LIFE of PI

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a tiger by the toe. If he hollers, let him go, Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. For some reason that children’s rhyme popped into my mind as I started to read this tale of survival. It  involves a 16 year old Indian boy, and a 3 year old, 450 pound Bengal Tiger marooned together on a lifeboat for 227 days in the Pacific Ocean. Wow, what a tale spun by the Man Booker Prize winner, Yann Martel. Oh, I forgot to mention that initially there was also a zebra, a rat, a hyena, and a orangutan on board. You can imagine how long they lasted with a furious tiger aboard. Did I like this novel? Yes, but I’m not sure it was worthy of the “Booker” award. It has the strength of an unusual story, but lacks the strong finish to knock the reader out. I did like Martel’s easy to understand prose, and I also enjoyed the font changes that let the reader know who was narrating the story. It’s a difficult novel to rate because of the long and sometimes tedious middle, and then the seemingly abrupt ending. Yet it was so entertaining. Do you see my dilemma? I must recommend this novel by virtue of it’s original and exhilarating story, even though some say that it was similar to Moacyr Scliar’s Max and the Cats .
 

The first part of the story introduces the reader to our protagonist, Piscine (self changed to Pi, because of people mispronouncing his name as ‘pissing’) Molitor Patel. He lives with his father, mother, and brother Ravi in Pondicherry, India. The family owns a prominent zoo during the turbulent reign of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the mid 1970s. Pi is going through a confused time in his life were he is unsure if he is a Hindu, a Catholic, or a Muslim. This is one part of the book that I didn’t think was relevant to the story. Anyway, Pi’s father has had enough of India’s politics and decides to sell his wild animals to various zoo’s in America and elsewhere. He boards his family and animals on the Japanese cargo ship, Tsimtsum with the ultimate destination of Canada, and a fresh start in life. But guess what? The ship sinks several days out of port, resulting in the loss of Pi’s family and everybody else, except for Pi and a few animals treading water.

As the ship sinks, Pi has been tossed into a lifeboat by crew members. He sees the tiger ( Richard Parker ) struggling in the water. Pi throws a roped lifebuoy to the tiger and starts to haul him in, and then realizes that he is dragging a wild tiger to his boat! Pi says “ Let go of that lifebuoy, Richard Parker! Let go, I said. I don’t want you here, do you understand? Go somewhere else. Leave me alone. Get lost. Drown! Drown!” Too late, the tiger pulls himself aboard. You might wonder how a tiger got the name Richard Parker. Well, when the tiger was young, he was captured by a hunter named Richard Parker. The hunter saw the tiger drinking a lot of water, so he named him “ Thirsty “. However when they went to the ticket booth for the train ride to the zoo, confusion ran amok, and the names on the tickets got reversed, and the hunter became Thirsty, and the tiger became Richard Parker. At the zoo, Pi’s father thought it was amusing and kept the unusual name for his tiger. Most of the remaining novel is about survival at sea, or man versus beast for seven months on a 26’ by 8’ lifeboat. Who wins? Can Pi train the tiger on the boat? Will the tiger try to eat Pi? Can Pi catch enough food to keep Richard Parker happy? These are a few of the questions that will be answered, as you read this daring fantasy tale. This novel is well worth the effort, I suggest you add it to your books-to-read list.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Man versus ocean beast novels have interested all genres of reader for years, not that Richard Parker is an ocean beast. But who can forget the hunt for the white whale in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick , or the Nautilus’s battle with the giant squid in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , or Peter Benchley’s modern classic, Jaws . As in Pi’s plight, being shipwrecked has also spawned some classic novels; such as, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe , shipwrecked on a Caribbean island for 28 years, or Johann Wyss’s Swiss Family Robinson , a family trapped on a deserted island.

