Word: yossarianic
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Another Mike Nichols film is Catch 22, an adaptation of Joseph Heller's apocalyptic novel. But how could anyone ever transfer the lunacy of Major Major Major Major, Yossarian, Colonel Cathcart and the Watergate figure of all time, Milo Minderbinder to the screen? Nichols tries, and fails. With Alan Arkin...
Something Happened, for instance, cannot really be read apart from Catch-22. It represents the second installment, so to speak, of Heller's War and Peace. Over ten years ago Heller explained: "The hero is the antithesis of Yossarian-20 years later." Of his Syrian-American bombardier in Catch-22 he had written: "It was a vile and muddy war, and Yossarian could have lived without it-lived forever, perhaps." Of his WASP business executive, Bob Slocum, in Something Happened, Heller might have written: It was a vile and muddy peace, and Slocum was dying of it-dying...
...World War II, the last few months, when Germany was not a factor. The dangers of Catch-22 don't come from the enemy--they do as far as the flak goes--but the real dangers are the ones that continue after the war comes to an end. Yossarian's own superiors and their superiors are no different from the enemy. All right, Catch-22 is about a person being destroyed by the war, about from their own superiors from within the organizations of which they are a part. That is the truth of this country...
...What did Yossarian do after he took...
...wife. I don't know. The main reason is that I felt in this book, it would be better if they were not named. I didn't,t even say what they do. In Catch-22, where Yossarian has a first name, it's only used twice in the thing--his nickname is used more often. He's never described physically--Yossarian--other than being suntanned, and kind of large in build. I don't know why it's that way. I think that in the books I write I tend to lean away from action-packed kind of literal...