Word: hellers
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...Joseph Heller gets more miles per novel than any other American-made author. Consider the phenomenal efficiency of Catch-22, a book that continues to run on one joke. It is the old switcheroo, best expressed by Doc Daneeka when he tells Yossarian "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...
Eighteen years and one angst-guzzler later (Something Happened), Heller re-styles old reliable. Daneeka's catch-22 is now Potomac newspeak and the Doc himself is reincarnated as Ralph Newsome, a presidential aide who attempts to lure Bruce Gold, Ph.D., into Government service. Gold, a college professor, has caught the President's eye by favorably reviewing the Chief Executive's book, My Year in the White House, You can do and say anything you want, says Newsome, "as long as it's everything we tell you to say and do in support of our policies...
...Heller, who is neither a Gentile nor a card-carrying intellectual, goes directly for the exposed nerve. Invite a Jew to the White House (and You Make Him Your Slave) is the title of an article Gold planned to write before receiving his own invitation to Washington. Once there, he is constantly reminded of his background. Take this exchange with a Connally-type Texan: " 'Now, Gold. Everybody here is a somebody, and I don't know why you're being so captious about who it is you are. He is the Spade, she is the Widow...
Gold, in fact, does not change, despite Heller's facile attempt to conclude the novel with a hint of cultural reconciliation. Which is just as well. For Gold works best as a caricature in a burlesque about hypocrisy, jealousy and status lust...
...trouble with Good as Gold is that Heller is never content to stay with Washington as Kafka Komix. He insists on ventriloquizing bleak pronouncements on the state of the union: "Gold knew that the most advanced and penultimate stage of a civilization was attained when chaos masqueraded as order, and he knew we were already there." Or, "No society worth its salt would watch itself perishing without some serious attempt to avert its own destruction. Therefore, Gold concluded, we are not a society. Or we are not worth our salt. Or both...