Yann Martel has seven published works, and has been involved in three movies. According to Wikipedia, he was influenced by... “Martel has said in a number of interviews that Dante's Divine Comedy is the single most impressive book [he has] ever read. In talking about his most memorable childhood book, he recalls Le Petit Chose  by Alphonse Daudet. He said that he read it when he was ten years old, and it was the first time he found a book so heartbreaking that it moved him to tears.”

And to ponder some notable quotes from Yann Martel: “If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”

From Pi, in the Life of Pi: “I was giving up. I would have given up - if a voice hadn't made itself heard in my heart. The voice said "I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen everyday. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen.”

And lastly: “I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”

A HIGHER CALL

My God, what a book! Adam Makos with Larry Alexander bring us this harrowing and chivalrous story of two World War II Air Forces. This is not just a story about an incident involving a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 and a U.S. B-17 Flying Fortress. No, it’s also about both sides fighting with courage and perseverance while maintaining a healthy respect for each other. The German Air Force fighter pilots were not Nazi Party members; in fact, their attitude was a thorn in the side of the German Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering (German spelling). They fought because they had no choice: fly or die.  On page 288, the pilot's attitude is confirmed when Major Hohagen of the German Air Force tells a joke to one of the book’s protagonist, Ace Franz Stigler: “Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and all of their friends are out on a boat at sea, there’s a big storm and their boat sinks! Who’s saved?” Franz knew the joke. “Germany.” If a political officer overheard this joke, by law they both would have been executed. Herr Goering would occasionally slip a political officer into the ranks of the Air Force to get the flavor of the pilots. I extol the effort the authors made to bring the readers this compelling non-fiction Pulitzer Prize worthy story. I know that says a lot, but you haven’t read this book.

The book opens with the story of Franz Stigler, a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter pilot, who completed 487 missions by the war’s end and focuses on his time served in North Africa and his service defending Italy and Germany from U.S. and British bombing raids. The reader meets many aces such as Hans-Joachim Marseille, The Star of Africa , and General Adolf Galland, leader of all fighter pilots. Most of the pilots we meet were awarded the Knights Cross (30 or more victories). Bear in mind that you are going to feel empathy for these men, even though they are the enemy. They fought bravely for their country, not for the Nazi Party. They fought with honor and with a knight's chivalry throughout the war. They had a code of ethics similar to the American fighters and bombers: they didn’t shoot a parachuting enemy pilot, nor mistreat them as a POW. Unfortunately, that can’t be said if the SS did the capturing. It’s sad that the typical German citizen hated the German fighter pilot at the end of the war because: ”You didn’t keep the bombs from falling.” That's a pretty sad statement since no one could stop thousands of B-17's dropping bombs every day. The Germans called our monstrous B-17 Flying Fortress "The Four Motors." Each plane rained down a payload of twelve 500 pound bombs.

The second part of the book tells the story of a twenty year old American pilot, 2nd Lt. Charlie Brown (Not of Snoopy’s Red Baron squad). He is a member of the 379th bomber group stationed in England. You are going to like his crew: Al ‘Doc’ Sadok, Robert ‘Andy’ Andrews, and Spencer ‘Pinky’ Luke, to name a few. They get into a now famous incident with Franz Stigler on Charlie’s first bombing raid as a Captain that winds up becoming the title of this book. My definition of "a higher call" is “vacating a duty for a better one" or "it’s God’s wish". I don’t know if the author had my definitions in mind, or not. You might ask, "What is the incident?" Well, I can’t tell you! You'll have to read this wonderful story yourself to find out. By the way, this book doesn’t read like the history that it is; instead, it reads like a novel such as Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts .

