My Intimate Relationship With Books II

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's 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. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”

Joseph Heller, Catch 22, p. 47

Some books, like some people in my life, have been epiphanal. That is, they have profoundly changed the way I thought about something–myself, society, religion, relationships. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, was like that. I had read the Arthurian legend in The Once and Future King, by T.H. White, seen the movie Camelot , and even been in a local production of the musical Camelot before I read Bradley’s version, and I loved it. Mists is the Arthurian legend written from the women's points of view and it shook me up.

I had never really realized until then that the same events in a book could be interpreted two, three, or perhaps many ways. These days, of course, it is common to take the same story, say the story of Oz, and to reconceive it from the point of view of different characters, but this was new to me, especially the experience of considering events not from my male perspective but from a (man reading about a) woman’s view. It also helped me realize I can step back and think about my thinking when I put my mind to it. Mists changed the lens I use for looking at lenses, irretrievably.

Reading Catch-22 , by Joseph Heller, was a lightning bolt. It is a satire of war. The nation was involved in Viet Nam when I read it. Devouring it, which I have called reading “page after page of important insanity”, changed the way I thought of war and, as significantly, of big institutions like government, the military, and big business. After consuming that orgy of the unordinary, I always felt I should look at big-brother behemoths irreverently, with a question mark, just as C-22 did.

Some books were life changing when I read them the first time, but each time I re-read them I was also able to interpret life significantly differently or more deeply. John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath is such a book. The first time I read this I was blown away. My parents grew up during the depression and my mom's family were Okies, living right in the dustbowl, and were tossed off their Oklahoma farm in the 1930's. One of my mom's greatest fears was the prospect of having to pack up and move to California.

Grapes gave me a small glimpse into the horror and helplessness of people who are poor, have no power, are victims of circumstances, and despite having loving, close family relationships, strong values, and remarkable will power are essentially doomed. Talk about shaking me up—that did. When I re-read the book, more than once, later in life, even lately, each time I read it as a different, but still as the same, person. I had more education about social justice, economics, politics; I had suffered the sting of realizing I was a person of little power, and also the satisfaction of knowing some ways to take more control of my life than the Joads would ever experience.

So, when reading the book these new times I had more insightful lenses to look through each time. My mom never had to move to California, though she feared more than anything that her family would have to pack up and go, and she never talked much to me about living those days. I should have asked her more about it. A book like The Grapes of Wrath tells me a bit about her story and is an intermediary between her life and mine.

Each time a book is read it can be revelatory—bringing new aha, shocking, bombshell moments when you say to yourself, "I never thought of that before!", "I never thought of it that way before," and that is because we have changed or we do know more about ourselves or the world. The epiphany, the insight, each time can be small and incremental or unimaginably huge, just as we have changed in different ways, large and small.

References:

Bradley, M. Z. (1982). The mists of Avalon (1st ed.). New York: Knopf.

Heller, J. (1962). Catch-22. New York: Dell Pub. Co.

Steinbeck, J. (1972). The grapes of wrath. New York: Viking Press.