Review of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Title: Clever satire in spots but too long and repetitive, then mean
I waited too long to read this novel. I wanted to like it more than I did. I'm in my early 50's. I think if I'd read it in my early 20's, or really late teens, without much life experience at all--and during the 1970s--I would have thought much better of it (probably not; I was old at 15). As it is, I come to this novel now with my own books and poetry published and much of life lived already, and here nearly halfway into the 2010s--and enough experiences to fill two lives or more. Experience colors perspective. Of course.
I won't get into plot details here. What little there are. I'm just providing some feedback after reading the book, and my take on things based on my perspective.
I've not a veteran; my experience comes from sitting down and talking in-depth with many veterans (special operators among them) about their service and combat experiences, from WW2 to Iraq (and several other locales in between). My father served 2 and a half years in the Pacific Theater during WW2 and was awarded four bronze service stars. I've talked with and listened to men relate their experiences of losing limbs and watching men die in combat alongside them. I know much more than the average non-military person about the meaning of the words loyalty, duty, respect, service, honor, discipline, and personal courage. These are traits mocked and denigrated in this novel, and these are traits that are mocked and denigrated in our popular culture today.
I told you that as preface to telling you this: Catch-22 is a funny (satirical and absurdist) novel in some little bits, but it's also a tedious and repetitive novel. I agree with Norman Mailer's assessment in an essay in my copy of the 50th anniversary edition that you could remove 100 pages from the middle of Catch-22 and you wouldn't notice as a reader; and, jokingly Mailer writes, neither would Heller: "not even the author could be certain they were gone."
By the time I'd read to page 125 I'd read all of what Heller had to give stylistically, primarily (more later). That is: each of the chapters from that point on presents essentially the same thing: a character, a little plot detail (what little narrative arc there is) to link to the greater "plot," then a self-contained "story" (really just a slice of life experience of that chapter's sort-of main character). In other words, as Mailer points out: Cut 100 pages in the middle and you've lost nothing of the experience of the novel.
As the novel progresses it becomes bitter and even mean-spirited. Heller lets loose in certain parts of the novel, showing his absurd anti-war sentiments. (Similar to John Lennon's dangerously childish and naive Utopian cult hit "Imagine.") You'll also get this from the extra material in the back of the 50th anniversary edition. Heller absolutely hated war. At all costs. His fictionalized account of American fighter planes strafing Americans is not funny, it's twisted. Read Heller's essay "Reeling in Catch-22" to see what the man really thought. How there was in the 1960s a "change in spirit, a new spirit of healthy irreverence." He goes on to call "Americanism....horsesh**." How it doesn't work. How it's not true. I wanted to say, Really, Mr. Heller? Well, I have a friend who served 2 years in a Chinese re-education camp who came to the U.S. who thinks, pretty much, exactly the opposite as you do. Or read Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Heller's attitude gels with Utopian peaceniks of the 1960s. It doesn't work so well in the modern realities of Russian gulags and Chinese re-education camps. And the post-modern world of new Islamic jihadist caliphates.
So, for me, where this novel fails miserably is when Heller is tearing down the appropriateness and necessity of war, and when he treads into bitter, completely absurd territory. In some spots I actually was pissed off at how the character Yossarian places other men in danger because of his actions, because he doesn't want to do his duty. That's beyond cowardly; it's not at all funny; it's inhuman.
Having said all that I will say this: I did enjoy portions of the book. Heller's take on the absurdities of the military bureaucracy are funny. There are laugh-out-loud moments, mostly early on, but as the novel goes on the humor lessens and the dreariness and repetitiveness and absurdity settles in and all around. Commanding officers up and down the chain are idiots and worthy of contempt. It wears thin after a while.
Back to my "more later" comment above: Curiously, the final 50 pages of the book are written in a serious (not completely absurdist-satirist) tone. Then the last 5 pages returns to Yossarian's nuttiness. The end.
During the Vietnam War this novel may have served its purpose to give some Americans what they thought they needed: an alternative "narrative" to what they thought America represented. At least what it represented to them living in their cocooned lives out in suburbia. Here we stand at the end of American empire in the first decade of the 21st century, and the novel reads to me like a child stomping its feet in front of its parents about how unfair the world is and how mummy and daddy don't know nothing about nothing and about how everything would be alright if only we could all play nice.
Here's a news flash, Mr. Heller: Life's not fair. The world doesn't care about you. Life doesn't owe you anything. Very often you are asked to look outside yourself and give yourself to something society deems the greater good; this is called real life. There is evil in this world. That's why there's no playing nice. And sociopaths (and a**holes) are at the top because their personalities give them the skills to stomp on good and just people's heads to get there, and stay there. That's the way it is.
If there's an analogy to be made in the movie world, it may be this: Catch-22 is to "war" what Office Space is to "the job". Both poke fun at the "insanity" of their environments by using exaggeration, but we all know that's not how it really is. At least, we should know.
