybe. Both it and Catch-22 could stand to be 50% shorter I think, but what do I know?

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 7 July 2003 12:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Josh if you can like Stereo-fucking-lab you can like Heller.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 7 July 2003 12:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Something Happened is so, so harsh - I blame it in part for the bad mood that landed on me circa autumn of '95.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 7 July 2003 12:57 (twenty-two years ago)

when i was a baby in a pram my mother saw joseph heller in a bookshop and asked him to sign a copy of 'good as gold' for me, so he did ' to dear minna, love from mum' and then he signed his name at the bottom.
approx 8 years later i was learning how to do cursive handwriting. i was also into forgery. i went to the bookshelf, opened the book, neatly copied out joseph's autograph on the same page and then scribbled out the original so that mine could pass for the real thing.

― minna (minna), Monday, 7 July 2003 13:32 (twenty-two years ago)

mark, I've stopped reading far better books than catch-22. clever has nothing to do with it.

would you rather have me like heller or vollmann, sterl?

― Josh (Josh), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 03:33 (twenty-two years ago)

vollmann.

are the two exclusive?

(the joke re. s-lab was all about the repetition)

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 03:53 (twenty-two years ago)

moral of my story: i am realer than joseph heller

― minna (minna), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 05:05 (twenty-two years ago)

yes i got that sterl but if i want repetition i'll read uh i dunno uh 'watt'

― Josh (Josh), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 05:29 (twenty-two years ago)

also hello different media

― Josh (Josh), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 05:44 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah, I finished SH tonight. I dig dig a lot of it. I really love Heller's sense of humor but it does drag a lot. It's just that that narrator, Bob, is soo redundant about things. It's the fucking sledgehammer of regret and malaise! The present action of the "story" can't be more than 5% of the novel. I understand that's half the point but it makes for some workmanlike reading through the last half.

There are things about love about the book, and things I don't I'm really torn.

Maybe that's a good thing?

― ben welsh (benwelsh), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 07:06 (twenty-two years ago)

P.S. I like Good As Gold better, more meat to the story. I also think it was funny. (DEAD! GESTORBEN! TOTEN!) Though each is hilarious in it's own way. (ha, ha)

― ben welsh (benwelsh), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 07:08 (twenty-two years ago)

^^^ that should say "funnier." I think Good As Gold is funnier. It's not near as ambitious, however. Heller is the typical ambitious American novelist in many senses, he really tries to pull everything theme together in his books, he aims high. I dig that.

― ben welsh (benwelsh), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 07:09 (twenty-two years ago)

he looks a bit like michael winner these days

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 07:53 (twenty-two years ago)

isnt he dead

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 07:53 (twenty-two years ago)

In which case we wish he looked like Michael Winner.

Or at least Michael Winner looked like him.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 08:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Josh, finish it before judging it. Otherwise your last post is just wrong.

― Mark C (Mark C), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 11:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't think it changes media Mark. It stayed resolutely a novel when I read it. (I don't like the film).

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 11:57 (twenty-two years ago)

I did a short entry on this back in May; for an even more condensed version: search the first four books, destroy everything else.

― TMFTML (TMFTML), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 13:36 (twenty-two years ago)

He's dead.

― ben welsh (benwelsh), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 16:05 (twenty-two years ago)

The play of repetition off, and with, digression in Catch-22 is not so unique a selling point as it maybe was at the time, but nevertheless - a tonic.

Something Happened: the central character endeavours to digress from the traumatic matter at hand, but, miserably, fails, miserably. Rough going, great stuff.

Just finished an old Heller story, "MacAdam's Log", reprinted in the new collection, again all about digression, which is weirdly (or not so weirdly) like George Saunders.

― Neil Willett (Neil Willett), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 18:37 (twenty-two years ago)

digression is the right word dude. (Bob gets in those parenthesis of his (we'll, I guess they're his, they certainly arn't mine, ha ha.) and just starts off and never looks back, rambling, and babbling, and flying off on all kinda of crazy tangents.)

― ben welsh (benwelsh), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 20:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I loved C22 when I read it a long, long time ago. I thought it was completely brilliant. I still think it's brilliant but I can't read it anymore, because I actually joined the USAF and IT'S NOT A JOKE. EVERYTHING IS REALLY THAT RIDICULOUS. Heller takes it a step further in a couple of cases but as far as my experience goes minus the bomb runs and flak jackets there's very little difference in the real world vs. that book.

I tried reading the 'sequel' to C22 in late high school and couldn't get through it. I think my attention span has gotten even worse.

― Millar (Millar), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 20:30 (twenty-two years ago)

When ppl used to say to Joseph Heller "you've never written anything as gd as Catch 22" he used to reply "who has?"

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 20:37 (twenty-two years ago)

hello different media

― Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 22:17 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.wwpf.com/watson/pix/photo4lc.jpg

― Dada, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 22:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Catch 22 has just about all the features that typically irritate me in novels. I didn't get very far.

― Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 22:39 (twenty-two years ago)

The Guardian UK ran a previously unpublished Heller short story today.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,991380,00.html

― ben welsh (benwelsh), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 03:15 (twenty-two years ago)

eight years pass...

http://www.slate.com/id/2300576/

― Michael B, Tuesday, 2 August 2011 22:32 (fourteen years ago)

nine months pass...

think catch-22 may be my favourite ever.

reading the sequel atm. harder work but still great writing imo.

― pet tommy & the barkhaters (darraghmac), Monday, 28 May 2012 09:21 (thirteen years ago)

i pretty much never find novels funny, but 'catch-22' is perfect. i love that he apparently modeled it after 'absalom! absalom!'

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 28 May 2012 23:24 (thirteen years ago)

Haha really?

― thillrer (loves laboured breathing), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 04:09 (thirteen years ago)

from an interview book i found on google books:

Which other writers influenced Catch-22?
Celine was a very strong influence in terms of literary style, particularly Journey to the End of the Night. Also Nathanael West and Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark. Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! has a structure that I wanted to follow, and also an epic feeling which I try to get in my own idiom.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 06:53 (thirteen years ago)

I read Laughter in the Dark because I had read somewhere else that it was a formative influence on Catch-22. Never mentioned AA! though

― thillrer (loves laboured breathing), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 12:22 (thirteen years ago)

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