tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post2463658240277077672..comments2024-03-26T23:41:10.319+00:00Comments on Authors Electric: Catch 22 by John A. A. LoganKatherine Robertshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17196712319655603442noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-4318916083230129132016-07-11T15:39:20.477+01:002016-07-11T15:39:20.477+01:00Very fine piece of writing, John, for which many t...Very fine piece of writing, John, for which many thanks. Thank-you too for reminding me of Catch 22 which I read a long time ago and was both captivated and disturbed by it. It's strange in Scotland right now, though, isn't it? Strangely calm, with the country holding its breath. A friend today said she wakes up every morning thinking it must all have been a nightmare and then she remembers it's true and ongoing. Last Saturday, one of the last comments from one of the panelists on BBC R4's Any Questions was a glib 'suck it up' And it clarified a couple of things for me. That it doesn't now feel as though Scotland is leaving England so much as England removing itself from the rest of the UK. There's a clear sense of fracture, a sense of being cut adrift, already going our own way and realising that it isn't so scary after all. And there's also a sense that if we're going to have to suck it up in one way or another - and it seems we are - we might as well suck it up for Scotland as part of Europe, rather than being dragged along in England's tired old wake. I certainly know a number of people who voted 'no' in the Scottish referendum who have changed their minds. I love your reflection on people doing it for themselves. Talking to young people here that's how they feel too - imagining their own futures into being rather than having them imposed. All the same, I'm seriously considering applying for a Polish passport! Catherine Czerkawskahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14554969254207924049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-52400744047574551572016-07-11T13:55:22.406+01:002016-07-11T13:55:22.406+01:00What a brilliant, captivating essay! Even the City...What a brilliant, captivating essay! Even the City dog, nosing "warm litter" in the safety of the structured City fares better than the Country dog, who crazily wandered into the unknown of thick grasses and unpredictable traffic.<br /><br />That McDonald's, though, is one of those portals into the dangerous world of Catch 22 and black nothingness. On the surface there is a comforting sameness in the McDonald's "brand," one of the "wares spread on the ground" by the demagogues, swallowing up cultural diversity around the world. Likewise the giant furry Tigger, Bumble Bees and Scooby Doo - totems of that place we really do not want to inhabit, luring even or maybe especially children into cultural homogeneity, oblivious to the literature that produced Tigger, and diverting their attention from the pipe and drum corps, uniquely identified with Scotland. <br /><br />Your essay fades from "dark, absorbent translucence" in Catch 22, harbinger of the corporate dictatorship, to the opacity of a Communist world where everything looks the same in the dark. But the pipes save the day. And in doing, your essay allow us to understand more clearly one of the dilemmas facing the U.K., and more particularly Scotland, in the wake of Brexit.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com