Catch-22

Rating:
Summary: What did I miss?
Review: I forced myself through one hundred pages of this book and then I stopped. Nothing much was happening & I just had no interest in the characters or slow moving story line. Maybe the book picks up further a long, but I wasn't interested enough to read on. Maybe I missed something as the reviews for this book are most high.

Rating:
Summary: A stunning masterpiece on every level
Review: CATCH-22 is masterful in so many ways. It begins as comic farce, proceeds to the increasingly surreal, and then transforms into a nightmarish tragedy before ending triumphantly. No novel that I know so successfully blends all these disparate moods. I believe it was Hugh Walpole who wrote, "Life is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel." No book illustrates that better than this novel. This truly is one of the funniest books I have ever read. It is also one of the most tragic.

CATCH-22 also introduces one of the most insane collection of great characters in fiction: Yossarian, the Chaplain, Orr, ex-P.F.C Wintergreen, Milo Minderbender, Maj. Major Major Major, Nately, Doc Daneeka, Danby, General Dreedle, Nately's girl (not the description in the book, but Amazon's software will bleep it), Cathcart, Nurse Duckett, The Texan, Major ----- de Coverley, The Soldier in White, and a host of other characters. It is one of the most gloriously populated novels of the past half century.

This is a novel I can almost not discuss except through superlatives: greatest war novel I have read, funniest novel I have ever read, greatest English language novel of the past 40 years. But the best thing is that it is, on top of being a superb book, an exceedingly fun book to read. Even at its nightmarish, this is a fun, delightful book. And few novels contain as many unforgetable moments as this one.

Rating:
Summary: This book is one of a kind.
Review: I usually prefer the English classics (eg. Dickens, Austen, Brontes etc.),but thought due to a friend's recommendation that I would give this a go - it was well worth it. This book is unique, with its gently facetious humour and the darkness which becomes more and more prevelant as the novel moves on. A situation strikes you as hilariously funny in one part of the book, but later it is presented in a light which makes you feel incredibly guilty for laughing first time around. This book plays with your emotions on a grand scale.

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...