The third part of the book deals with Goering’s dissatisfaction with Germany’s famous fighter pilots. He would have liked them executed for treasonous statements, and he accuses them of being cowards, but they are too popular, so he makes them form the JV-44’s unit (the squadron of experts). They are responsible for defending Germany against the massive U.S. bombing raids in the last months of the war. Goering figures that they will die quickly against overwhelming odds. He forgets that these men are legends in their own time: Franz Stigler, Major Gerhard Barkhorn (301 victories!), Col. Luetzow, Oberst Steinhoff, Oberst Roedel, Major Hohagen, Oberst Trautloft, and Hauptmann "The Count" Krupinski. This part of the book was very exciting and sometimes very sad. The rest of the book deals with what happened to these men (German and American) in the ensuing years after the war. Well, like Arte Johnson on the Laugh-In show used to say: “It’s very interesting”. So is this gripping book!

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Reichsmarshall Goering was an ace fighter for Germany in World War I and joined the Nazi Party in 1922. He spent most of his time stealing art and property from the Jewish people. He was sentenced to hang by the neck at the Nuremberg Trials but took a cyanide pill the night prior to his sentence being carried out. A U.S. private is said to have given Goering the pill hidden in a fountain pen that was smuggled into the prison by a German woman.

After the war, Franz saw the ghosts in his dreams of the Holocaust, the crimes of the minority (the Nazi Party) that had spoiled every German fighting man’s honor. One German pilot spoke for the fighting forces when he wrote, "The atrocities committed under the sign of the Swastika deserve the most severe punishment. The allies ought to leave the criminals to the German fighting soldiers to bring to justice." (pages 348-349.)

Adam Makos is a journalist, historian, and editor of the military magazine Valor. In his fifteen years of work in the military field, Makos has interviewed countless veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and present-day wars. In the bibliography section of the book, Adam states that "It’s important to note that Franz Stigler flew 487 combat missions during WWII, and Charlie Brown flew 29. Both men had documented the time, date, and place of every mission in their logbooks, but only Charlie’s logbook survived the war. In May 1945, American interrogators seized Franz’s logbook and it was never seen again."

And finally, I thought the part in the book about the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was a real eye-opener for this reviewer. Only 1,074 women passed the flying courses that allowed them to pick up and deliver all sorts of military planes from the factory to the bases.The character in the book was Marjorie Ketcham, who had a budding relationship with Lt. Charlie Brown until he was transferred to England. According to Wikipedia, “They flew sixty million miles of operational flights from aircraft factories to ports of embarkation and military training bases. They also towed targets for live anti-aircraft artillery practice, simulated strafing missions, and transported cargo. Women in these roles flew almost every type of aircraft flown by the USAAF during World War II. In addition, a few exceptionally qualified women were allowed to test rocket-propelled planes, to pilot jet-propelled planes, and to work with radar-controlled targets. Between September 1942 and December 1944, the WASP delivered 12,650 aircraft of 78 different types."

OUTER DARK

This 1968 novel written by Cormac McCarthy is brilliant but also one of the most disheartening stories that I’ve ever read. Warning: If you are suffering from depression, don’t even think about reading this somber book. Cormac is truly the gloom and doom master. A quote from All the Pretty Horses sums up Mr. McCarthy’s thoughts on life: ”It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.” One of Cormac’s Outer Dark quotes is: “Ive seen the meanness of humans till I dont know why God aint put out the sun and gone away.” One of the two main characters, Culla states bleakness best when talking to the mysterious bearded man and says, ”I never give nobody nothin, I never had nothin. Never figured nothin, never had nothin, never was nothin, the man said. He was looking at nothin at all.” I added the quotations, but Cormac doesn’t use them or any other basic elements of prose in his novels. If you have read any of my reviews, you know that I’m not a fan of his famous novel The Road ; however, I do admire this novel. He has stated in the past that if the story is good enough, the author doesn’t have to be grammatically correct. I hear you loud and clear! This story will stay with me for awhile.

