Sunday, March 9, 2008

Catch 22.....

It has been some months since i read that amazing book, Catch 22!!!! jus thought i would share my feelings with all....
I had been told that it was a great book..but somehow or other i had been putting it off...Yossarins story is the story of us....individuals caught in the cross fire of history and who steadfastly refuse to sacrifice their "Lower cause" (ie sanity, petty selfishness etc etc) for the sake of the "Greater" cause!!!!
It has humour as it has pain....it has sense as it has "non sense"..the beauty is that everyting is so seamlessly weaved together that ones loses track where he is standing at the particular monment...u laugh out aloud when you read aabout someone being killed....u ll feel like crying when a dog is being beaten!!!! the book does not philosophises....it merely asks questions, that too very subtely....
It makes a mockery of the concept of war, with all its noble ideals!!!! as our hero puts it beautifully - it does not make a difference to a guy who is dead as to whoever wins the war....I felt Yossarin is the common man....there can be nothing noble, nothing honourable in death!!! it is plain and simple death....anyone will lose all feeling of chivalary if he had to hold the strewn bowels of his comrade, watching him die without you being able to do anything....
I could go about talkin about the book but i request everyone to read it....many people wont like it.... its overtly lewd and at times amazingly crass!!! but in Yossarin's story, everyone will identigy with....it is the story of a single individual fighting to maintain his common sense against a world that is hell bent on proving him wrong!!!!

1 comment:

Srini Iyer said...

a gist but not a summary.. if i cud do with summary why shud i go thru the entire book.. actually somehow i couldn't..he he.. all because i am a common man