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Looking Back at Catch-22 2/6/2014 2:23:57 PM
Every now and then it's fun to catch up with one of those classic books that everybody knows, even if many haven't read it. This is my review of Catch-22. Reading an acknowledged classic like Catch-22 for the first time I approached it with what I thought was a certain familiarity with the subject matter, only to find myself surprised at how little of what went into the book I actually knew.
There's no need to explain what the famous Catch is; if you don't know it’s meaning by now then you've been asleep for decades. What surprised me was how the book was about so much more than the eponymous Catch. Page after page was filled with unrelenting, even scorching, criticism of the insanity of war and the ridiculousness of putting the lives of a generation of brave young men in the hands of vain, self-serving old men.
Heller’s style can be challenging for some, as there is very little in the way of linear narrative, and even individual scenes often seem to have no beginning, middle or ending. Every military order, every briefing, every conversation, is turned into meaningless, circular arguments, where characters repeat themselves, speak past each other, intentionally misinterpret what they’re supposed to do, and thereby reveal how the lunatics are running the asylum, and the inmates are just sane enough to know they want to get home alive.
The flight squadron, around which the book revolves, is essentially forced to play Russian roulette: the more missions the pilots fly, the more likely some of them are to be killed, and most of them are very well aware of that, yet they are forced to continue flying. They hope and pray they can survive their quota of missions so they can be sent home, while their superiors compete with each other by regularly adding to the number of missions that have to be flown. As the number of missions keeps mounting, and the number of pilots getting killed keeps growing, the survivors are driven to desperation, and desperate measures, each time they think they’ve approached the finish line, only to see it stretched further ahead.
Heller presents a huge cast of characters, each one crazy in his own way. It takes a while to figure out who’s who, but eventually each one develops a distinguishing trait or theme, which informs their characters through-out the book: Yossarian is obsessed with the idea that people, including the enemy, may be out to kill him ; Major Major, the squadron leader, can’t stand facing any of his men, so he sets up a system where they can only have appointments with him when he’s not there; Milo Minderbinder, the entrepreneur, buys and sells from anyone, including the Germans, all in the name of making a good deal; Nately is so in love with an Italian prostitute that he wants to keep flying missions for fear of otherwise being sent back home; and so many others. The story, such as it is, jumps back and forth over a period of several months, with scenes and characters popping in and out seemingly at random, always stressing the total ridiculousness of the lives that are being led, as well as the arbitrariness, and suddenness, of the deaths that occur. Many things that happen defy logic, if not plain probability, but that is par for the course in a book that sometimes is unabashedly silly, while at the same time deadly serious in its message.
The book is frustrating at times in the way scenes veer off into unexpected territory, and almost incomprehensible in some of its loopy dialogue, but that’s what makes it so successful, leaving the reader feeling the frustration of the characters, and understanding just why it is they’re going crazy.
This review first appeared on Amazon.com at:http://www.amazon.com/review/R3EBCI9FDYUVV8
