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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
Being a very avid fan of the show, I felt that A.) I completely failed as a fan for not knowing that the sitcom was based on a book, B.) I should be and I am ashamed, and C.) I expected to have a hard time adjusting to the differences between book and show. Instead, I actually enjoyed them.
I'm one of those people who watch M*A*S*H and then decide to might as well round out the experience by reading the book it was adapted from. I haven't gotten to the movie yet but I really want to, it's just my usual internet movie-snooping has let me down so I'll have to get it from the library like a grandma.
Funny story, the copy I read from the library was this little blue hardcover book, plain and simple and very neat, just the title and the author on the cover, one of 300 limited edition copies reprinted in 1976 "by Special Arrangement." Last year I had been lurking around the library looking for stuff to read and picked it up, and found out no one had checked it out in the whole time it's been at the library, which was rather sad. I was going to check it out to give it something to live for but I was stupid and honestly thought it was some kind of obscure Korean war medical-army textbook. It was only when I'd begun to watch the show during quarantine when I realized it was in fact fiction, and some pretty appealing fiction too, if the show was any guide to it.
It turned out it was some pretty appealing fiction, but as I'm sure many people have already said, the only similarities were the character names and the setting, 4077th MASH. Going in on that perspective, I kind of just read it as simply a book about a M*A*S*H in Korea.
That being said, the stark difference between the book and the tv adaptation actually made the beginning of the book even more entertaining to read. As the characters were introduced I took it in stride, but when I compared some of them to their adaptation counterparts it just made it pretty funny.
For a couple characters the inspiration is definitely there- I think the show just built off them, which is all good. However, that expectation could have made the characters seem less well-rounded to me? As I've seen the characters after seasons worth of character development done, more than could be done for a random corporal in a certain little blue book.
Yes I'm talking about Radar O'Reilly, secretary and resident psychic soft-boy of the 4077. As far as I can tell, without having seen the movie, there are three different versions of Radar. Maybe 3.5 but I'll get to that.
In the book he was actually epic- His psychic abilities were amped up and he became a literal radio signal and could detect anything anywhere. He also did that great thing where he kept popping up just as Henry calls him over and scaring the shit out of him, which is one of my favorite character interactions in the show. In literary version, I am very happy to report it is just as funny.
In the movie, I assume he is basically Radar from the early seasons. In the tv show, Radar from the early seasons is actually my favorite Radar- He keeps that psychic secretary stuff up really well, and seems older, his voice even being deeper. He's like some kind of weird force subtly backing stuff up, which is an interesting angle I took from about the first 3 episodes where the show was still finding it's adaption style. Eventually Radar took his place as both the beloved teenage son of Hawkeye and Trapper and the overworked psychic secretary of the outfit, but I think his whole arc from book to movie to early show to later show is a cool little corner of the adaptations.
As for the book itself-I'm contradicting myself by comparing it to it's adaptions- I thought it was pretty funny. The first half especially was really excellent- I really liked the funny lil vignette style, the style I've come to love so much I made a bookshelf for it. (Though I'm pretty sure the timeline is linear.)
In these early chapters we're introduced to a character that intrigued me immediately- I'll call him alt-Trapper. Show-Trapper is a big lovable curly-haired mischievous clown who lurks around with Hawkeye but is very nice and good. alt-Trapper, on the other hand, is a weird little clusterfuck.
He lived in a parka and absorbed beer before anyone recognized him as some guy famous for trapping a woman on a train and raping her. From there he joins the cool kid's crew immediately, because rape is (very very not) super cool and fun. This is what I mean by clusterfuck. The rest of the book he's kind of a weird quiet guy who will join in dialogue to have someone to keep it up.
alt-Trapper is very strange. The others also have alts but I've already gone over Trapper and Radar and the rest aren't very exceptional.
Getting back to the book- I also really liked the writing style. I put in an update when I first started about how it reminded me of that distinctive fairy tale style writing- it didn't embellish it's sentences, it stated character names and dialogue very clearly, and the only time it went off from the story was to very nicely and simply explain medical procedures the surgeons were doing at the time.
So overall, it was a weird little collection of stories. Read it in the context of being a fan of the tv show adaption and you get even more fun out of it.
