CATCH-22 (1970)

Classics Revisited Book Group (Posting 20)

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.
Joseph Heller Catch-22

Dobbs: [Over the radio] Help him! Help him!
Yossarian: Help who?
Dobbs: Help the bombardier!
Yossarian: I'm the bombardier, I'm all right.
Dobbs: Then help HIM, help HIM!
From the Mike Nichols film Catch-22

This is my twentieth and final posting for books I’ve done in my Classics Revisited book group that have accompanying movies. Catch-22 (the book) is one of the most famous and most read classics of the last fifty or so years. It features a set of chapters mostly identified by the names of different American bombardiers during World War II in the European theater in the latter stages of World War II. Most of the stories revolve around Captain Yossarian, the seemingly only sane flyer in the whole military who just wants to complete his bombing missions and go home.

The nature of the book seems to not lend itself to film, but after watching it again, this is a case where I actually like the film more than the book. Director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry gave the film a dream quality that really works here and the cast led by Alan Arkin is top notch. Part of the problem with the initial run of Catch-22 (the movie) is that it came out the same year as the other anti-establishment military movie M*A*S*H and seemed to get lost in the shuffle or didn’t quite get to the subversive level of the Altman film.

Book or movie? Despite the undeniable humor of the book (My favorite part is Doc Daneeka trying to convince everyone he isn’t dead even though he’s standing right in front of them) and the fact that it does have a lot to say about the insanity that usually accompanies war, I did find the shtick a little repetitive after awhile. I didn’t get that with the movie. I suppose that sometimes having to edit out plot threads and characters can be a good thing.

Well that’s it for the two-month journey into the Classics Revisited Book Group section of this blog. Here are all the books we did for this group presented here if for no other reason than I just like to make lists and hope to add to it in the future.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
1984 by George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
King Lear by William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Night by Elie Weisel
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Lolita by Vladamir Nabakov
Short Stories by Edgar Allen Poe
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
True Grit by Charles Portis
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER (1968)

Classics Revisited Book Group (Posting 19)

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter directed by Robert Ellis Miller
or
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

In these book vs. movie posts I’ve done during the last couple of months, I’ve tried not to always pick the book over the movie, but I’m afraid that is just the way it seems to have panned out most of the time. I mean if you want to see a movie that is better than the book you can always watch The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, Psycho or The Graduate.

Book or Movie? That being said, I’m still picking The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (the book) over the The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (the film), despite the fact that the film is not at all bad. It’s also interesting that it has never been filmed since that I’m aware of. The film does have Alan Arkin, who is as good as the deaf mute Mr. Singer as Cliff Robertson’s similar role as Charly from the same year. Of course, the story of Heart revolves mainly around the teenaged girl Mick played by Sondra Locke who is coming of age at this time in the rural south in the 30’s .

I first read Carson McCuller’s story in high school and was happy to note that all these years later, it is still thick with the good, the bad and the ugly of growing up in the rural South and holds up quite well. It also made the top twenty of the Modern Library’s top 100 English language novels of the century, so others obviously still like it as well.

CHARLY (1968)

Classics Revisited Book Group (Posting 18)

Charly directed by Ralph Nelson
or
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Charlie Gordon is a mentally retarded man who has an operation that improves his intelligence to a genius level before he begins to revert back. The novel is told in first person through Charlie’s journals. It sounds like a pretty basic story and maybe it is, but it is also one of my favorite books, which I’ve read many times. Keyes’s device of using the journals of Charlie to tell the story is really what makes the book for me.

However, this device doesn’t translate that well to film and may be what has limited the success of the original film adaptation. This 1968 version does have Cliff Robertson (who really is Charlie to me) and some groovy Ravi Shankar sitar music, but the plot doesn’t flow as successfully as it should.

The more recent television remake with Matthew Modine was even less successful.

Book or Movie? I would definitely choose the book here.

A RAISIN IN THE SUN (1961)

Classics Revisited Book Group (Posting 17)

A Raisin in the Sun directed by Daniel Petrie
or
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry’s play about a poor Chicago black family trying to get ahead has been filmed several times, with the most famous adaptation being the 1961 version starring Sidney Poitier. If I’m not mistaken, it was even converted into a musial(called Raisin, of course). It is a strong story, though I didn’t find the ending as satisfying as I would have liked.

Book or movie? Either the book or film is a good start, but I’d like to see this on stage at some point.