It’s meant to be inexplicable. The couple went home tried out what Doc showed him, something apparently went wrong and the guy came back to punch Doc. The entire nove is absurd. Who knows what happened between the couple?
It’s a decade late, but I have to point out that this is backward. One of the American officers sincerely says it is better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees and the old man points out the converse is true: it’s better to live on one’s feet than die on one’s knees, i.e. the old man enthusiastically embraced the beliefs of whoever was in charge at the moment.
What a book! I first read it in the mid-60s and very few modern works have had such an impact on me. I remember waiting years and years for Heller to write another book. It was so frustrating but perfectly understandable. How do you follow Catch-22?
Of course, he finally wrote another book (Something Happened in 1974) and several others, including a sequel to Catch-22, but you can’t capture lightning in a bottle twice. None of them came close to the wonderful original.
As for favorite bits, there are so many. Yes, Major Major Major definitely. His firm rule that he can only be seen in his office when he’s not there is priceless, and as this comes so early in the book it was my first hint that I was reading something very special here.
Nately’s whore is hilarious as well as delivering quite a shock at one point in the book. Milo Minderbinder’s financial wizardry, Dunbar’s plan to if not extend life then at least make it seem interminable. And of course, that pesky catch, which trips Yossarian up everywhere, Catch-22.
By the way the novel would have been called Catch-18 but Heller changed it on the eve of publication to avoid confusion with Leon Uris’ current best-seller Mila 18.
As I said, what a book!
Since the guy had been so proud before, I assumed he felt things were good and he was in control. When they tried real intercourse, I guess I assumed the wife figured a few things out, about sex and the husband in general, and started calling more shots.
Now you’ve changed everything!
Too many good parts to list, but one stands out:
Milo Minderbinder trying to get the men to eat chocolate-covered cotton.
In addition to the parts already mentioned, there’s the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade — brought down by three magic words from Major _______ de Coverley.
Yes, something like that. I’m frankly amazed that people don’t understand that ‘a punch in the nose’ is a traditional response to an insult or dishonoring. This story was about the 1940s, I don’t know how figuratively the phrase would be interpreted at the time because I was around negative 15 years old at the time, but it’s still a well known concept, and it’s still literally interpreted in less genteel circles.
This would be my interpretation. I’m guessing the guy was actually impotent so he was incapable of having normal intercourse. But he and his wife were doing something that they had convinced themselves was sex.
So Daneeka explained to them what sex was and the husband tried it out using the rubber models. And then when he got home, he found his parts weren’t working the way the rubber models did. Rather than realize he was impotent, he assumed that Daneeka had been pulling an elaborate practical joke on him.
*Catch-22, MASH *and other books of the era that were so in/famous for their raunchiness can be a hard read today, because that raunchiness is all between the lines - there’s setup, there might be description of bare breasts or ‘erect manhood’… and then it gets all squirrelly and indirect and coy. If you know what they’re talking about, it is pretty raunchy, raw stuff, but if you don’t… it’s (no pun intended) pretty WTF.
It wasn’t until maybe the middle 1970s that mainstream books got completely down and dirty and wrote sex scenes without hiding behind literary figleaves, no matter how ruff and tuff and raw the book or writer’s reputation.
I think the OP example is one that might have been better understood by a 1960s reader than by later generations. I know I’ve had to go back over a passage and think about it in these cases, and I doubt that was the writer’s intent.
I don’t think I understand the point you’re making here. What’s the hidden stuff that you’re seeing in this passage?
I dunno. Explain the husband’s reaction to me and we’ll take it from there. 
I think that in a later era, say 1975, the scene would have been more explicitly written and the source of the husband’s upset would have been spelled out. Heller was riding the line between raunchy and safe that so many other mainstream authors of the 1950s and 60s did - they were free to talk locker-room, but only to a point and then had to use veiled references and circumlocutions.
MASH is a better example of that. It even censors itself towards the end (“Mother ______! Mother _______!”)
So you’re saying the point of the joke was satirizing the censorship of the time? I have to admit I don’t see it that way myself.
Does anyone know what chapter it is in?
Ok, I found it now (page 22) and Im pretty sure I understand what caused it.
The guy figured out the saint Anthony joke way later, and came back to punch him for it.
Chapter 5 “Chief White Halfoat”
FWIW, I was once involved with a pretty young thing (she was 20, I was 37) who stopped me to say “It’s my first time!” when things got serious.
TMALSS, it took a month of gentle (never rough!) trying before everything “came together,” so to speak. Not because she was unwilling (far from it!) but because she simply wouldn’t (couldn’t) “open up.”
I suspect other men (especially those with less experience) might have experimented with other options (like “tryin’ the back door 'cause the front one’s locked”), but that was never of any interest to me.
Suffice it to say that when things did finally “come together” it was glorious! :o
Since the guy was evidently enjoying whatever they were doing, and was perfectly satisfied, I doubt this. I just assumed they were doing something that wasn’t regular penis-in-vagina sex, probably anal. When they finally had intercourse, her hymen broke, there was blood, and it was painful for her. So the guy got mad at Daneeka telling them to do something so ridiculous and distressing.
Why is penis-in-vagina more ridiculous than penis-in-poopchute?
First-time anal sex usually doesn’t cause bleeding, for one thing. And the guy might not have even been aware that vaginas existed.
I’ll give you distressing, but ridiculous? At least turds don’t come out of the vagina.