Catch 22

Catch 22 is considered by many to be the Greatest Novel of the 20th Century. That's a pretty big fair-dinkum call. I don't know if I could restrict myself to make such a call, but if I ever did make an assertion along those lines, Catch 22 might very well be it. It's that good. Not many books can claim to have had an impact on western society the way Catch 22 has. I mean, it invented the phrase and concept "catch 22'", and influenced a variety of texts from M.A.S.H. in the 60s and 70s to the more recent Buffalo Soldiers, and fuelled anti-war protests all over the world in subsequent decades. So c'mon, recognise!

The book begins as an episodic look at an American WW2 fighting squadron based in the Mediterranean just outside Italy. Our focus is Captain Yossarian, a man desperately trying to get out of the war. His nerves are shot from dropping bombs, and he is obsessed with the idea that people are trying to kill him (such is the point of war). He repeatedly tries to get himself thrown out of the airforce by acting crazy, but the squadron's doctor asserts that it would be crazy NOT to act crazy, and therefore Yossarian can't be crazy. This is the central catch 22 of the book, though the text is riddled with them as a means to portraying the illogical paradoxes of war.

Catch 22 devotes a lot of time to other characters on the squadron, a motley bunch of unhinged, tragic and/or hilarious characters whose personal stories overlap with Yossarian's and paint out the wider context of war's senselessness. As such, the plot doesn't really move beyond that, the book is more concerned with exploring themes and the fates of it's characters. Having said that though, it's final act is a masterful sequence that eventually leads to an awesome ending.

What begins as a comedy ends as the kind of tragedy where there isn't much one can do other than laugh. This kind of black humour would later be utilised for the popular books and TV series M.A.S.H., but it's in this book where it found it's legs. When it's funny it's laugh-out-loud stuff, propelled by great character dynamics and wit, but when it's serious it hits hard. This juxtaposition is what brings the horrors and tragic futility of war to the surface of the text in ways that few other books can match.

Predictably, Catch 22 was and remains a very controversial book. Joseph Heller really hit a goldmine with his ballsy and trailblazing attack on the war machine, and the fact that a lot of it was fuelled by his own personal experiences as a WW2 bombadier really rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way. This is one of the great novels, and all I have written about it in this blog is only the tip of the iceberg. This book could withstand a hundred re-reads. Go find a copy!