We came home after 6 days to find that the cats were still alive, thank god. I was worried all week, even though I left them with enough food and water and litter to accommodate a small colony of cats. Baskerville actually took advantage of the free-for-all and got really fat. I had no idea one cat could put on so much weight in a week! I can almost hear him grunt when he jumps up to the bathroom sink. Ah well, we'll work on that. Maybe I should take him out jogging.
I finished reading Catch-22 this morning. It's one of those books that, despite being a practically sparkling display of wit and brilliance, took me a long time to finish. I have very little interest in "war" books, as I have very little interest in war as a fictional backdrop. But this one wasn't so much about the war as it was about a world in which war was necessarily a part. The island of Pianosa was a microcosm for larger systems, and the mysteriously sane-looking inhabitants were totally cuckooed out of their minds, but only in the way a large group of people (say, a nation-state) would parade that insanity with total confidence in themselves, the sort of confidence that could only come from being blissfully free of reality checks, or anyone powerful enough to give them one.
Yossarian is a well-earned protagonist, and had he been placed in any other book, he might have just blended in. But he operates as you'd think any normal person would, which makes him an aberration in the world of Catch-22. He exudes the sort of cool-headed self-interest that seems so God-given, so natural, and he is the only person who does it without remorse or subterfuge. The perfect Yossarian statement, I think, was "Whoever wants me dead is my enemy, I don't care what side he's on", and he reacts in his unshakeable sensibility, with perfect horror, at his own commanding officers.
There is irony at every turn, and it operates in a near-fractal pattern, with broad strokes of plot deftly striking against each other, down to the tiniest remarks found on any page.
Maybe that's why I had a hard time getting through the book. Most stories waddle along inconspicuously until they glow, then the glow fades and you're drifting again. You get the feeling that those little spots of glow are exactly what the story was written for, as if everything else was designed to build blurrily up to this one peak of clarity, this one bright dazzle of brilliance that tells you everything you ever wanted to know or feel about life and more. Those bright spots accentuate the dimmer ones. If you can believe it, Catch-22 was all bright, and that's why it got tiresome from time to time. I couldn't handle the constant clever derring-dos between the officers, the prostitutes, the facts, the gentle, subtle, narrative interjections. There was virtually no plot beyond the same three or four rehashed disagreements.
Milo Minderbender is the perfect satire of mindless capitalism. His introductory chapter was one of my favorite parts of the book. Among other things he buys German aircraft, then leases them back to the Germans, sells out his own squadron's location, then tries to sell chocolate covered cotton while he attends the funeral of people who died in the attack. He sells secrets and equipment to both sides, and somehow he's still tolerated because he's the best businessman who ever lived. It's boggling.
The end of the book was interesting, mainly because I wasn't expecting it to have an "end" at all. One of the most unstructured, uniformly composed books I've ever read somehow managed to read a conclusion. Yossarian reveals himself in the plainest way to actually have a bit of a deeper, philosophical grievance against the war and the warmongers when he finally does something contrary to his self interest basically just to shaft the man. He really, honestly, lives on the highest plain of moral reason, though his actions seem simple. In the end, he is neither a sheep nor a egocentrist, adrift in a world constructed to receive only those who are both.
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