Funny story, the copy I read from the library was this little blue hardcover book, plain and simple and very neat, just the title and the author on the cover, one of 300 limited edition copies reprinted in 1976 "by Special Arrangement." Last year I had been lurking around the library looking for stuff to read and picked it up, and found out no one had checked it out in the whole time it's been at the library, which was rather sad. I was going to check it out to give it something to live for but I was stupid and honestly thought it was some kind of obscure Korean war medical-army textbook. It was only when I'd begun to watch the show during quarantine when I realized it was in fact fiction, and some pretty appealing fiction too, if the show was any guide to it.
It turned out it was some pretty appealing fiction, but as I'm sure many people have already said, the only similarities were the character names and the setting, 4077th MASH. Going in on that perspective, I kind of just read it as simply a book about a M*A*S*H in Korea.
That being said, the stark difference between the book and the tv adaptation actually made the beginning of the book even more entertaining to read. As the characters were introduced I took it in stride, but when I compared some of them to their adaptation counterparts it just made it pretty funny.
For a couple characters the inspiration is definitely there- I think the show just built off them, which is all good. However, that expectation could have made the characters seem less well-rounded to me? As I've seen the characters after seasons worth of character development done, more than could be done for a random corporal in a certain little blue book.
Yes I'm talking about Radar O'Reilly, secretary and resident psychic soft-boy of the 4077. As far as I can tell, without having seen the movie, there are three different versions of Radar. Maybe 3.5 but I'll get to that.
In the book he was actually epic- His psychic abilities were amped up and he became a literal radio signal and could detect anything anywhere. He also did that great thing where he kept popping up just as Henry calls him over and scaring the shit out of him, which is one of my favorite character interactions in the show. In literary version, I am very happy to report it is just as funny.
In the movie, I assume he is basically Radar from the early seasons. In the tv show, Radar from the early seasons is actually my favorite Radar- He keeps that psychic secretary stuff up really well, and seems older, his voice even being deeper. He's like some kind of weird force subtly backing stuff up, which is an interesting angle I took from about the first 3 episodes where the show was still finding it's adaption style. Eventually Radar took his place as both the beloved teenage son of Hawkeye and Trapper and the overworked psychic secretary of the outfit, but I think his whole arc from book to movie to early show to later show is a cool little corner of the adaptations.
As for the book itself-I'm contradicting myself by comparing it to it's adaptions- I thought it was pretty funny. The first half especially was really excellent- I really liked the funny lil vignette style, the style I've come to love so much I made a bookshelf for it. (Though I'm pretty sure the timeline is linear.)
In these early chapters we're introduced to a character that intrigued me immediately- I'll call him alt-Trapper. Show-Trapper is a big lovable curly-haired mischievous clown who lurks around with Hawkeye but is very nice and good. alt-Trapper, on the other hand, is a weird little clusterfuck.
He lived in a parka and absorbed beer before anyone recognized him as some guy famous for trapping a woman on a train and raping her. From there he joins the cool kid's crew immediately, because rape is (very very not) super cool and fun. This is what I mean by clusterfuck. The rest of the book he's kind of a weird quiet guy who will join in dialogue to have someone to keep it up.
alt-Trapper is very strange. The others also have alts but I've already gone over Trapper and Radar and the rest aren't very exceptional.
Getting back to the book- I also really liked the writing style. I put in an update when I first started about how it reminded me of that distinctive fairy tale style writing- it didn't embellish it's sentences, it stated character names and dialogue very clearly, and the only time it went off from the story was to very nicely and simply explain medical procedures the surgeons were doing at the time.
So overall, it was a weird little collection of stories. Read it in the context of being a fan of the tv show adaption and you get even more fun out of it.
adventurous
dark
funny
informative
sad
fast-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I absolutely loved this book.
It was fun and thought provoking
Reminiscent of the show that it inspired
It was fun and thought provoking
Reminiscent of the show that it inspired
Its no Catch-22, but it was fun to "see" those characters again (I grew up on the MASH reruns).
dark
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I found this book far tamer than the movie and a decent bit tamer than even the TV show. It’s hard to take the book on its own merits without constantly running ever character and action through that filter, but it was entertaining. Knowing the book took 11 years of collaboration between “Richard Hooker” and WC Heinz brings home the difficulty of writing a war book when you’ve participated in said war.
Not fabulous, and I'm not sure I would call it a novel (it's more of a bunch of loosely related incidents featuring the same characters), but it was interesting to see the origins of the long-running TV show. It did show some facets of the war that the show was never able to get across, like the youth of the doctors and that for the surgeons, it alternated between utter boredom and utter insanity. I understood the heat more, too. So all in all, not a bad read, but not a must-read, even for fans of the show.