Latest news with #Catch-22
Indian Express
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
4 literary cameos you missed in Bollywood movies
(Written by Kaashvi Khubyani) Books are not always read out loud in movies. Sometimes, they just sit quietly in the background- in someone's hands or next to a cup of coffee, but they still say a lot. In Bollywood movies, where everything is big and dramatic, these little book moments can feel surprisingly personal. They often tell us what a character is feeling or searching for. Here are four such times where books made quiet but powerful appearances on screen. Imtiaz Ali's Tamasha is all about figuring out who you really are, even if the world forces you to be someone else. In one scene, Ved (Ranbir Kapoor) gives Tara (Deepika Padukone) a copy of Catch-22– a book about a man stuck in a confusion and frustration. It's not just a random choice. The book reflects Ved's own struggle with living a life that doesn't feel like his. Just like the story, Ved feels trapped and the book quietly says so. When Rani (Kangana Ranaut) takes a solo trip to Paris after getting heartbroken, she takes something special with her- The Alchemist. The book is about chasing your dreams and finding your purpose and that's exactly what Rani ends up doing. As she discovers new places and new parts of herself, the book becomes her travel companion. It accompanies her, reminding her that she's stronger than she thought she would ever become. She steps out of her comfort zone and slowly lets go of who she was. She begins to find her own 'Personal Legend,' not in the form of love or marriage but in reclaiming herself. Black tells the story of Michelle (Rani Mukerji), a girl who can't see or hear and her teacher (Amitabh Bachchan), who helps her find her way in a world. The film is inspired by Helen Keller's life and in one important scene, Michelle is seen holding Keller's autobiography. The book doesn't just appear as a reference, it's a symbol of hope. It becomes a reminder that words can be felt even when they can't be heard and that even the most silent journeys are still full of voice. Since Dil Bechara is based on The Fault in Our Stars, it makes sense that Kizie (Sanjana Sanghi) is shown reading the original book early in the film. It's a small yet emotional moment- a look at the story it's retelling. Like the novel, the movie is tender and heartbreaking. By showing the book on screen, it feels like the characters know they're part of something bigger, a story that so many people have cried over and connected with. The next time you're watching a movie, notice the books that characters are reading or even just keeping nearby. They're placed in the scene for a reason. Books in films might not always have dialogue, but they do speak. Whether it's about identity, love, growing up or healing, these quiet literary moments add something special and often, something deeply human. (The writer is an intern with
Business Insider
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Gary Mobley Declares a 'Catch-22' in Progress With Intel Stock (NASDAQ:INTC) Turnaround
A Catch-22 might be one of the worst things to run into, especially where investments are involved. And that is exactly what chip stock Intel (INTC) is facing, according to Loop Capital analyst Gary Mobley, who has a five-star rating on TipRanks. The notion clearly frightened investors, who sent shares slipping down fractionally in Tuesday afternoon's trading. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. For those not familiar, a Catch-22—derived from the Joseph Heller novel of the same name—is essentially a paradox. It is a situation that cannot be escaped from due to contradictory rules or limitations that inherently cancel each other out. The original novel declared that combat pilots could get out of flying combat missions if they were found insane. But requesting a mental evaluation was a sign of sanity, thus, anyone who actually requested an evaluation was considered sane. Intel faces something similar, Mobley noted. Mobley noted that the advanced-node manufacturing systems at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM) were better than Intel's. Further, Intel also faces stiff competition for the product arm. However, in order to improve Intel's products, and take on those competitors, Intel would need to turn to Taiwan Semiconductor, and thus pay its own competition. Worse, Mobley notes, Intel cannot recover its fixed costs without volume orders from the products division, which optimally, would be routed to Taiwan Semiconductor instead. Thus, Intel Foundry may end up as a 'headwind' for Intel Products. Clear Linux Departs Meanwhile, Intel—which has been rapidly pulling out of projects in a bid to save cash—pulled out of another project. The Clear Linux OS team has been shut down, and a 10-year tenure of open source development has been shuttered with it. Intel both developed and maintained the Clear Linux system, which was specifically optimized to run with Intel hardware. Clear Linux users, therefore, are advised that there will be no further security updates, and that they should move to other distributions to protect themselves. Is Intel a Buy, Hold or Sell? Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on INTC stock based on one Buy, 26 Holds and four Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 29.41% loss in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $21.98 per share implies 5.38% downside risk.