Even though Cormac doesn’t mention a time or place, I did some basic research, and it seems that this story takes place in the Appalachia mountains of east Tennessee. I can’t find a time period, but it felt like I was reading a novel set in the early 1900s. It’s the story of a brother and sister, Culla and Rinthy, who have an incestious relationship resulting in a baby. Both of these people are destitute mountain people of low education living in a rural cabin. As Rinthy recovers from the birth, she hears a tinker (a travelling seller of pots and pans) outside talking to her brother. The tinker leaves, and while Rinthy sleeps, Culla goes in the woods and leaves the baby in the glade to die. When Culla goes home, he chops a fake grave with his axe. The tinker finds the baby. When Rinthy wakes, Culla says the baby died. She discovers that the grave is fake and thinking that her brother sold her baby to the tinker, she leaves on foot pursuing the tinker. Culla also leaves on foot seemingly looking for his sister but more likely because he is fleeing from his sins and just wants to get away. To complicate matters for Culla, three mysterious men apparently follow him causing death and mayhem in his wake. Rinthy, in her travels, finds people mostly accommodating to her plight. Culla, Rinthy, the baby, the tinker, and the three mysterious men are heading for a collision of monumental and unguessable fruition. You must read this, McCarthy’s precocious second novel; it is stunning.

I find this story full of symbolism and metaphors. For instance, Culla and the three mysterious men seem to have nothing in common. But why do the three men appear to follow Culla from town to town, causing Culla many troubles. The leader of the men wears black, the color of evil and death. Culla seems to be running from his sins, and the three men are in pursuit to mete out punishment. Evil looms all around Culla. Are the three men emissaries of the devil? Rinthy, on the other hand, receives food and shelter from most of the people she meets on her quest to find her baby. Do these people represent the Archangels of God? I don’t know, but I do know when I’m reading a book full of symbolism. And what of the mean tinker? Who does he portray? And finally, who is the blind man Culla meets at the end of the novel who says, “But I knowed I’d seen ye afore.” Culla wants to know if the blind man is a preacher, and the blind man says, ”No. No preacher. What is they to preach? It’s all plain enough. Word and flesh. I don’t hold much with preachin.” Is this the Grim Reaper, now hot on Culla’s trail? I don’t know, but it’s fun conjecturing.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Cormac McCarthy is 79 years old, and has written 10 novels in three different genres: Southern Gothic, Western, and Post apocalyptic. He says he is working on a long novel (that’s unusual!) called The Passenger. Three (there’s that number again) of his novels have been adapted for film. No Country for Old Men won the Academy Award for best picture. He has done very well for one who violates most of the rules of writing, grammar, and punctuation.

Goodreads says that one of Cormac’s famous quotes is from his novel, The Road: “Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.” That’s pretty good writing for someone who makes his own criteria.

Vulture on 6/6/07 said that Cormac bombed on the Oprah Winfrey show: "On yesterday's show, McCarthy wasn't as gnomically apocalyptic as we’d speculated he would be. Slouching in an overstuffed armchair, he seemed more like a nice-enough old man, gamely trying to answer the inane questions posed by the over enthusiastic woman sitting opposite. Winfrey trotted out such chestnuts as "Where did the idea for this novel come from?" and "Do you have a writing routine?" McCarthy, to his credit, treated the questions seriously, though that may be because he's the only writer on earth who's never heard them before.”

And lastly, a quote from chapter one of All the Pretty Horses shows Cormac’s descriptive style: "They rode together a last time on a day in early March when the weather had already warmed and yellow mexicanhat bloomed by the roadside. They unladed the horses at McCullough's and rode up through the middle pasture along Grape Creek and into the low hills. The creek was clear and green with trailing moss braided over the gravel bars. They rode slowly up through the open country among scrub mesquite and nopal. They crossed from Tom Green County into Coke County They crossed the old Schonover road and they rode up through broken hills dotted with cedar where the ground was cobbled with traprock and they could see snow on the thin blue ranges a hundred miles to the north." Rules or no rules, this man can write!

