Ruminations of a meandering mind

This title is something I have associated with Joseph Heller because his works are unique. As one reviewer reviewing his book “Closing Time” puts it “Heller is the master of the morbid wisecrack. Heller dissects the American dream with as sharp and poignant a wit as ever”. In his works Heller creates a mad mad world and some of the conversations of his characters are hilarious to the point of being absurd. The one thing you immediately notice in his books is the colossal length of some of his sentences, reading which you are as confused as ever.

In “Closing Time”, another allegory like “Catch 22” there are some paragraphs and conversations that do make you laugh. Consider this first extract:
“The Freedom of Information Act, the chaplain explained, was a federal regulation obliging government agencies to release all information to anyone who made application to it, except information they had that they did not want to release. And Because of this one catch in The Freedom of Information Act, Yossarian had subsequently found out, they were technically not compelled to release any information at all. Hundreds of thousands of pages each week went out regularly to applicants with everything blacked out on them but punctuation marks, prepositions and conjunctions. It was a good catch, Yossarian judged expertly, because the government did not have to release any information about the information they chose not to release, and it was impossible to know if anyone was complying with the federal law called the Freedom of Information Act.”

Here’s another good one from one of his characters:
[“And Christopher Maxon is always agreeable,” Patrick guaranteed, “as long as you give him something to agree with. I have lunch with him frequently when I feel like eating alone”].