March / War Reading: "Catch 22"

[Sapphire]

but rumour has it that it's a funny read

It depends all on your sense of humour: if you think sarcasm and reasoning overly logical (going into the ridiculous) is funny, it is indeed a funny read. Otherwise, it might be a bit harsh.

There are so many characters, it's difficult to keep track of who's who

I often have that problem, especially when the story does not grab me immediately. I did not have it with this book... I guess it depends on how much you want to read this book: if you think you might grow to enjoy it you could just keep a note in your book with characters and some of their particulars. Or use this list: wiki can be useful .

I do not know how you can "get it". Maybe you could focus more on the current happenings, the dialogues that are being held, than try to follow it as a chronologous story? Not sure, just a thought .

[Drkshadow03]

Chapter 1 introduces us to the characters: Yossarian, Dunbar, the man in white, the Texan, the chaplain, and a few others. The fact that we have so many characters in the opening hints that the book will cover a large cast throughout.

We begin with homoerotic overtones. Immediately we have our first Catch-22 situation: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Not quite jaundice, but sick enough not to discharge him either. Status quo is maintained.

The story off the bat seems to be making fun of government and bureacracy. The doctors and nurses are robots. They would rather a patient get horribly sick so they can operate than just hang in limbo. We see this view expressed again with the firefighters. They would rather the building burn down so they can do something than for it to spontaneously end itself and have nothing to keep themselves occupied. The bureacrats themselves send an agent to find out who is writing fake letters. However, they only get their feathers ruffled when Yossarian writes on the outside of the envelope; they don't seem to care what he does to the actual letters. All the rules must be followed to the dotted "i." The point so far seems to be that these sort of bureacratic people forget the true purpose and spirit of their jobs and instead become obsessed with the routine and rules and regulation.

The fact that the patients are faking their sickness suggests this work may deal with illusion, acting, fakery of human relations--the masks we put on when interacting with each other. Always a sense of irony. "The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him." While the irony is delicious, I don't think Heller is playing up the irony for irony's sake. His point here seems to be that people dislike good-natured, friendly, and likeable people perhaps because it reveals the shortcomings of ourselves when we are around such people or we prefer people who are rude jerks or uncomfortable and awkward. Compare the Texan's generally gregarious outspoken self to the Chaplain who Yossarian falls in love with. The Chaplian is a stammering confused idiot. The Texan also seems to be a stereotypical Texan, larger than life, spouting patriotic gibberish, and half-baked ideals about America.

I love the part when Yossarian is talking to the Chaplain and warns him against going into the other ward because all those people are insane and insanity is contagious. I'm not a hundred percent sure what to make of those comments beyond the superficial reaction.

The Censoring of the letters seems to follow a pattern. The first couple of methods of censoring has him symbolically still fighting the war. We begin wars by censoring language: Hey, you speak the wrong language so I'm going to have to fight you. Then he erases the people signing the letters, crushing their identities. Then he attacks their cities and streets as he puts it.

So far I'm intrigued. I can already tell that as much as I get, I am also going to miss a lot. This book will probably require a re-read in the future with the assistance of some criticism.

If I had to predict what this novel will be about from the opening chapter, I suspect thematically it will poke fun at bureacracy; the irony, humor, and ridiculousness of war; and the ridiculous and idiocy of people and their personalities in general.

Those are some of my thoughts upon reading the first chapter.

[Quark]

I'm not a hundred percent sure what to make of those comments beyond the superficial reaction.

It's good to see that you guys are trying to push past the obvious, but don't completely discount those superficial reactions. There are some great ones, after all. Many of the chapter are pretty hilarious. "The Man Who Saw Everything Twice" is probably my favorite. Even if you give up on the book I would at least read that part.

[Wilde woman]

There are so many characters, it's difficult to keep track of who's who, and it's not engaging enough for me to back track and figure it out when I get lost.

In Heller's defense, the point of the novel is not to develop every single character into a complex, rounded portrait. The point of having such a big cast is to, I think, show how the bureaucracy of war dehumanizes everyone, regardless of their background. Hence you've got religious people like the Chaplain, machievellians like Milo Minderbinder, Ph.Ds like Doc Daneeka, ethnic minorities like Crazy Joe, and even regular old joes like Major Major equally messed-up.

As for the structure of the novel, its cyclical nature is exactly what makes it IMO so great. Every time you cycle back you learn something you didn't know the first time around, or see an important event from someone else's POV. It's true it takes work to keep track of everything, but the book ultimately rewards you in the end.

Heller's humor is not to everyone's liking and I hear a lot of people actually find Catch-22 less funny on their second or third read-throughs. I don't think it's your typical laugh-out-loud type of humor, but a darker humor hinging on the absolute tragic absurdity of the situation these men are caught in. Some of the humor works better on screen than on the page. I personally think it's one of the greatest novels in the English language, but admittedly it's not an easy read.

[havepeace09]

Interesting comments, all.

After posting my post, I spent the weekend with my father-in-law (a former soldier of fortune, true story!) and I asked him what he thought of the book. He enjoyed having read it way back when, and for him, having lived through Viet Nam (and participated) it had particular resonance for its obvious indictment on war as industry...

IMO, for so many people to laud this book, it has its place in the Canon, and I would like to re-read the 40+ pages when I'm ready to take notes, as suggested (as did father-in-law), and perhaps approach this book as an excercise rather than a pleasure read.