RINGWORLD

What do a puppeteer, a kzin, and two humans have in common? They are going to Ringworld! You thought I was going to say Disney World, didn’t you? This is the premise of Larry Niven’s epic novel about an artificial ring, one million miles wide, encircling a sun-like star. I haven’t read a space exploratory novel this good since Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama. Niven’s book was so good it won the trifecta of the sci-fi world: 1970 Hugo, 1971 Nebula, and Locus Awards. To this reader, Mr. Niven’s salient point is in his ability to use specialized jargon that the reader easily understands, while still inventing new ingenious technology, such as the quantum II hyperdrive spaceship that speeds along at one light year every one and a quarter minutes! And can Niven describe alien life forms? Damn straight! How about a Garfield the cat look alike (known as a kzin) that is eight foot tall and 500 pounds with a nasty disposition? What about a puppeteer that has a tripod body with two heads, more intelligence than man and when frightened, rolls himself into a ball? I also think that Star Trek may have preempted the transporter idea from Niven’s transfer booth. These are a few of the amazing concepts and characters in this recommended novel.

At the galactic core, supernovas cause a blast that will wipe out Earth and known space in 20,000 years. The frightened puppeteers have already left, heading towards the Lesser Clouds of Magellan looking for a new home. Our protagonist, Louis Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday (he looks 20) party on earth. A large kzin, known as Speaker-to-Animals is there; sexy Teela Brown is there; and, who pops out of a transfer booth? Nessus, an insane puppeteer who wants to talk deal with these three party goers. Nessus asks Louis, Speaker, and Teela to join him on an exploratory mission 200 light years away. If they agree, their reward will be the quantum hyperdrive ship and its blueprints. The puppeteer will not tell them where they are going until they are on the way. Louis wants to go because he is bored and ready for adventure; Teela wants to go because she is in love with Louis; and, the Speaker wants to go because he wants to steal the ship for his people so they will have a spaceship advantage over the humans. The kzin have a long history of losing wars against the humans from Earth and were anxious to get out of their submissive morbidity.

As they board spaceship Long Shot, Speaker makes a failed attempt to steal the ship. The puppeteer has a secret weapon called a tasp that induces a current in the pleasure center of the brain. Nessus, the two headed tripod says to the Speaker: "You understand that I will use the tasp every time you force me to. I will use it if you attempt to use violence too often, or if you startle me too much; you will soon become dependent upon the tasp; if you kill me, you will still be ignobly bound by the tasp itself." "Very astute," said Speaker. "Brilliantly unorthodox tactics. I will trouble you no more." Nessus, being a puppeteer, was inherently a coward, and thus needed every mental advantage to keep a vicious animal like Speaker from tearing him apart. After that, off they go to meet the puppeteer fleet in the Clouds of Magellan. There they learn their mission: to explore the mysterious ring to see if it will support life. After getting nebulous mission instructions relayed from the Hindmost, the leader of the puppeteers, the four board the Lying Bastard and head for the baffling ring. This is where Niven’s story gets real astronomical and unnerving. You know what this means, don’t you? Well, I wet your whistle and now you have to grab a copy of this wondrous novel and find out what happens.

I like Niven’s mix of real science with his science and neologisms that seem like logical terms. He does a good job explaining Kemplerer rosette: a gravitational system of heavier and lighter bodies orbiting in a regular repeating pattern around a common barycenter. Got it? Starseeds seemed real, but are not. They are space traveling creatures used by Outsiders to plant life on planets. Flying cycles and floating police stations are purely figments of Mr. Niven’s mind. What’s to come on Ringworld is stated by Nessus to Louis: ”This place is, is unsafe. Strange storms and badly programmed machinery and sunflower fields and unpredictable natives all threaten our lives.” Really? Buckle your seat belts and enjoy.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: According to Wikipedia: “After the publication of Ringworld many fans identified numerous engineering problems in the Ringworld as described in the novel. One major problem was that the Ringworld, being a rigid structure, was not actually in orbit around the star it encircled and would eventually drift, resulting in the entire structure colliding with its sun and disintegrating. This led MIT students attending the 1971 Worldcon to chant, "The Ringworld is unstable! The Ringworld is unstable!" The phrase made its way into a filk song, "Give Me That Pro, Larry Niven." Niven wrote the 1980 sequel The Ringworld Engineers in part to address these engineering issues.”

