Life-changing eh?

Just like the Dirty Weeker, both '1984' and 'Catch 22' made a big impact on me too. I seriously believe that 'Catch 22' is the best book to come out of the USA during the 20th Century (with 'The Grapes of Wrath' a close second). The combination of great writing, chopping & changing narrative, superb and memorable characterisations, content and just the right length for a great novel, plus - and this is really important - a superb ending, make it a must-read book. So many books are great, but are let down by having a cop-out or weak ending - 'Catch 22' is brilliant to the last page. The heights and lows of the story, the insights! All brilliant. To take just one example: the episode where Hungry Joe wants to kill Colonel Cathcart - he has a plan, he has the means, he is willing to do it - all he needs is Yossarian to tell him to go ahead. "Why the hell didn't you just go ahead do it?" (or something similar) Yossarian asks him, "I need you to tell me to go ahead". Or "T.S. Elliot"; and I still can't follow how Milo can buy eggs for 20c in Sicily and sell them for a profit at 15c each.

I'm not sure it's actually changed my life, but if I ever get around to writing a book, it will be there to remind me what I'm aiming at.

One book that may have changed my life is V.S. Naipaul's 'A House for Mr Biswas'. I would recommend this book to anyone, and frequently do. It would be a remarkable book anyway, but when it was written it was probably the first book published in English to use vernacular language from the colonies - Trinidad in this case. The language is superb and it has added the word 'arseness' to my vocabulary as well as the term 'to paddle your own canoe'. It also has a great ability to draw vivid pictures, I can see Mr Biswas lying on his bed with one leg crossed on the other, as he prods the muscle of his calf and makes it swing for his own amusement and to annoy his wife. This is another book which scales the highs and lows of life; from clinical depression to joy - "That's right kids, Daddy's coming home...in a box!" - you have to read it. I first read it (as did Mrs Grimsdale) when we were about 26 or 27, had been married a couple of years and we had a toddler. Since then I've read it every few years or so and each time I get something else out of it, and I empathise more and more with Mr Biswas.

If anyone else has read it - gaz me and we can exchange favourite passages. My very favourite comes when Biswas has been working for a newspaper, which has changed hands and gone downhill. He gets a letter from an old colleague who moved to the States and replies to him with a light-hearted letter bemoaning the state of the paper now; when he reads it over, he realises it is full of bitterness and bile so throws it away. He never gets around to re-writing it, and eventually he realises he'll never reply to it and so loses touch with a good friend forever. The pathos in that short passage of writing is incredible.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Thu 15 May 2008, 17:55, 1 reply)

I love Catch 22
I even made a poem about it.



Yossarian, Yossarian
Your my kind of fella
Too bad that your just fiction
In a book by Joseph Heller



Class!
( girlinthehole, Thu 15 May 2008, 19:34, closed)