The Hindu
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
On definitive 20th century novels
Daily Quiz | On definitive 20th century novels Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit YOUR SCORE 0 /5 RETAKE THE QUIZ 1 / 5 | In this dystopian novel famous for its exploration of surveillance and totalitarianism — and which was published 35 years before the date in its title — what is the name of the omnipresent authoritarian leader symbolising oppressive control? DID YOU KNOW THE ANSWER? YES NO Answer : Big Brother SHOW ANSWER 2 / 5 | This novel has been celebrated for its critique of the 'American dream' during the Jazz Age. It was, however, a commercial failure when it was published in 1925. In its pages, name the mysterious millionaire known for lavish parties and his obsession with Daisy Buchanan. DID YOU KNOW THE ANSWER? YES NO Answer : Jay Gatsby SHOW ANSWER 3 / 5 | First published in 1967, the book quickly came to be hailed as one of the greatest achievements of literature worldwide. A landmark of magical realism, the book chronicles the Buendía family saga in what fictional town that symbolises isolation and cyclical history? DID YOU KNOW THE ANSWER? YES NO Answer : Macondo SHOW ANSWER 4 / 5 | Known for its satirical take on the absurdity of war, ________ is named for a paradoxical military rule in its plot that traps soldiers in a no-win situation. Fill in the blank with the book's name that has also entered regular use as a term of the English language. DID YOU KNOW THE ANSWER? YES NO Answer : Catch-22 SHOW ANSWER
Time of India
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
10 quirky literary masterpieces every student should read before college
Before academic syllabi teach you how to analyse literature, these ten quirky masterpieces teach you how to experience it. From absurdist novellas to comic sci-fi and meta-narratives, this curated list helps college-bound students reflect, laugh, and rethink what it means to read deeply. These are not books for grades — they're companions for growth, self-discovery, and unexpected joy. Before college teaches you how to dissect literature in a classroom, these books teach you how to live with literature. They are strange, layered, often hilarious, and quietly brilliant. books that do not just ask you to read but to reflect, pause, and sometimes, laugh at the absurdities of the world. Here's a reading list for students about to begin their college journeys curated not for completion but for contemplation. The Metamorphosis Author: Franz Kafka Genre: Absurdist fiction / Existential novella Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a bug. No explanation, no dramatics. His family reacts not with horror but inconvenience. Kafka does not offer comfort or clarity, and that's exactly the point. This slim novella challenges readers to grapple with alienation and identity in ways that feel eerily relevant to young adulthood. For students on the brink of entering a world that will repeatedly ask them to define their place, this is a haunting, essential first lesson. Catch-22 Author: Joseph Heller Genre: Satirical war novel This novel unfolds in the middle of a war, but the real battles are not just in the air, they're in the logic traps and contradictions of military life. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like You Can Make Massive Side Income By Learning Order Flow Analysis TradeWise Learn More Undo Every rule has a loophole, and every escape has a cost. The phrase Catch-22 has become a cultural shorthand for no-win situations, and Heller's work is its origin story. For students preparing to navigate university bureaucracy, this book is a clever and often dizzying primer on how systems break down and people cope within them. Slaughterhouse-Five Author: Kurt Vonnegut Genre: Science fiction / Metafiction Billy Pilgrim is 'unstuck in time.' He moves between his experiences as a soldier in World War II and moments with aliens on a distant planet. This sounds like science fiction, and it is, but it is also an anti-war novel, a meditation on grief, and a study of narrative form. Vonnegut's quiet refrain — 'so it goes', after every death teaches students a hard, necessary truth: life's chaos is often beyond understanding, and still, we must continue. Waiting for Godot Author: Samuel Beckett Genre: Absurdist drama / Existential play Two men wait on a road, Godot never comes. Not much happens, yet everything happens. Beckett's play is an academic favourite because it resists interpretation. For college-bound students, it offers early exposure to the complexities of meaning-making. What do we do while waiting for things we cannot control? Why do we keep going? These are questions that arrive early in college life. Beckett simply asks them sooner. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Author: Douglas Adams Genre: Comic science fiction Earth is destroyed in the first few pages and a man in a bathrobe is saved by a friend who turns out to be an alien. They travel across galaxies with nothing but a towel and dry wit. Douglas Adams's cult classic is wildly entertaining, but it is also sneakily philosophical. Beneath the absurdity is a gentle reminder that most of life's big questions do not have answers, and sometimes, the smartest thing to do is laugh while asking them anyway. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler Author: Italo Calvino Genre: Postmodern fiction / Metafiction This book begins with you, the reader, trying to read If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Then the book changes. Again, and again. Calvino crafts a literary puzzle where each chapter becomes a new story and a new voice. For students about to spend years reading critically, this novel is a bold introduction to meta-fiction and narrative experimentation. It gently destabilises traditional ideas of plot, identity, and authorship and does so with quiet charm. The Importance of Being Earnest Author: Oscar Wilde Genre: Comedy of manners / Satirical play Before sarcasm had a name, Wilde mastered it. This Victorian comedy of manners takes on double lives, mistaken identities, and the absurdity of social conventions. Every line is sharp, deliberate, and quotable. At just over an hour to read, it is brief but brilliant. Students stepping into adulthood will appreciate how Wilde pokes fun at what society expects one to do. One Hundred Essays I Don't Have Time to Write Author: Sarah Ruhl Genre: Essay collection / Literary non-fiction Ruhl is a playwright but in this collection, she becomes a thinker on everyday life. Her essays are short, observational, and surprisingly profound. Topics range from parenthood to punctuation. For students with shrinking attention spans and expanding workloads, this book models how intellectual reflection can thrive in fragments. It is a reminder that writing and thinking need not be long to be meaningful. Me Talk Pretty One Day Author: David Sedaris Genre: Humorous autobiographical essays Sedaris's essays on trying to learn French in Paris, coping with a lisp, and navigating eccentric family dynamics are deeply funny but never cruel. His humour disarms without dismissing the awkwardness of becoming an adult. For students anxious about entering new environments, Sedaris offers proof that vulnerability and wit can coexist, and even flourish. