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In a comment on yesterday’s Towel Day post, Marta said:<\/p>\nIn a comment on yesterday’s Towel Day post, Marta said:<\/p>\n
The miracle of the towel! The man who realized this was a man to be reckoned with indeed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That got me thinking: how cool it would be to come up with a… a something<\/em> — an in-joke, an idea, a catchphrase, a little fictional detail, an entire story — which lodges in readers’ minds, gets passed around even among people who never read the original, and becomes part of the culture’s stock of unchanging raw materials.<\/p>\n
Like towels in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em>, say.<\/p>\n
Or — to broaden the focus to the almost 100% universal (First World) level: The Wizard of Oz<\/em>. Not the book, either (sorry, L. Frank Baum) — the movie.<\/p>\n
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- “I’ll get you, my pretty.”<\/li>\n
- “…and your little dog, too!”<\/li>\n
- “I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks…”<\/li>\n
- “Professor Marvel never guesses; he knows<\/em>!”<\/li>\n
- “Auntie Em! Uncle Henry!”<\/li>\n
- “Some, where<\/em>—” (You almost don’t have to finish the phrase.)<\/li>\n
- “If I only had a brain”<\/li>\n
- “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”<\/li>\n
- “First they tore my legs off and threw them over there<\/em>…”<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
(etc. etc. etc. — all of which I or other people have used in conversations in recent months.)<\/p>\n
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Such phrases — such images — immediately bloom when touched by participants or passersby. They’re like the conversational equivalents of the mezuzah affixed to the lintel of a doorway of a Jewish household. We touch them going in; we touch them going out. Over time, they become burnished by all that handling, smooth, shiny, blending in with the surroundings until it’s all just one surface, reassuring when we touch it still but for long-forgotten reasons, a constant reminder of the presence of universal truth and our obligation — our willingness<\/em> — to participate in it. Entry into the culture practically demands comfortable handling of these tokens.<\/p>\n
For a number of years — both before and after the publication of his second book — Joseph Heller became slightly sick of Catch-22<\/em>. He was sick of being asked when (or worse, whether<\/em>) he’d write another book as good. He was tired of people thinking of nothing other than Catch-22<\/em> when they heard his name.<\/p>\n
Semi-famously, his original title for the book was Catch-18<\/em>. (Actually, his very earliest working title for it was reportedly Catch-14<\/em>.) Just before its publication, though, a different publisher announced its plans to publish Leon Uris’s novel Mila 18<\/em>; when that publisher heard about the upcoming Catch-18<\/em>, they lodged a protest to Heller’s publisher — who changed it to -22<\/em>.*<\/p>\n
I’ve wondered about it, but I’ve never heard or read of Heller’s own response to all this title-changing. (I’m pretty sure that no typewriter in existence back then had a global search-and-replace function; I hope Heller himself didn’t have to change all occurrences of the number!)<\/p>\n
But I do know that if you ask someone today about Mila 18<\/em>, if they respond at all it will be with puzzlement.** But almost none of us wonder what “catch-22” means, capitalized, italicized, or not.<\/p>\n
So is it just dumb luck and marketing? Do these phrases and images have natural attributes which distinguish them from all other candidates — enable them to transcend the merely trendy catchphrase of a TV sitcom and live on for decades after their coinage?<\/p>\n
And the real kicker: have you ever come up with a phrase like any of these which (all right) coulda been a contender, coulda been somebody<\/em>… if only<\/em>?<\/p>\n
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