If you like Ringworld, you can gorge on its three sequels and four prequels. As much as I enjoyed the novel, I don’t think I can spend that much time on the same subject. I might read the second novel, only to see how Niven resolved the engineering issues.

What does Larry Niven say about Ringworld? goodreads quotes Niven as follows: “I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius - one Earth orbit - around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base.
And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges. Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding.”  

Finally, Niven explains why Speaker tried to steal the puppeteer’s spaceship: “For two hundred and fifty years the kzinti had not attacked human space. They had nothing to attack with. For two hundred and fifty years men had not attacked the kzinti worlds; and no kzin could understand it. Men confused them terribly.”   

Time and Again

This is a guest review from my eldest son, Deron:

Time and Again is the classic time travel story by Jack Finney set in New York City in 1970 and 1882. Our time traveller is Simon Morely, Si for short, an artist for an advertising agency. One day while at work, Si is visited unannounced by Major Ruben Prien. Over lunch, Major Prien tells Si that he has been selected, based on tests he had taken while still in the Army, for a secret government project, and he asks Si if he’d like to participate. Si eventually accepts; and when further tests confirm that Si is qualified, Major Prien reveals the nature of the project: time travel.

The project is in its infancy and is testing a conjecture that through self-hypnosis one can travel back in time. Essentially, if you believe that you’ve gone back in time, you will. Si decides on a time to travel to after a conversation with his girlfriend Kate.

Kate’s grandfather was Andrew Carmody, a financier and political figure in NYC during the late 1800s. She inherited a mysterious letter, partly charred, that Carmody wrote which reads, "If a discussion of Court House Carrara should prove of interest to you, please appear in City Hall Park at half past twelve on Thursday next.” Also on that letter, apparently added later, is scrawled: "That the sending of this should cause the Destruction by Fire of the entire World (a word seemed to be missing here at the end of the top line where the paper was burned) seems well nigh incredible. Yet it is so, and the Fault and Guilt (another word missing in the burned area) mine, and can never be denied or escaped...I now end the life which should have ended then." Si suggests to Major Prien that he travel back to 1882 and resolve the mystery of this cryptic letter. The board members of the project, seeing no harm and possible benefits to Si’s request, agree.

I enjoyed this book. At just short of 400 pages and with straightforward writing, it was a quick read. The book is illustrated with Si’s sketches and photos that help immerse one in late 19th century NYC. Additionally, there is exhaustive description of the people, their clothing, customs, streets, and buildings of that time. Sometimes these descriptions reminded me of Moby Dick in the sense that there are many chapters in Moby Dick that describe the whaling business in detail that are not germane to the plot. I felt the same for this book to the point where the narrative bogs down. However, would Moby Dick be the same book if those chapters were removed? No. Likewise, I ultimately think the same for this book.

The story picks up momentum in the second half as the mystery of the letter is slowly unravelled. There is also a subplot related to the changing motives of the government officials responsible for the project that adds an additional twist to the book’s satisfying conclusion.

The characters were uncomplicated as were their motives for the most part and with little depth. The good guys were good; the bad guys were bad. Conflicts are neatly resolved. However, I find this kind of character development to be very common with authors like Clarke and Asimov. Their books are often event, not character, driven. It is the same here. As long as you read this book in the right frame of mind, you'll enjoy the story.

RATING: 4 our of 5 stars

Comment: Finney wrote a sequel, From Time to Time, that was published just after his death in 1995 and 25 years after the publication of Time and Again.

