To the happy few

“Bomb bay clear,” Sergeant Knight in the back would announce.
“Did we hit the bridge?” McWatt would ask.
“I couldn’t see, sir, I kept getting bounced back here pretty hard and I couldn’t see. Everything’s covered with smoke now and I can’t see.”
“Hey, Aarfy, did the bombs hit the target?”
“What target?” Captain Aardvaark, Yossarian’s plump, pipe-smoking navigator would say from the confusion of maps he had created at Yossarian’s side at the nose of the ship. “I don’t think we’re at the target yet, are we?”
“Yossarian, did the bombs hit the target?”
“What bombs?” answered Yossarian, whose only concern had been the flak.
“Oh well,” McWatt would sing, “what the hell.”

— Joseph Heller, in Catch-22

Now, men, it’s no skin off my behind. But that girl that wants to play the accordion for you today is old enough to be a mother. How would you feel if your own mother traveled over three thousand miles to play the accordion to some troops that didn’t want to watch her? How is that kid whose mother that accordion player is old enough to be going to feel when he grows up and learns about it? We all know the answer to that one.

— Joseph Heller, in Catch-22

“It must be nice to live like a vegetable,” he conceded wistfully.
“It’s lousy.”
“No, it must be very pleasant to be free from all this doubt and pressure,” insisted Major Danby. “I think I’d like to live like a vegetable and make no important decisions.”
“What kind of vegetable, Danby?”
“A cucumber or a carrot.”
“What kind of cucumber? A good one or a bad one?”
“Oh, a good one, of course.”
“They’d cut you up in your prime and slice you up for a salad.”
Major Danby’s face fell. “A poor one, then.”
“They’d let you rot and use you for fertilizer to help the good ones grow.”

— Joseph Heller, in Catch-22

Esta ideia é parecida com a justificação da má arte, na Citadelle de Saint-Exupéry, mas aqui toma uma forma negativa. “They’d let you rot”. Aqui está a teoria do velho italiano que discutia com Nately.

“America,” he said, “will lose the war. And Italy will win it.”
“America is the stongest and most prosperous nation on earth,” Nately informed him with lofty fervor and dignity. “And the American fighting man is second to none.”
“Exactly,” agreed the old man pleasantly, with a hint of taunting amusement. “Italy, on the other hand, is one of the least properous nations on earth. And the Italian fighting man is probably second to all. And that’s exactly why my country is doing so well in this war while your country is doing so poorly.”
“I’m sorry I laughed at you. But Italy was occupied by the Germans and is now being occupied by us. You don’t call that doing very well, do you?”
“But of course I do,” exclaimed the old man cheerfully. “The Germans are being driven out, and we’re still here. In a few years, you will be gone, too, and we will still be here. You see, Italy is really a very poor and weak country, and that’s what makes us so strong. Italian soldiers are not dying anymore. But American and German soldiers are. I call that doing extremely well. Yes, I’m quite certain Italy will survive this war and still be in existence long after your own country has been destroyed.”

— Joseph Heller, in Catch-22

“Are you sure you didn’t imagine the whole thing?” Hungry Joe inquired hesitantly after a while.
“Imagine it? You were right there with me, weren’t you? You just flew her back to Rome.”
“Maybe I imagined the whole thing too.”

— Joseph Heller, in Catch-22

“Suspension of disbelief” é o conceito que Samuel Taylor Coleridge introduziu no século XIX, para explicar a possibilidade da ficção. Pode-se brincar com o público de muitas maneiras, testando os limites, indo além do que se julgaria razoável. Os limites são amplos, a julgar pelo exemplo clássico do Super Homem, que se disfarçava apenas com óculos e um penteado diferente. Como substituto da realidade é absurdo, mas não deixa de ser uma experiência interessante em disfarce moral, ou emocional; há um contraste tão marcado entre as personalidades do herói e do cobarde que se torna impossível identificá-los. Por outras palavras: é o cinismo das personagens que torna possível a nossa candura.

Milan Kundera, n’A Lentidão, não conseguia decidir se a nudez dos manifestantes era uma bandeira de pureza ou um balde de esterco, para lançar na cara dos adversários. Esse dilema – um falso dilema, como todos os que são criados pelo Homem, – é característico do autor; em vez de procurar um equilíbrio, dirige-se aos extremos, esperando que a média se aproxime do centro. Faz lembrar um equilibrista que se inclina ostensivamente, ora para um lado, ora para outro, tentando freneticamente manter-se em cima da corda; o entretenimento é garantido, mas é nos momentos mais sóbrios que se vê a grandeza do artista, sólido como uma rocha. Como na Imortalidade.

“Afinal de contas eram alemãs”, disse eu. “Vou ler os manifestos rosa-crucianos.”
“Mas você disse que eram falsos”, disse Belbo.
“E então? Também nós estamos a construir uma falsidade.”
“É verdade”, concordou ele. “Já não me lembrava.”

— Umberto Eco, in O Pêndulo de Foucault