But for the meantime, I've set it aside until such time I'm ready to put some energy into it. Decided to pick up some Saul Bellow, and it tastes like dessert

[Drkshadow03]

I was surprised at how serious the tone gets towards the end of the novel. There is a distinct shift from over-the-top ridiculousness used for comic effect and the complete abscence of the violent brutality of war that characterizes so many other anti-War novels to a serious, depressing, melancholy tone at the end. We even start seeing violent deaths. Colonel Cathcart and Korn felt like opportunists and nitwits in the first half, but towards the end they almost take on a dimension of pure evil.

------------------------------------------------------------------

My official blog entry of Catch-22.

[win]

I have been meaning to re-read it for ages - will start now I have found some fellow-travellers. My all-time favourite anti-war book

from win

[Dionido]

Catch-22 is definitely one those books that stands apart from others for the impression it left on me. I was truly fascinated by what I like to think of as a "comic epic". Epic, because Heller created a giant picture made up of many side-plots, memorable characters, spanning over a long period of time (even though I don't think it specifies how long in the novel), and all of it held together by the presence of our highly likeable hero, John Yossarian. And all this with the obvious antiphrastic intention of ridiculising the futility of war and society in general. Yossarian, from the beginning, is presented as one of the very few to have a clear view of how things truly are and in fact our hero is frequently defined as "crazy" by the various authorities (this is a very old concept; the "fool" as the only one to be free; see Hamlet, La Casa de Bernarda Alba, and others I can't think of).

Also, Heller's genius in using irony just kept me smiling through the whole book. I found it irresistible.
But it's interesting how in a few occasions Heller lets that irony fall, and clearly exposes the pure brutality of war, for example in the recurring descriptions of Snowden's death, that assume an almost dream-like vividness as throughout the novel we get a more complete image of the scene ("I'm cold"). This technique gives these images an incredible dramatic (actually almost poetic I find) strength, since they're in such stark contrast with the satirical prose whith which they are seamlessly bound.


Btw, I posted this also on the general literature forum

[dfloyd]

although I don't believe Heller invented the phrase "Catch 22". This was used in the service long before Heller's book. The movie is good, but doesn't quite come up to the book, although I did like Bob Newhart as Major Major. If you can't keep track of the characters in this book, you better never read Dostoevsky.

[kev67]

I have re-started reading this after a break of about thirty-two years. I was in hospital the last time having my adenoids taken out. I am enjoying it more than I did last time, although parsing through all the double negatives can get a bit tedious. It reminds me a lot of M.A.S.H. The characters are a similar mix of wiseguys and stiffs. Yossarian reminds me of both Hawkeye and Corporal Clinger: Hawkeye from his sense of humour, Clinger from his schemes to get out the air force.

I used to be interested in WW2 aircraft. I did not know the Bombardier was in command of the bomber during the bombing run. I thought the pilot was always in charge, but not always it seems. I looked up Yossarian's complaint that there was no escape hatch in the bombardier's area in my 20 volume Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft. The cut-out drawing showed an escape hatch in the Bombardier's area, but the cutout was of the B25J version of the North American Mitchell. I think Yossarian may have been flying in a B25B. Still it shows that command were not total idiots, and that recommendations for improvement were acted upon. I was interested that Heller writes about helicopters hovering over the sea where the aircraft carrying Clevinger has disappeared. I did not know helicopters were in use during WW2.

I read quite a lot about RAF Bomber Command in my teens. Crews had to fly two tours of thirty raids before being retired from the front line. iirc only 12% of crews got through the first tour and only 3% completed the second. Of those airmen who did not make it through both tours, about half baled out over enemy territory and were taken prisoner. A few airmen were badly injured and invalided out. Taking into account casualties during training, nearly 60% of airmen in Bomber Command were killed on duty. Despite that, it seems very few airmen attempted to avoid doing their tours, like Yossarian does. For a start, I think most airmen became very loyal to their crews. If a airman malingered in hospital, his crew would have to find a replacement, and he wouldn't want that. For another thing, airmen who showed signs of reluctance or mental breakdown could be marked down as L.M.F. (Lack of Moral Fibre). Most airmen would rather have died than take that disgrace. So Yossarian does not seem like a very typical airman. It could be that morale was broken by Colonel Cathcart continually increasing the number of raids his airmen had to do. I believe US aircrew on American heavy bombers usually had to complete twenty-five raids before being sent home. I read somewhere that Joseph Heller flew as a bombardier on Mitchell B25 bombers himself and completed sixty raids. Maybe Yossarian was someone Joseph Heller would have liked to have been like, but in actual fact wasn't.

[kev67]

I am definitely enjoying this more the second time around. The best character so far for me is Milo Minderbender. Someone who manages to make a profit selling eggs at 5c each while buying them at 7c each, basically by selling them to the vendors in the first place at 6c each when he'd bought them at 1c each. He uses the USAAF mess funds to buy his produce and USAAF aircraft and pilots to transport them, but because everyone has a share in the syndicate everyone's happy to go along with it. He doesn't think the government has any business interfering with commerce, but when he gets lumbered with a lot of cotton he can't sell, bribes the government to bale him out. Joseph Heller is not just a writer, he's a prophet.

[kev67]

In the last chapter I read, Yossarian and Dunbar sexually assault a nurse. I suppose that is the first thing Yossarian has done that a 21st century reader would not approve of. Then they chapter goes on to skewer psychotherapy.