Catch 22

Rating:
Summary: A huge disappointment.
Review: Although literate, accessible, and sometimes brilliantly written, the characters' lack of humanity blunt the force of Heller's satire. Ironic that a novel so beloved by the Sixties' generation contains no real individuals, just a batch of comically drawn stick figures cascading down an endless mudslide of absurdity.

Yossarian is a bore. A hero in his own right for having flown so many dangerous missions, he runs away from heroism to become an epic-slacker and whiner. It could be said that this slacking and whining is how Yossarian's dread of flying missions manifests itself. But could an airman, a bombadier who has seen and inflicted and endured so much suffering really act as he does, even given the book's absurd context? While Catch-22's fans may see him as an anti-hero, I see him simply as an anti-human.

The real disappointment for me, however, was that the book was not even sporadically funny. I've laughed out loud at the best of them--Twain, Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh--and nothing, not one single scene comes within puking distance of these masters. The mediocre Marx Brothers patter, the Keatonesque knockabout, and the ante-Stranglove absurdity are all recognizable and should amount to something--but they don't. It is like sitting through a four hour stand-up comedy routine where a skilled and ingenious performer does everything including painting his genitalia green and none of it adds up to funny. In this sense, Heller is a skillful and often ingenious storyteller, but he is not a particularly funny one.

Okay, now that I've dumped on Heller and laid my curmudgeonly, sourpuss opinions out there for you all to see, is there somewhere else where you can read a funny book about WWII? Yes, most definitely: Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honor trilogy. This book has everything working against its being funny: a dull central character (calling Guy Crouchback a hero would be a gross overstatement), a dreary, failed marriage, and lots of tedious training far from the heat of battle. But out of these unpromising situations, Waugh creates a story that is both uproarious and profoundly moving. Put his Apthorpe up against any of the martinet officers in Catch-22 and tell me who it is that makes you laugh the hardest. Yet, when Apthorpe dies unheroically in the second volume, I felt a sense of loss--something I never felt in Catch-22.

Rating:
Summary: The anti-establishment guide of the 20th century
Review: On the one hand, Catch-22 may be beating a dead horse under the circumstances that it is trying to convince the reader that not all soldiers serving during WW2 were perfect and that many were trying to escape their duty, but on the no-so-literal side, the book is an amazing insight into the twisted rules of most establishments and organizations, notably and especially those which are "American".

At a surface glance, Catch-22 appears to be about one Captain Yossarian, a navigator serving in Italy during World War 2 who is constantly trying to find ways to get out of combat and return home due to the fact that his commanding officer, Colonel Cathcart, is constantly raising the number of required bombing missions for each pilot. The context of the story follows Yossarian's various crazy attempts to escape the hellhole he is trapped in, as well as the insane antics of the other soldiers in his squadron and the numerous backstabbings and alliances that occur. By the time you reach the middle of the book, you'll be questioning if there is even one sane man in the entire squadron.

That is the surface look. When you look underneath that, Heller has taken all the loopholes and injustices of the military and served them up for any somewhat intelligent person to see and therefore to use, in order that they won't get themselves caught up in a net of contradictions and lies, essentially falling into the all American trap of joining the military. (Little did Heller know how many young men would do just that less than 20 years later in Vietnam.)

However, that is still not all. Under this second skin of the military lies an even deeper message that goes even beyond how distrustful and wicked the military can be, and that is the horrid truth that establishments all across the globe are using the same twisted procedures and insanely irrational rules to keep those who are a part of it in check. The fact that there is not only one message hidden under the surface of the plot, but an even deeper one embedded in that is truly genius, and I do not use that word lightly.

With the universal truth about establishments and their catch-22's (essentially a lose-lose situation), there are also many other messages in tow throughout the novel about the morality, decency, and existence of man. The chapter titled "Nately's Old Man" serves up a decent argument about war and the ultimate future of America and hereby all nations, and the chilling chapter "Snowden" brings the entire existence of man into question in a disturbing scene taking place during the death of a soldier on board a plane. Some may view Catch-22 as an irrelevant novel to anyone who wasn't alive in the 1950's due to its WW2 theme and overall plot, but deep down inside, theire is a truth to this novel which has stood the test of time. No true reader of literature would dare pass this up.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't Stand the Test of Time
Review: Mark Twain said that a classic is a book that everybody praises but nobody reads. I'd like to add that a classic is often praised now because it was praised in the past. Some classics are timeless and can make their point in any period, but others are useful for a certain amount of time then lose their effectiveness. "Catch-22" clearly falls into the second category. When this book was written back in the 50's it was necessary to give the world a reaction to the mythology of World War II. The soldiers in the war were still being worshipped as perfect humans with a perfect love for their country and unlimited bravery and courage to save the world. Surely some of the soldiers were not so perfect and that's what Joseph Heller shows us in this book. In the character of Yossarian, we have a WWII soldier who was not the epitome of courage, but a slacker and malcontent who did everything he could to get out of his duty. But Heller takes this way too far as the book becomes an extremely repetitive parade of soldiers who do nothing but try to weasel their way out of service or stab each other in the back; and officers who are inept bureaucrats who are under-qualified for their positions of authority and are focused on their own self-interest rather than winning the war. With this never-ending parade of idiots, Heller not only makes the statement that some of the fighting men in WWII were not up to the stereotypical ideal. He keeps on repeating the implication that they were ALL unworthy. He makes this point early on but fails to expand on it other than beating it to death repeatedly. While "Catch-22" is still useful as a good example of non-conformist and subversive literature, it has aged badly. Some "classics" are relevant in any time period, but the era in which this book's points were truly necessary is long gone.

