I’m a Harry Potter fan, but I don’t think “muggle” has percolated into the public psyche like “Catch-22” has. I know quite a few people who would have no idea what a muggle was, but I doubt I know anyone – any Westerner – who does not understand what a catch-22 is.
Right - I agree, but muggle is in the dictionary, which is what you asked about.
Really? I had no idea “muggle” was in the dictionary. Good for JK Rowling. 
If you forget a character, here is a Wikipedia page with a list and links to separate pages for most of the characters:
Don’t read that yet, spazurek.
He didn’t want to fly any more missions, right? He was sane by definition.
Nope, it really predates Rowling.
Webster’s New Millennium™ Dictionary of English
muggle
1 Definition: a marijuana cigarette
Etymology: 1920s
2 Definition: a common person, esp. one who is ignorant or has no skills
Example: There are muggles in every computer class.
Etymology: 1920s
CMC +fnord!
How can he see that he has flies in his eyes if he has flies in his eyes?
“But 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.” – Milo Minderbinder
Actually, it more generally lampoons essentially all large corporate entities and groups which inevitably succumb to bizarre, nonsensical rationalizations for what they do and how they do it under the guise of principles they espouse but don’t follow.
For example, Yossarian is criticized for not volunteering to send himself back out into combat because ,“They’re trying to kill me.” When it is pointed out to him that the enemy isn’t shooting at him, they’re shooting at everyone, he retorts, “And what difference does that make?”, a sensible attitude for a man who “had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.” Yossarian doesn’t believe in the social contract, at least insofar as it requires him to senselessly sacrifice himself for some greater good which mostly involves Milo Minderbinder showing a profit and Colonel Cathcart trying to get “feathers in his cap” by alternately impressing General Peckham and General Dreedle. This abandonment of the imposed responsibility to participate in violence against strangers (and accept violence from the same strangers in return) makes him sane, and therefore unqualified to not participate in the madness of warfare.
Then there is the concept of the loyalty oath: “To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, [Captain Black] replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to.” The utter pointlessness of the entire exercise (except, of course, in not permitting Major Major to sign a loyalty oath, demonstrating his disloyalty) is unquestioned despite spiralling out of control until one obstinate individual beyond reproach–Major – de Coverly, whose essential function seems to be acquiring rooms and whores in every city that is taken–refuses the oath and demands, “Gimme eat…Give 'em all eat!”, upon which the whole scheme collapses.
The novel is hardly a satire of one limited political process or approach; the context is much larger and encompassing.
Although Catch-22 is his most accessible, I think that many of his other works are underrated, especially Good As Gold and Picture This. Closing Time has flashes of brilliance but like many a Kurt Vonnegut novel, just never really comes together.
Stranger
From a simple-minded reader, without any knowledge of literay theory, I just have to tell you that once you finish it you will have a “Oh! So that’s what he was talking about” moment.
And it is all worth it. You may be tempted to read it again almost immediately, just to see how the author played fair with us all along.
I had never heard of “muggle” before Harry Potter. A lot makes sense now. JK Rowling is promoting drug use among youths. :eek:
Or perhaps the Harry Potter series is a literary Reefer Madness, warning against drugs while pushing children toward them. :eek:
Uhh, Rowling’s definition doesn’t.
I’ve read Good as Gold, and Closing Time. Picture This doesn’t sound familiar, but I read one other, God in the title? God Knows.
None grabbed me like ‘Catch-22’. Hence, ‘Peaked on the first novel’ not, ‘never wrote anything worth reading again.’
I agree with you about Closing Time. Heller and Vonegut were friends, I understand.
I love Catch 22. It’s probably my favorite book. I read everything else he wrote some time afterward and enjoyed God Knows, but IMO his second best was Something Happened. It’s sort of a Babbitt of the 1950s rather than 1920s but a good deal darker and more desperate.
I’m inspired to try reading this again. Thanks all!
Catch 22 is up there amongst my favourite books, but I have to say that **Something Happened ** was the most tiresome book I’ve ever read. Was I missing some great ironic joke? Is it called ‘Something Happened’ because barely anything happens in it at all?
I’m in the middle of re-reading it again for probably the fifth or sixth time. I’ll echo the others who have said stick with it, things start to sort themselves out after a while, although it is hard to follow all the jumping around at first.
I’ve also seen the movie once or twice although it’s been a number of years. Believe it or not, it actually does help me keep some characters straight by remembering who played them in the movie.
The title is a double entendre; before the beginning of the book, “something happened” to the protagonist, Bob Slocum, that made him slowly lose enthusiasm and hope for life; he’s just toiling away at some mid-level job at an anonymous insurance company; his biggest dream seems to be giving a speech at the annual convention, which is dashed by his boss to decides to give the speech himself, despite being a poor speaker. (The topic and content of the speech is unstated, but it’s clearly one of those things that is intended to fill up space and mean nothing to anyone.) Once you make it all the way to the end “something happens” that is dramatic and shocking, reveling Slocum into action. Up to then, it is caustic and wryly self-eviscerating meditation on the futility of, well, pretty much everything in Slocum’s life.
It doesn’t make for easy reading to be certain, nor does it permit narrative distance from the madness. Whereas Catch-22 invites you to observe Yossarian sympathetically (as he is the only character who acts with sane self-preservation in the middle of madness), Something Happened has Bob Slocum narrating his stream of consciousness about the pointless absurdity of his life, which is not a comfortable message for readers who enjoy a similar lack of drive or purpose. The prose is witty but the jokes fall flat, not because they are poorly written but because of the utter despair behind them; even when Slocum is joking with himself, or patently lying to the reader, he knows how truly and hopelessly desperate he is to escape from his self-imposed morass.
This was reportedly Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite of Heller’s novels, and here is his New York Times book review of it.
I liked Something Happened, but to be honest it took me two or three stabs to really get through it. It is not a novel of plot or action, and isn’t intended to please the reader with artifice or saccharine resolution.
Stranger
I love Catch-22 although now the book is not as funny as it used to be. Milo’s got nothing on Haliburton.
Picture This and God Knows are also very good. imho
Stranger:
I don’t think that’s quite true. I’d include Dunbar and the Chaplain under that rubric, at least for the most part.
Dunbar wants to extend his life by making it as boring and unpleasant as possible. The Chaplain (A.T. Tappman) is so neurotic about pleasing people and trying to get along, even with his assistant, Corporal Whitcomb, who mocks and heckles him at all times that he won’t stand up for himself at all, even when there are no consequences.
Clevenger is pretty much sane, but he’s also a complete dupe who staunchly believes in principles that are completely out of place in the the context of the novel, or indeed, in the real world. Of course, since the reader is allied with Yossarian, he sees Clevenger as just being part of the madness, justifying with his slogans and insistence that everything will be made right, and that no one is trying to kill Yossarian.
Stranger