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Author: Mark Haddon Genre: Mystery / Coming-of-age fiction Told from the perspective of a teenage boy on the autism spectrum, this novel is part mystery, part coming-of-age story. Christopher wants to solve the case of a dead dog, what unfolds is a tender and mathematical journey through grief, truth, and emotional discovery. It is a necessary read for young adults learning to value different ways of seeing, thinking, and being. Before you begin reading This list is not about reading the longest books or the most awarded ones. It is about encountering voices that defy easy categorisation, about spending time with ideas that do not resolve neatly. In college, you will be taught how to write papers about literature. Before that, let literature write something to you. Something odd, something essential and something that stays. Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
Spectator
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
What we get wrong about modernism
In The Art of the Novel, Milan Kundera writes, witheringly: 'we must reckon with the modernism of fixed rules, the modernism of the university – establishment modernism, so to speak.' He is addressing the novels of Hermann Broch, which, he argues, don't fit the standardised mould. 'This establishment modernism, for instance, insists on the destruction of the novel form. In Broch's perspective, the possibilities of the novel form are far from being exhausted. Establishment modernism would have the novel do away with the artifice of character, which it claims is finally nothing but a mask pointlessly hiding the author's face. In Broch's characters, the author's self is undetectable.' Several comfortable, undisputed, widely accepted ideas about modernism are contradicted by the practice of leading modernists. Kundera is also sceptical about modernism's alleged clean break with the literature of the past. He is right. T.S. Eliot, too, has a more complicated view of the modern writer's relationship to the past: 'what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them.' What does this imply? You can only modify the literature of the past if you issue out of the literature of the past – if you develop an aspect latent in the literature of the past. Another instance: fragmentation of form. Joyce's Ulysses has an intricate plan of Homeric parallels. These are spelled out in the Linati schema – along with an organ, an art, a colour, a theme for each episode – released by Joyce to help his readers appreciate the novel's complex structure. The most fragmented section is Molly Bloom's (virtually) unpunctuated soliloquy, but its formlessness is dictated by a Homeric parallel – Penelope unravelling her tapestry every night, to postpone making a choice between her suitors, a decision to be taken once her tapestry is complete. The first world war is commonly assumed to be the midwife of modernism – a four-year cataclysm that is bound to have had a significant effect on literature. Malcolm Bradbury's introduction to Catch-22: 'War shattered older notions of art, of form and representation; it had transformed older notions of reality, the rules of perception, the structures of artistic expression. It fragmented, hardened, modernised the voice of modern fiction…' Funny how the hundred years' war, say, had so little effect on art. Bradbury, of course, can anticipate the obvious objection – inconvenient chronology – and he does so, raising his voice: 'It is true that the real avant-garde revolt of the modern had begun earlier in the century… Thus the avant-garde experiments of modern painting, writing, architecture and philosophy, and the powerful movements and campaigns that developed them (cubism, expressionism, futurism and so on), mostly came before the war. They upset the classic orders of the arts, broke the frame of realism, rendered art neo-mechanical, fragmentary and abstract. But it took the war itself to ensure the inevitability of their revolt (my italics).' Good to know the first world war was multitasking – not just killing millions and redrawing the borders of Europe, but making a contribution to the arts in its spare time. Two points. Picasso's 'Les demoiselles d'Avignon' was painted in 1907. This is Ezra Pound writing to Harriet Monroe about Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock': 'He has actually trained himself and modernised himself on his own… It is such a comfort to meet a man and not to have to tell him to wash his face, wipe his feet, and remember the date (1914) on the calendar.' The war, then, is definitively late to the party. About 'Prufrock', E.M. Forster had this to say in 1928: 'Here was a protest, and a feeble one, and the more congenial for being feeble. For what, in that world of gigantic horror, was tolerable except for the slighter gestures of dissent? He who measured himself against the war, who drew himself to his full height, as it were, and said to Armadillo-Armageddon 'Avaunt!' collapsed at once into a pinch of dust. But he who could turn aside to complain of ladies and drawing rooms preserved a tiny drop of our self-respect, he carried on the human heritage.' The first world war comprehensively snubbed. Academics, from George Steiner to Helen Gardner, have a weakness for the ramped rhetoric of thought, for bigging things up. Gardner's reading of Prufrock's 'overwhelming question': 'The question that Mr Prufrock dare not ask is only superficially the kind of question which one 'pops'. There is another question all the time, which every other question depends on.' Which is? She doesn't tell us: 'we are aware of the 'sense of the abyss'. There is an 'overwhelming question', which is not being asked; which one dare not ask, for perhaps there is no answer or only such an answer as it would be better not to know…' A question so polyamorphous that, as Eric Morecambe used to say, 'There's no answer to that.'
