Obit: Joseph Heller (Catch-22) 13-Dec-1999

Subject: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: Peter T.
Date: 13 Dec 99 - 05:30 PM

"There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22".

The great, great novelist Joseph Heller died today. Yossarian, however, is immortal. ("They're trying to kill me!" "No they aren't, they are trying to kill everybody!" "And what has that got to do with it?")

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: JedMarum
Date: 13 Dec 99 - 05:33 PM

Milo Minderbinder is my favorite movie character - the book was one of the best I ever read ... I couldn't put it down, and laughed out loud, all night long, drove my poor wife crazy!

Bon voyage, Mr. Heller, and thanks for the great stories!

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: catspaw49
Date: 13 Dec 99 - 07:49 PM

Another of my favorites. Jean Shephard (wonderful short story writer) a few months ago and I just saw on the news before coming to the 'Cat about Heller.

Thanks for giving us Yossarian and Wanda Hickey gentlemen.

Spaw

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: Caitrin
Date: 13 Dec 99 - 08:25 PM

I just read Catch-22 for the first time this summer. Heller was clearly a marvelous storyteller and a master of irony. My hat is off. Benedictions, Mr. Heller, wherever you may go.

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Dec 99 - 08:35 PM

Maybe he found his Catch-22 and he's gone to another realm of irony. Brilliant writer, great movie. Good journey, Heller.

kat

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: annamill
Date: 13 Dec 99 - 09:25 PM

I love this book, but it's been a very long time. About 20 years. Is it ths one, or "MASH" that has Major Major Major Major? I know I'm not crazy, just ask me. You people keep giving me stuff to do! Now I have to go read it again. Peter, I think I'm going to the MMA this Sunday.

Love, annap

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: Caitrin
Date: 13 Dec 99 - 09:29 PM

Catch-22 has Major Major Major Major. Poor guy.

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: thosp
Date: 13 Dec 99 - 09:36 PM

a truly great book-and deservedly made it onto the Best 100 books of the century NY Times list --
yes annap Major Major is from C-22

peace (Y) thosp

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 14 Dec 99 - 12:25 AM

Yes, poor Major Major (who thought he was named Caleb until he started school), and Doc Daneeka who got killed when an airplane he wasn't on crashed and he couldn't prove he was alive, and Dunbar who was disappeared, and Clevinger and Orr-who put crabapples in his cheeks, and A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, USA, and the guy (what was his name?) who dreamed that Doc Daneeka's cat was going to suffocate him by going to sleep on his face--and it did, and "that shithead," Lt. (later Gen.) Sheisskopf who wanted to have parades on Pianosa (and had earlier wanted to attatch men's forearms to their hips with stainless steel pegs and wire so they wouldn't swing their arms when they marched...and Chief Whitehorse and Snowdon spilling his guts all over the back of the B-25 showing Yossarian that we are all meat and the dead man in Dunbar's tent and the patient in the hospital wrapped up like a mummy who had an IV attatched to a bottle which when empty was replaced with the bottle into which the patient's waste fluids drained...

An incredibly rich, inventive novel, totally original, totally hysterical (in both senses of the word). Possibly a curse to Joseph Heller, because whatever he wrote afterwards wasn't Catch-22. It's a hell of a catch, that Catch-22.

seed

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: JedMarum
Date: 14 Dec 99 - 12:52 AM

well said, Seed!

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: Caitrin
Date: 14 Dec 99 - 04:52 PM

Quite a catch...even when you're right, you're wrong. And if you're wrong, you're still wrong.

Subject: RE: 'There was only one catch, Catch-22'
From: lamarca
Date: 14 Dec 99 - 05:45 PM

Catch-22 was the spark of my first foray into teenage rebellion. My parents both read it and loved it, but said that I couldn't, because I wasn't old enough (at age 13). The next year, I felt particularly smug when my 9th grade English teacher, Mrs. Leithen, GAVE it to me to read. She was one of the few teachers I've ever had who would go "outside the curriculum" to try to spark and feed an interest in reading and learning in her students. I took it home and showed my parents, saying "My teacher gave this to me - nyaahh, nyaahh, nyaahh!" or something equally juvenile. My folks wisely just smiled and told me if I had any questions about the book to ask them.

I read it with horrid fascination for the grimness, the humor and the cynicism, and understood a bit better why my parents were out protesting against the Vietnam War...

Rest gentle, Joseph Heller.