CATCH-22

This uproarious satirical novel by Joseph Heller prompted me to think of Robert Crichton’s The Secret Of Santa Vittoria, another novel blending WWII and comedy. Published in 1961, Catch-22 was the forerunner to Richard Hooker’s 1968 novel, Mash: A Novel About Three Army Doctors . It’s not about Army Doctor’s in Korea, but about Army Air Force pilots and bombardiers during WWII stationed on the small island of Pianosa, west of Italy. In order to understand the insanity of this story, the reader has to comprehend what Catch-22 is. In chapter five, Doc Daneeka explains to Yossarian and Orr, his roommate, why he can’t ground them due to insanity: “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified 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 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,' he observed. 'It's the best there is, Doc Daneeka agreed.” This catch was why none of the bombing personnel were able to avoid flying mission after mission.

The main character is Captain Yossarian, a bombardier who is convinced he is going to die on a mission. In chapter two, he explains to fellow officer, Clevinger why: "'They're trying to kill me,' Yossarian told him calmly. 'No one's trying to kill you,' Clevinger cried. 'Then why are they shooting at me?' Yossarian asked. 'They're shooting at everyone,' Clevinger answered. 'They're trying to kill everyone.' 'And what difference does that make?'" Yossarian’s fear of dying on a bombing raid was exacerbated by his group commander, Colonel Cathcart. 

The colonel's lack of compassion was buoyed by his desire to be a general and, more importantly, to be featured in The Saturday Evening Post! If the Air Force wanted 40 missions before you could go home, the Colonel wanted 45; and anytime someone came close to the required number of missions, Colonel Cathcart would raise that number. The Colonel is only one of the complex characters in this novel.

I have many favorite characters and situations in this black comedy. The first is Lt. Milo Minderbinder, the mess hall officer. From day one, he wheels and deals like no other war time entrepreneur. He gets away with his shenanigans by telling everyone that they have a share in his enterprises. In chapter 22, he explains his egg business: ”...I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don't make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.” He gets into so many businesses that he even deals with the Germans! In chapter 24, he takes a contract from the Germans to bomb his own base: “This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him...Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made.” Then he says in the same chapter: “I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry." As the Milo character gets deeper into the book, it only gets more humorous.

My second favorite character is Major Major Major Major, the squadron commander, who looked like Henry Fonda! People who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was. In chapter nine, we learn: “With a little ingenuity and vision, he had made it all but impossible for anyone in the squadron to talk to him, which was just fine with everyone, he noticed, since no one wanted to talk to him anyway.” In chapter ten, we find that: “Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.” But you can see him, if he is not in his office. If you try to barge into his tent, he goes out the window. I know it's confusing, but his first, middle and last name was Major, thus the four 'majors' when he got promoted to, you guessed it, Major. This book is a riot.

My third favorite is Major-------de Coverley, Major Major Major Major’s executive officer. Throughout the novel he has a blank for his first name. His function is uncertain at best. He basically pitches horseshoes all day, kidnaps Italian workers, and rents apartments for his men to use on rest leave. As soon as he hears of a city that the U.S. Army has captured, he’s on his way there, usually at the head of the procession in a Jeep. No one (friend or foe) knows who he is. But the reader knows that he is there just to rent apartments for his men. His picture appears in many publications, as if he is leading the conquering army. I’m telling you this book is a gas.

There are two subplots that are absolutely hysterical. The first involves the Chaplain’s hostile assistant, Cpl. Whitcomb. The corporal comes up with the following generic condolence letter: “Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. And Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action.” This one was sent to Doc Daneeka’s wife, even though the Doc wasn’t dead. Col. Cathcart feels this letter will prove his concern for his men and finally get him in The Saturday Evening Post. He promotes Whitcomb to sergeant! The second subplot revolves around our hero, Yossarian. After Yossarian tells Lt. Nately’s whore that Nately was killed in action, She tries to kill Yossarian and she relentlessly pursues him chapter, after chapter. Nobody knows why she wants to slay him, but it is funny.

