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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2198 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 31, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Yes, it's a good point. I thought of the grim sections as an alternating contrast to the humorous ones, but you're right of course that they do overlap as well.

Ironically, the author didn't seem to mind his wartime experience too much, rather thinking of the Korean war while writing the book.

"How did I feel about the war when I was in it?" Heller wrote in the letter to an academic preparing a collection of essays about the book. "Much differently than Yossarian felt and much differently than I felt when I wrote the novel … In truth I enjoyed it and so did just about everyone else I served with, in training and even in combat.

"I was young, it was adventurous, there was much hoopla and glamour; in addition, and this too is hard to get across to college students today, for me and for most others, going into the army resulted immediately in a vast improvement in my standard of living."

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