Good as Gold

I just finished my third Joseph Heller book. Hoping it would be more like Catch-22 than Something Happened, I'm left torn and uncertain on how to judge it. I suppose it'd be easiest if I broke it down into two main components: tone and content. Tone-wise, the book was a real treat. Heller didn't match his Catch-22 levels when it came to delivering laughs and head shakes, but the same type of writing was there. All throughout the book, there were subtle oxymora ("I've been working on being more humble, and I'm very proud of how humble I've become."), there was ironic wordplay ("I can't believe you consider her an 'exception' when she's such an exceptional student!"), and there were logical impossibilities and worthless all-encompassing statements ("I'm absolutely certain that the job is yours, unless of course it isn't"). There were also idiotic conversations aplenty. For example, at one point, several pseudo-intellectuals discuss what the world would be like if there was no water; without seeing the bigger picture (simply, that life would not exist without water) they come to a consensus that people would have to drink beer and wine to quench their thirst (since alcohol is different than water). All of this is utterly irrelevant to the story at hand, but it is classic Heller. And for that, I was thankful. On the other hand, the content of the novel wasn't especially memorable in any way. Part of the problem was a plethora of characters and plot lines and an apparent lack of focus. Sure, that sounds a lot like real life, but this is a book. I wanted more plot and fewer sidetracks, even though the sidetracks were typically the greatest source of Heller's humor. Here's the plot (no spoilers) in a nutshell. Bruce Gold is a Jewish middle-aged English professor who has written a favorable review of a recent book by the President. As such, he has won over the President and suddenly been offered the chance to become an important governmental figure in Washington. In order to do so, he will need to make a number of distinctive changes to his lifestyle (namely, his innate Jewishness) including leaving his wife for a young, wealthy, WASPy woman. At the same time, he's been tasked with writing a book about the "Jewish experience" in America, but he has no idea how to do write about such an experience because he's unsure about whether or not he's lived it. As he struggles through both of these new assignments, his father and siblings give him all kinds of shit and his daughter begins to rebel against him. On the surface, then, the book contains many different plot points, but ultimately it's about a man in the middle of his life with everything falling apart around him. Of course, Heller also takes the opportunity to insert plenty of "Jewish" into the novel. Furthermore, the federal government is lampooned much in the same manner that Heller attacked war in Catch-22 and corporate America in Something Happened. There was just a whole lot going on and not all of it seemed pointed in much of a direction. Still, the book was often funny and sometimes touching, always relatable and even sad here and there. A few characters were memorably outrageous (Gold's father and brother, one of Gold's government confidants, and most notably Gold's anti-Semitic father-in-law-to-be). Everything was there, and I should have loved this book. But it just wasn't Catch-22, and that alone was enough for me to dismiss it as less than perfect. I still give it a seven or an eight out of ten, but by no means is this something I would expect any of my friends to give an honest read. In ranking the three Heller books I've had the pleasure of reading so far, it should come as no surprise that Catch-22 is head and shoulders above the two I've read in these past six months. But how do those two compare? Good as Gold was bittersweet and fun. It seemed a lot like "Catch-22 Lite," whereas Something Happened was dark, bitter, and sarcastic throughout - nothing like Catch-22 at all. Do I give props to the book that more closely resembled my favorite of all time, or do I respect the one that went in an entirely different direction? The jury is still out, I suppose. Sadly, none of Heller's other four books are as critically acclaimed as Good as Gold, which is allegedly the closest he ever got to recapturing the mastery he exhibited in Catch-22. This brings me to another point - of those four remaining books, I already own one. Why not buy the other three, give them all a shot, and judge Heller's lifetime of works from cover to cover? I may just do this, counter-intuitive to my backlog issue as it may be. So where will I go from here? God Knows.