For Dowding - Where I Would Want To Ride In A B-25 In Combat

[funked]

I know you have the book but I can't resist:

 

The B-25s they flew in were stable, dependable, dull-green ships with twin rudders and engines and wide wings.  Their single fault, from where Yossarian sat as a bombardier, was the tight crawlway separating the bombardier’s compartment in the plexiglass nose from the nearest escape hatch.  The crawlway was a narrow, square, cold tunnel hollowed out beneath the flight controls, and a large man like Yossarian could squeeze through only with difficulty.  A chubby, moon-faced navigator with little reptilian eyes and a pipe like Aarfy’s had trouble, too, and Yossarian used to chase him back from the nose as they turned toward the target, now minutes away.  There was a time of tension then, a time of waiting with nothing to hear and nothing to see and nothing to do but wait as the antiaircraft guns below took aim and made ready to knock them all sprawling into infinite sleep if they could.

The crawlway was Yossarian’s lifeline to outside from a plane about to fall, but Yossarian swore at it with seething antagonism, reviled it as an obstacle put there by providence as part of the plot that would destroy him.  There was room for an additional escape hatch right there in the nose of a B-25, but there was no escape hatch.  Instead there was the crawlway, and since the mess on the mission over Avignon he had learned to detest every mammoth inch of it, for it slung him seconds and seconds away from his parachute, which was too bulky to be taken up front with him, and seconds and seconds more after that away from the escape hatch on the floor between the rear of the elevated flight deck and the feet of the faceless top turret gunner mounted high above.  Yossarian longed to be where Aarfy could be once Yossarian had chased him back from the nose; Yossarian longed to sit on the floor in a huddled ball right on top of the escape hatch inside a sheltering igloo of extra flak suits that he would have been happy to carry along with him, his parachute already hooked to his harness where it belonged, one fist clenching the red-handled rip cord, one fist gripping the emergency hatch release that would spill him earthward into air at the first dreadful squeal of destruction.  That was where he wanted to be if he had to be there at all, instead of hung out there in front like some Golly-gee cantilevered goldfish in some Golly-gee cantilievered goldfish bowl while the Golly-gee foul black tiers of flak were bursting and booming and billowing all around and above and below him in a climbing, cracking, staggered, banging, phantasmagorical, cosmological wickedness that jarred and tossed and shivered, clattered and pierced, and threatened to annihilate them all in one splinter of a second in one vast flash of fire.

[Dowding]

hehehe Funked. I think Heller was describing his own personal experience there, what do you think?    

Those paragraphs sum up his style perfectly. The descriptions of the 88s makes you almost hear the crack as it detonates. Better than any film could ever do, I think.

Who's your favourite character? What's your favourite scene? And have you read the sequel? Ou est le neigedens d'antan?  

[This message has been edited by Dowding (edited 05-24-2001).]

[StSanta]

Ah, Yossarian lives  

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Von Santa
Staffelkapitän 9./JG 54 "Grünherz"
"If you return from a mission with a victory, but without your Rottenflieger, you have lost your battle."
- D. Hrabak, JG 54 "Grünherz"

[funked]

My favorite character is Yossarian of course.
My favorite scene or image was the changing of the bottles attached to the soldier in white.
Didn't read the sequel.

[Weave]

My favorite is when they're ready for take off and everyone is giving the thumbs up, except Yossarian of course.

How many people notice that when Major Major is having his tirade with the sgt in his office, that as the camera follows his paces back and forth, the picture on the wall keeps changing. Trivia question, whos pictures are shown in each switch?

[Dowding]

I haven't seen the film, but I've read the book countless times.

My favourite character probably is Yossarian, but I don't think I've read a book with so many colourful characters.

My favourite scene is probably the pre-mission briefing with the 'moaning' incident. The moaning reaches a crescendo before being silenced, and then one of the staff unintentionally moans. The CO then  orders him shot.

The most disturbing part of the book is Milo and his business. How he bombs his squadron using USAAF planes on contract from the LW - funny, but a little bit weird.

If you are expecting anything on a par with Catch-22, don't read the sequel 'Closing Time'. But then Heller himself admits he could never equal Catch 22.

[Yoj]

Of course - in Catch-22 Heller relates his own experiences.  Every book after that was based on his imagination.

My favorite character is Orr.  He's a smarter Yossarian who is subtle enough to scheme his way out of the madness.  And he keeps telling Yossarian, but Yossarian is too distracted to listen.

Trivia - did you know the original name of the book was "Catch-18"?  But the publisher had just released "Mila 18", and tey didn't wat two titles with the same number out at the same time, so Heller had to change it.

- Yoj

[AKDejaVu]

I really have to read the book.  I have seen the movie so many times.

AKDejaVu

[Yoj]

There is a LOT more in the book (natch), but be patient with it - until you catch on to what's going on, reading it can be confusing - the chronology is very disjointed.

[Dowding]

I had to read it twice before I understood what was going on. And by the third reading I think I had picked up on most of the things that I had missed in the first two readings.

I know people who could never get into it, and others who picked it up and were hooked from the first chapter.

For me, I was hooked after:

"It was love at first sight.
The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."

I didn't put the book down for the two days it took me to read it.

BTW, Catch-22 is out on DVD in the US - I've just ordered it from Canada since it doesn't seem to be available in the UK.

[Gadfly]

We have even "recreated" Milos contract in the main arena, but Nately was spared this time.

I love that book, and the movie.