Joseph Heller

Book : Catch-22
Author : Joseph Heller
Rating : 5/5

There is a place in a world where irony meets comedy, courts it, marries it and from this marriage reality is born. This world is called Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" - Simon Cleveland

Sad, depressing, anti-war, crazy, unapologetic and funny as hell ! The book boasts of one of the greatest ever collection of fictional characters : Colenel Catchcart, General Dreedle, Dunbar, Nately, Nately's whore, Nately's whore's kid sister, Chaplain, Major Major Major Major, Milo Minderbinder, Orr, Ex-P.F.C Wintergreen, Doc Daneeka and last but not the least Yossarian.
"What kind of name is Yossarian?" you wonder.
Well, quoting the book : "It's Yossarian's name sir."

But the most remarkable feature of this book for me was the convoluted plot and dialogue. A tool that Heller uses for most of the humor in the story and a tool which makes it nearly impossible for the reader to keep track of the timeline of the events. The book is basically a satirical look at the madness of war, a look at how sometime selfish motives of some insane men lead us to those insanely deadly yet avoidable tragic situations and a look at the underlying principle of the book : Man is Matter. It follows Yossarian, a B-25 bombardier, and his misguided attempts to break free from crazy bureaucratic laws binding him to the war and return alive to his home. His only aim in life is to survive, his enemy is everyone who wants to get him killed regardless of what nationality.
Quoting the book again : "He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt." because "It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."

Finally Catch-22, a term coined by Heller through this novel, is a situation where you lose regardless of your choice, most of the times because of a catch in the law. Picture this :
"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 to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," Yossarian observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed."

Ayn Rand

Book : Fountainhead
Author : Ayn Rand
Rating : 3/5



















Book : Atlas Shrugged
Author : Ayn Rand
Rating : 2/5

I wouldn't be exagarating at all If I say it is the most over-rated literary piece and most over-the-top way of presenting a flawed philosophy ever.

First basic flaw of the book is obviously the redundancy. Any intelligent person will get what Rand is trying to say, her ideas, within first 200 pages of the book. They were all crystal clear. But no, that was just the beginning. Rand then goes on to write 800 more pages about the same thing over and over again. Presenting them in 1001 different ways. Giving us a hundred more incidents of how the 'moochers' are totally incompetent while the genius 'producers' are the real saviors of this world.

Which brings me to the biggest flaw with the book - the characters. First she creates the set of elitist, who have everything perfect right from the facial expression to their intelligence and workaholic nature, while the 'looters' are total idiots who wouldn't know how to add even if given a calculator. The Elitists are created to be the heroes who are driving the world forward, the intellects without whom the world would collapse, and amazingly ALL of these 'producers' share the same ideas about the virtue of selfishness. Their enemies are all incompetent lazy-ass sheeps who are ALL sad, depressing, scared and idiots. Wow. How very convenient of the author. I could better have watched a Rajnikanth flick, it would have been more believable. Now coming to the 'masterplan' to crush the world to pieces, to 'stop the motor of the world', the plan looked to be straight out of a comic book, it was childish to say the least - Uhh ok, I am a genius and I want to destabilize the world, what do I do? Yeah that's right I will assemble all the other superheroes and we shall hide behind the mountains. Hilarious. I can bet DC Comic executives must have approached Rand after reading Atlas Shrugged.

Come on Ms. Rand you don't like Socialism, we get it , move on. But there is no moving on this book, she just stays put. But she is an influential writer, I can give that to her. How else do you explain the number of people who have been mislead by this so called philosophy? That is why the book was able to get 2 stars.

I liked Fountainhead, I could see what Rand was trying to present there. But Atlas Shrugged was just over the top with it's overly melodramatic characters and plot. I am not just trashing the book because I don't like her ideas, I would never do that to any book, but I also don't like the lazy way she created the plot and characters at her own convenience in order to prove a flawed philosophy.