The reader will also meet: Chaplain Tappman, who is intimidated by everyone; Nurses Cramer and Duckett; Hungry Joe and his screaming nightmares; Chief White Halfoat, who knows he is going to die of pneumonia; Aarfy, the navigator; and Huple, the fifteen year old pilot, just to mention a few. How Joseph Heller kept track of all these characters is unbelievable. There is so much going on in this book that I had to take notes to remember who is who, and who did what. This is a great American classic and should be read by book lovers of all genres. The great American author Studs Terkel states in the "other voices" section of this book: “You will meet in this astonishing novel, certainly one of the most original in years, madmen of every rank: Major Major Major, on whose unwilling frame the gold leaf is pinned because of his unfortunate resemblance to Henry Fonda; Doc Daneeka, who is declared dead despite his high temperature; Hungry Joe and his fistfights with Huple’s cat; ex-pfc Wintergreen, who has more power than almost anybody.” Enough said?

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: That Joseph Heller was really a bombardier in WWII and flew 60 missions on the Italian front gave this novel credibility. How did the idea of the book commence? Well, according to Tracy Daugherty’s book, Just One Catch: The Passionate Life of Joseph Heller, it began this way: "But the most common account Heller gave of the hatching of Catch-22 varied little from what he said to The Paris Review in 1974: 'I was lying in bed in my four-room apartment on the West Side when suddenly this line came to me: ‘It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, Someone fell madly in love with him.’ I didn’t have the name Yossarian. The chaplain wasn’t necessarily an army chaplain—he could have been a prison chaplain. But as soon as the opening sentence was available, the book began to evolve clearly in my mind—even most of the particulars… the tone, the form, many of the characters, including some I eventually couldn’t use. All of this took place within an hour and a half. It got me so excited that I did what the cliché says you’re supposed to do: I jumped out of bed and paced the floor.'” The book was born in 1953 and finished in 1961.

According to eNotes, our protagonist, Yossarian is a typical character in a Heller novel: “Heller's use of anachronism reflected the disordered nature of contemporary existence. His protagonists are antiheroes who search for meaning in their lives and struggle to avoid being overwhelmed by such institutions as the military, big business, government, and religion.” They go on to say, “Some critics claim that Heller's later work pales in comparison with Catch-22 and Something Happened, but others maintain that his canon viewed as a whole displays his continued evolution as a writer.”

Three of Heller’s works were turned into movies: Sex and the Single Girl (1964), Casino Royale (1967), and Catch-22 (1970). He died at the age 76 in East Hampton, NY in 1999.

The Lightning Thief

The following is a guest review of a Rick Riordan book by my most wonderful grandson, Kai Ohlarik:

This book is mainly about Zeus’s lightning bolt being stolen. He was sleeping one night when somebody stole his bolt, and Percy Jackson is on a quest to find it. Percy was forbidden to be born because his powers would be too powerful. His father was Poseidon, and he was born with his father’s power.

Percy, on his quest, finds himself battling many monsters, such as Medusa.  She was disguised as a statue maker. Percy gets into trouble with Ares, the God of War. Percy fights Procrustes, known as Crusty, disguised as a water bed salesman. In reality, all the beds were stretchers.

Annabeth helps Percy on his quest. She is very smart and a quick thinker. She is the daughter of Athena. Grover is a satyr, one-half goat and one-half human. Grover helps on the quest. Satyrs try to hunt down sons and daughters of the Gods all around the world. When they find them, they bring them to a special camp called Camp Half-Blood.

This is a really, really good book. What I liked was the Gods and the battles, and the ironic ending. I would definitely recommend this book to everybody that is looking for an action packed book.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Kai is nine years old and loves to read. If we have a budding author in the family, I would be thrilled! We just came back from Barnes & Noble with more books for Kai to read. Hopefully in the future, he will do more reviews for the 7 to 12 age group. While dashing between me and the T.V., as any normal nine year old would, I typed his review exactly as he verbalized it.