"I went on the internet this morning, and I found this, and wanted to share."
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Joseph Heller was born 100 years old today, and in my silly, mostly worthless opinion, he did what we human beings are supposed to do on this pretty blue marble of a planet: He saw both the beauty and the madness existence had to offer, and he drew glorious art all over its sad and lovely face.
You know how well he succeeded if you’ve spent time with his work.
To celebrate him today, I’ll pull a well-known quote from his most widely-read novel, Catch-22. His readers know this passage simply as “Snowden’s Secret,” about as concise and poignant a summation of meaning and loss as has ever been typed onto a page, scripted onto stretched vellum, or wedged into soft and giving clay.
For those who don’t know the story, in this passage, the main character, Capt. John Yossarian, a bombardier on a B-25 during WWII, is flying a mission out of Italy with his crew. The plane takes fire and passes through flak bursts, causing heavy damage to the airplane. One of Yossarian’s crewmates, Snowden, a young radioman, is injured, and Yossarian rushes to administer aid. At first, Snowden’s wounds appear superficial, but he keeps complaining that he’s cold - so cold, so very cold.
Yossarian, concerned, examines Snowden’s body further, but he sees nothing wrong. Eventually, he opens Snowden’s clothing and notices he has been hit underneath his flak vest. Hoping to pressure the wound, Yossarian opens the flak vest, and Snowden’s intestines spool out of his body onto the plane’s deck. The boy is still alive but for only seconds more.
Heller takes us to the moment:
“Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter; that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window, and he’ll fall. Set fire to him, and he’ll burn. Bury him, and he’ll rot like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret.”
----
I remember how that paragraph broke me wide open when I read it for the first time thirty or more years ago. Immediately, I read it again, and it broke me open anew. Then I read it a third time and a fourth and a fifth, and each time I felt its aching truth.
I still do. It is so very crystalline.
“The spirit gone, man is garbage.”
“Drop him from a window, and he’ll fall.”
“Set him on fire, and he’ll burn.”
“Bury him, and he’ll rot like other kinds of garbage.”
True, true, true, true, true. All so true. Devastatingly true.
The paragraph is so monstrously insightful that it’s hard to move past it. It holds you and makes you reckon with its brutality. It makes you fight for a reason to carry on – and eventually, you find it in the mirrored reflection of its otherwise unbearable weight:
If man is garbage when the spirit is gone – then when the spirit abides, we’re so much more.
While Heller doesn’t sculpt it into one perfect paragraph, the entire narrative explores what lives around that one radioman's tragic death. In a way, Catch-22, taken as a whole, teaches the reader what we might call Yossarian’s Secret - and it is this:
While the spirit remains, we’re pilots and artists, dancers and lovers, poets and jokers, writers and clowns. While the soul abides, while we rise up into the teeth of cruelty and grinding illogic, we’re so much more than dirt.
I like to think that if Joseph Heller had lived to see a century, he’d take some pride and solace in all us Yossarians out here who continue to resist and rebel in the face of creeping Armageddon. Who continue to care for the Snowdens of yesteryear and today and tomorrow, even though we know damn well that the tragedy will never, ever, end.
We know the truth, and still we rise, because, while the spirit abides, we are more.
Much, much more.
So, fellow beauties, the last one in the liferaft is a rotten egg. Grab a paddle. We make for Sweden at dusk.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Heller and love to you all.
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Michael J. Tallon
·Joseph Heller was born 100 years old today, and in my silly, mostly worthless opinion, he did what we human beings are supposed to do on this pretty blue marble of a planet: He saw both the beauty and the madness existence had to offer, and he drew glorious art all over its sad and lovely face.
You know how well he succeeded if you’ve spent time with his work.
To celebrate him today, I’ll pull a well-known quote from his most widely-read novel, Catch-22. His readers know this passage simply as “Snowden’s Secret,” about as concise and poignant a summation of meaning and loss as has ever been typed onto a page, scripted onto stretched vellum, or wedged into soft and giving clay.
For those who don’t know the story, in this passage, the main character, Capt. John Yossarian, a bombardier on a B-25 during WWII, is flying a mission out of Italy with his crew. The plane takes fire and passes through flak bursts, causing heavy damage to the airplane. One of Yossarian’s crewmates, Snowden, a young radioman, is injured, and Yossarian rushes to administer aid. At first, Snowden’s wounds appear superficial, but he keeps complaining that he’s cold - so cold, so very cold.
Yossarian, concerned, examines Snowden’s body further, but he sees nothing wrong. Eventually, he opens Snowden’s clothing and notices he has been hit underneath his flak vest. Hoping to pressure the wound, Yossarian opens the flak vest, and Snowden’s intestines spool out of his body onto the plane’s deck. The boy is still alive but for only seconds more.
Heller takes us to the moment:
“Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter; that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window, and he’ll fall. Set fire to him, and he’ll burn. Bury him, and he’ll rot like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret.”
----
I remember how that paragraph broke me wide open when I read it for the first time thirty or more years ago. Immediately, I read it again, and it broke me open anew. Then I read it a third time and a fourth and a fifth, and each time I felt its aching truth.
I still do. It is so very crystalline.
“The spirit gone, man is garbage.”
“Drop him from a window, and he’ll fall.”
“Set him on fire, and he’ll burn.”
“Bury him, and he’ll rot like other kinds of garbage.”
True, true, true, true, true. All so true. Devastatingly true.
The paragraph is so monstrously insightful that it’s hard to move past it. It holds you and makes you reckon with its brutality. It makes you fight for a reason to carry on – and eventually, you find it in the mirrored reflection of its otherwise unbearable weight:
If man is garbage when the spirit is gone – then when the spirit abides, we’re so much more.
While Heller doesn’t sculpt it into one perfect paragraph, the entire narrative explores what lives around that one radioman's tragic death. In a way, Catch-22, taken as a whole, teaches the reader what we might call Yossarian’s Secret - and it is this:
While the spirit remains, we’re pilots and artists, dancers and lovers, poets and jokers, writers and clowns. While the soul abides, while we rise up into the teeth of cruelty and grinding illogic, we’re so much more than dirt.
I like to think that if Joseph Heller had lived to see a century, he’d take some pride and solace in all us Yossarians out here who continue to resist and rebel in the face of creeping Armageddon. Who continue to care for the Snowdens of yesteryear and today and tomorrow, even though we know damn well that the tragedy will never, ever, end.
We know the truth, and still we rise, because, while the spirit abides, we are more.
Much, much more.
So, fellow beauties, the last one in the liferaft is a rotten egg. Grab a paddle. We make for Sweden at dusk.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Heller and love to you all.
