by James Wallace Harris, 10/2/23
This week I started rereading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, a novel first published in 1961. I was shocked by how much I disliked it. In my memory it was a terrific book. Back in 1970 I went to see Catch-22 the movie when it came out. I was so impressed I went to a bookstore, bought the book, went home, read it, and then went back to see the film again. For over fifty years I’ve thought of Catch-22 as a classic.
This week I listened to two hours of the novel before giving up. I can’t believe I ever loved that book. It’s sort of like how I feel when I catch Gilligan’s Island on TV, I can’t believe that in the eighth grade it was my favorite television show. Whenever I see a clip of Gilligan’s Island now, I assume I must have been brain damaged as a kid. I wondered the same thing when listening to Catch-22.
Maybe I’ve just lost my sense of humor. I loved Saturday Night Live when it came out back in 1975, but I’ve found it painful to watch for decades now. I’ve come to realize that I truly dislike lame satire. Heller appeared to take one absurdist point-of-view and stretched it out over a 21-hour audiobook. It felt like hearing a Who’s on First routine that never ended.
I came to the book expecting to find philosophical insight into WWII, and it just wasn’t there. Catch-22 is considered an anti-war classic, but I didn’t feel that in 2023. The film version of M.A.S.H. also came out in 1970. That was the height of the Vietnam War. Both stories felt like anti-war brilliance in 1970, but insane in 2023. Fifty-three years later, and after many other wars, such silliness no longer seems appropriate.
Obviously, I’ve changed over the decades, but I think there’s something else that’s changed. Postmodernism has crashed and burned. Postmodernism took us down a wrong path, and it’s time to retrace our steps.
I still reread my childhood favorite book, Have Space Suit-Will Travel which came out in 1958. It continues to work. It seems to be a genuine touchstone to my past. I find great insight into who I was as a kid and who I wanted to be when I grew up. To me, it was a science fiction version of Great Expectations — including the cynicism I give it in retrospect.
I also read an abridged version of Great Expectations in high school and have reread the full novel since. It seems to grow in maturity, especially as I read more about Charles Dickens. As a teenage boy I identified with Pip and his frustration with Estella. But as an old man, I figure Pip was a stand-in for the older 1858 Dickens, and Estella and Miss Havisham were stand-ins for Ellen Turan and her mother. The depth of Great Expectations grows with every rereading.
This morning I watched a video about rereading books by Anthony Vicino called “You Should Read These 12 Books Every Year.” Vicino is one of those people who want to get ahead in life quickly by reading self-help books. Because he wanted to succeed quickly, and many successful CEOs read fifty-two books a year, Vicino decided to read one hundred books in a year and get ahead twice as fast. What Vicino learned was to read fewer books. And rereading was the secret to success.
I’ve been thinking I need to do more rereading. This video made me wonder what twelve books I would reread every year. Would they be fiction or nonfiction? And would they be modern or postmodern? I’m starting to think we all took a wrong turn around 1960, at least in fiction. The trouble is since 1960 nonfiction has been overwhelming us with expanding knowledge that we need. Art and philosophy couldn’t handle that explosion of information and we got postmodernism.
I need to do a lot of rereading, and rethinking. What books will be ruined by my maturity and what books will reveal their own deeper maturity?
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
When I ‘re-read’ something these days, I mostly listen to audio. And to me, this is a substantially different experience. Even though I’m a compulsive reader, I have to confess that I really can’t read very well. I started too young. Listening to audio, I get the parts I skipped over or just spaced out on. It can be a totally different book. When I listened to the audio of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” , I thought the reader sounded like William S. Burroughs Jr, which actually worked pretty well. Now I think Pirsig was Beat.
Since I joined Audible in 2002 most my rereading has been via audiobooks too.
Doug, you and I are a lot alike. I learned bad reading habits as a kid. My inner reading voice is crappy compared to modern audiobook narrators.
I got into ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE way more in audio than when I first read it. Now that’s a book I need to reread again. I get the Beat feel. I need to do another rereading of Kerouac too.
I started rereading a couple years after Salman Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses, came out and caused so much stir. I thought it was all hype so I waited. Then I finally read it and OMG – that was terrific! As I closed the book I turned it over and opened it up and started in again. It felt like I’d gone from point A to point C and how the heck did I get there? So I read it again.
Since then I’ve reread a lot of books – fiction and non. I had to read Don DeLillo’s Underworld 3 times to really figure out what all happened to that baseball. I read Nabokov’s Pale Fire 3 times trying to figure out who was nuts and who/what Hazel was. (There’s a whole book devoted to that.)
But I have to be careful. I’m afraid some books aren’t going to live up to my memories of them. IT took me years to reread Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance but it survived and I appreciated it on a different level. Classics are usually good for a reread but too many books will be dated or their value is greatly diminished by finding out who-done-it.
And the times have changed. Back when Saturday Night Live was new it was NEW – it was bold – it was different – it was creating what we “expect” now and they can’t do because too many others have copied it (or something).
And I’m older – my kids and grandkids don’t seem to appreciate my old kind of rock ‘n roll and I know it had the best beat of all time and nobody did falsetto like the Righteous Brothers. Where did the hip-huggers go – I looked darned cute in them then … um .. no, Bek – not now.
I reread books a couple times a year. There are just too many books on my shelves waiting to be read. I occasionally reread a Jack Vance book. They hold up well. I’m a big fan of Dickens’ NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. I’m with you on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Loved it in the 1970s and 1980s. Now, it mostly sucks.