Sez Who?

It's nice to be confirmed in an unpopular opinion by even one person. I'm thinking this because the other day I was walking past a used bookstore and outside, in the cheapie racks, they had a paperback copy of MASH. I don't think everyone knows that before it was a series it was a film, and before it was a film it was a book. (Actually, these days I'm not sure that everyone knows it was a series.) I picked up the book when I was a kid and got a kick out of it, although I knew even then that it had many passages that aspired to be funnier than they were. I also failed to notice the homage it paid to Catch-22, even though I used to reread that all the time too. But MASH had an easygoing charm that I find still appealing, and both ooks were great for a teen back in the day—they had some intriguing (if by today's standards coy) allusions to human reproduction, they both had a good deal of wordplay going on, and they were both irreverent. This was catnip to a bookish teen in the '70s who considered most adults laughable fakes.

The unpopular opinion I always held was that the TV show wasn't very good. I have some Larry Gelbart fans among my dearest friends, but I've got to say that the jokes in the show struck me as corny gags. And the preaching! War Is Bad!* The beauty of the book was that it never strove to tell you war was bad. The author assumed you knew that, I suppose. But the TV show didn't—it kept nagging you about it, like you were stubbornly refusing to understand that war was bad and needed a constant harangue about it, and that if you achieved a tenuous, passing understanding that war was bad you needed constant reminding so that it wouldn't degenerate with disuse, like a golf swing or the ability to sight-read music. Alan Alda's nasal whine was a particular annoyance this way. I know, I know, people loved the show in general and Alan Alda's portrayal in particular. I used to think I was the only person who didn't. But now, reading up on it, I see there was one other person felt that way: the book's author.

No, the Hawkeye Pierce in the book was a smart guy and a good surgeon, and he figured that if he worked well enough he could get away with not suffering fools gladly. He never explicity or implicity said anything to the effect that war was bad, perhaps because he spent his working day repairing the damage caused by shell fragments and other missiles and spent his free time drinking and wisecracking. He was an appealing character, and I wish I'd once gotten around to writing the author and telling him so, but he died in 1997. Man, I hope he got some of that TV money!

*Among the people who've said War Is Bad was one Mohandas K. Gandhi, who famously suggested to the Jews of Europe that they should not resist the Nazi persecution violently, but should rather allow themselves to be martyred. Gandhi is another person who died before I could correspond with him and discuss that view, but in my own humble opinion, martyrdom is like celibacy or a tattoo: It's all very well to choose something like that for yourself, but you should hesitate to suggest it for others. If I were in imminent danger of being martyred, and Mr. G. sent an essay to the newspaper saying that I should go ahead and let myself be martyred, I would write to the paper myself and tell him to STFU.