Rating:
Summary: A clever novel
Review: Joseph Heller began work on Catch-22, the story of a US airman's attempts to survive the madness of the Second World War, shortly after returning from the conflict himself.

The book - tells the story of Captain Joseph Yossarian, a member of a US bomber crew stationed on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa. Yossarian is convinced that the military is trying to get him killed, and that those around him are insane, and he spends the book trying to get out of flying any more seemingly suicidal missions.

Yossarian is surrounded by a cast of bizarre characters, including Colonel Scheisskopf, obsessed with winning military parades at the expense of just about everything else, the newly promoted Major Major, who spends most of the war trying to hide from his men, and the profiteer Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, a pure capitalist whose only ambition is to make money out of the war, and who ends up charging a commission on every military engagement.

Using satire, black humour and seemingly undefeatable logic, the book argues that war is insane, that the military is insane, and that, quite probably, modern life itself is insane too.

As Yossarian struggles against the self-serving bureaucracy at the heart of the military machine, Heller argues that the individual will always struggle against the vested interests that control the world. And, perhaps, that madness is an entirely relevant reaction to this.

Yossarian's dilemma is summed up by "Catch-22" of the air force's code of practice, "which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind". What this means, as the book's Doc Daneeka explains to Yossarian of another flyer's situation, is that "Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to". In other words, the only sane reaction to war is to recognise its madness. But in doing so, and proving his sanity, Yossarian makes himself eligible to fight. As Yossarian puts it: "That's some catch, that Catch-22". The doctor, whose job is to save lives only so that they can be put in danger again, can only agree that "it's the best there is".

Rating:
Summary: Not Fiction But Fact
Review: This is not a work of fiction but the pure essence of reality. If you've ever been a part of a private sector organization (business), the military bureaucracy, or any federal, state of local governmental agency, then you have some, most, or all of the characteristics of some of the lunatics in this book. Which one(s) depends on who you, in your true self, really are. War is the setting, but this book is based on human organizational psychology. Yossarian was the lone sane person in this story, which is usually the case in real-life.

Rating:
Summary: Use of Flashback
Review: Can a writer create a classic work based on insanity? Can the way in which war is conducted be considered insane? Can insanity be fun? If you dare say yes to these questions, then you'll enjoy this classic novel, seemingly written from the inside out.

Writers often find the notion of flashback difficult, and if anything, Joseph L. Heller has endeared himself to us all by teaching us how to turn that dilemma into part and parcel in this masterpiece that is the Catch 22.

Rating:
Summary: The ultimate in paradoxyl humor - and Yossarin lives
Review: Catch 22 is a war book for people who love war, people who hate war, people who fear war, and people who don't particularly care about war. But most importantly, this is a book for people who have a sense of humor. Catch 22 is filled with ridiculous, unbelievable situations that make perfect sense. For example, a commander who wants to move up and therefore orders his men to fly more missions than are required - therein lies Catch 22 (or one version of it) - a man can leave because he finished his required missions, but he has to stay, otherwise he would be disobeying orders from a commanding officer. There is Milo, the self-perserving capitalist, Orr, who constantly crashes his plane, the Chaplain, who is afraid of everyone, and unsure about God, and many more. Basically, this book is about survival - living to tell the tale. And Yosseran does his best throughout the book. In his words, "he had decided to live forever or die in the attempt." So far, he's doing well...

Rating:
Summary: A Truly Great Book.
Review: This is a great book that should be re-read annually. It is a mordant and sarcastic black comedy that shows the folly of war and the foibles of that most bureaucratic institution of all, the U.S. military. In this time of a never-ending "War on Terrorism", this is a book that should be read by everyone.

Rating:
Summary: The Great American Novel
Review: Many have tried, but Joseph Heller went ahead and wrote the Great American Novel, Catch-22. If you haven't read it, please consider putting down whatever you are reading and dive into Catch-22 instead.
It's about war, sure, but more than that it's about how the mysterious thing we can Human Nature can make such a mess of things for us humans. Mr. Heller looks into the center of man and sees our fatal flaws and pours them out on page after page in an utterly hilarious way. No one has ever created so many memorable characters in a single book: Major Major Major Major, Colonel Cathcart, Milo Mindbender, and the center of this off-center universe, Captain Yossarian.

Read it, you'll like it. And, if you do, I also recommend most of the works of Kurt Vonnegut and my own first novel, Fate (by Mary Jane). Have a nice day.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed but Funny
Review: Catch-22 is damnably funny. But it suffers as Monty Python's "And Now For Something Completely Different" does - without a defined plot, it is incapable of sustaining a compelling narrative. Its midsection is bogged down with situations invented solely to amuse. It begins wonderfully and ends well, but the middle lays on the black comedy too thick. Heller tries too hard to be funny, and it turns repetitive, which makes it difficult to read all the way through.

There are many, many characters. For a comedy they fit their purpose, but as a novel some are simply superfluous, inflating an already long book to even longer proportions. Scheisskopf, for example, in addition to being needlessly vulgar (German for "s**t-head"), has no effect on the plot, nor influence on any characters. Had Heller exercised his right to excise, he could have safely clipped 100 pages. Do we need 2 separate chapters on Milo's escapades as a celebrated food smuggler? Ideas once fresh run foul by the final 3rd of the book's length.

Yet Catch-22 is brilliant, despite these surface flaws. The humor is definitely funny the characters memorable, if ersatz, and the rapport between soldiers seemingly real and certainly surreal. But only brilliant, not genius. Slaughterhouse-5 is genius - similarly, it paints World War 2 as absurd, poignant, and occasionally home to black humor, but Vonnegut's book dives deep into a few subjects while Catch-22 chooses to skim lightly over several.