Comments on: Catch-22: Chapters 5-8

By: bearing

bearing — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:49:50 +0000

My second son is named Milo, and it’s absolutely partly influenced by C22.

That and Bloom County.

By: erin

erin — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 03:53:39 +0000

I’m falling behind, but still committed. I agree 100% with everything you said. Could have been plucked from my brain, really. My second favorite passage, the first being the one you selected, was this:
“Milo’s mustache was unfortunate because the separated halves never matched. They were like Milo’s disunited eyes, which never looked at the same thing at the same time. Milo could see more things than most people, but he could see none of them too distinctly.”
Another goodie:
“One evening he felt the need for a live model and directed his wife to march around the room.
‘Naked?’ she asked hopefully.”

I refuse index cards. If the characters don’t stick it’s their own damn fault.

By: toni

toni — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:32:12 +0000

So I’m behind, but I’m reading!! I’m enjoying this book, if only because I have to actually “read” and can’t just speed read to find out what happens. On that same note, not much really happens, so I guess there’s nothing to “speed read.” Enjoying it though!!!

By: David

David — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:33:00 +0000

I believe you put the wrong tag on this post. You have “Neologisms” whereas the other Catch-22 posts are tagged “NaNoReMo 2007″.

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 05:43:15 +0000

Try reading Gravity’s Rainbow — fun book, but more characters than the bible (and a lot more begattin’)

By: dave

dave — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:29:42 +0000

If number of characters is a problem, by all means
don’t pick War and Peace for next time.
And if tail chasing is a problem don’t pick
Tristram Shandy.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:37:17 +0000

Meg’s comment about index cards reminds me of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” There is a character who was a former war correspondent who boiled the lives of everyone he ever met down to a couple of words and kept them in a library card catalog. No poin to this post – just felt like saying it. Good book though.

By: hal

hal — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:06:47 +0000

matt, at some point you will run across the word “infundibuliform” and I don’t know how familiar you are with geometry so maybe it’ll make sense to you but anyway, it’s “cone-shaped”. that word messed me up ten years ago and it’s all that comes to mind when someone mentions Heller’s thesaurousity.

By: Meg

Meg — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:19:54 +0000

To keep track of the extensive family trees and characters in Faulkner novels when I was devouring all those in college, I used to use an index card as a bookmark and jot down all the names, a few words about who each person was or why they were relevant, and which page they were introduced on in case I needed to go back to figure out who they were again later on. Worked pretty well. But I’ve read Catch-22 a few times already, and your theory that any character who doesn’t show up at least once every three chapters is forgettable is a sound one. Carry on, soldier! I’m enjoying your commentary!

By: ben

ben — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:56:47 +0000

"Alleged" plot?

I’ve read it four times, will hopefully live long enough to read it at least four more times, and can say with confidence that it’s got a point… but a plot? Not as much, I think.