It's OK:
3/5 on Amazon
2/5 on Goodreads
I waited too long to read this novel. I wanted to like it more than I did. I'm in my early 50's. I think if I'd read it in my early 20's, or really late teens, without much life experience at all--and during the 1970s--I would have thought much better of it (probably not; I was old at 15). As it is, I come to this novel now with my own books and poetry published and much of life lived already, and here nearly halfway into the 2010s--and enough experiences to fill two lives or more. Experience colors perspective. Of course.
I won't get into plot details here. What little there are. I'm just providing some feedback after reading the book, and my take on things based on my perspective.
I've not a veteran; my experience comes from sitting down and talking in-depth with many veterans (special operators among them) about their service and combat experiences, from WW2 to Iraq (and several other locales in between). My father served 2 and a half years in the Pacific Theater during WW2 and was awarded four bronze service stars. I've talked with and listened to men relate their experiences of losing limbs and watching men die in combat alongside them. I know much more than the average non-military person about the meaning of the words loyalty, duty, respect, service, honor, discipline, and personal courage. These are traits mocked and denigrated in this novel, and these are traits that are mocked and denigrated in our popular culture today.
I told you that as preface to telling you this: Catch-22 is a funny (satirical and absurdist) novel in some little bits, but it's also a tedious and repetitive novel. I agree with Norman Mailer's assessment in an essay in my copy of the 50th anniversary edition that you could remove 100 pages from the middle of Catch-22 and you wouldn't notice as a reader; and, jokingly Mailer writes, neither would Heller: "not even the author could be certain they were gone."
By the time I'd read to page 125 I'd read all of what Heller had to give stylistically, primarily (more later). That is: each of the chapters from that point on presents essentially the same thing: a character, a little plot detail (what little narrative arc there is) to link to the greater "plot," then a self-contained "story" (really just a slice of life experience of that chapter's sort-of main character). In other words, as Mailer points out: Cut 100 pages in the middle and you've lost nothing of the experience of the novel.
As the novel progresses it becomes bitter and even mean-spirited. Heller lets loose in certain parts of the novel, showing his absurd anti-war sentiments. (Similar to John Lennon's dangerously childish and naive Utopian cult hit "Imagine.") You'll also get this from the extra material in the back of the 50th anniversary edition. Heller absolutely hated war. At all costs. His fictionalized account of American fighter planes strafing Americans is not funny, it's twisted. Read Heller's essay "Reeling in Catch-22" to see what the man really thought. How there was in the 1960s a "change in spirit, a new spirit of healthy irreverence." He goes on to call "Americanism....horsesh**." How it doesn't work. How it's not true. I wanted to say, Really, Mr. Heller? Well, I have a friend who served 2 years in a Chinese re-education camp who came to the U.S. who thinks, pretty much, exactly the opposite as you do. Or read Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Heller's attitude gels with Utopian peaceniks of the 1960s. It doesn't work so well in the modern realities of Russian gulags and Chinese re-education camps. And the post-modern world of new Islamic jihadist caliphates.
So, for me, where this novel fails miserably is when Heller is tearing down the appropriateness and necessity of war, and when he treads into bitter, completely absurd territory. In some spots I actually was pissed off at how the character Yossarian places other men in danger because of his actions, because he doesn't want to do his duty. That's beyond cowardly; it's not at all funny; it's inhuman.
Having said all that I will say this: I did enjoy portions of the book. Heller's take on the absurdities of the military bureaucracy are funny. There are laugh-out-loud moments, mostly early on, but as the novel goes on the humor lessens and the dreariness and repetitiveness and absurdity settles in and all around. Commanding officers up and down the chain are idiots and worthy of contempt. It wears thin after a while.
Back to my "more later" comment above: Curiously, the final 50 pages of the book are written in a serious (not completely absurdist-satirist) tone. Then the last 5 pages returns to Yossarian's nuttiness. The end.
During the Vietnam War this novel may have served its purpose to give some Americans what they thought they needed: an alternative "narrative" to what they thought America represented. At least what it represented to them living in their cocooned lives out in suburbia. Here we stand at the end of American empire in the first decade of the 21st century, and the novel reads to me like a child stomping its feet in front of its parents about how unfair the world is and how mummy and daddy don't know nothing about nothing and about how everything would be alright if only we could all play nice.
Here's a news flash, Mr. Heller: Life's not fair. The world doesn't care about you. Life doesn't owe you anything. Very often you are asked to look outside yourself and give yourself to something society deems the greater good; this is called real life. There is evil in this world. That's why there's no playing nice. And sociopaths (and a**holes) are at the top because their personalities give them the skills to stomp on good and just people's heads to get there, and stay there. That's the way it is.
If there's an analogy to be made in the movie world, it may be this: Catch-22 is to "war" what Office Space is to "the job". Both poke fun at the "insanity" of their environments by using exaggeration, but we all know that's not how it really is. At least, we should know.
It's OK:
3/5 on Amazon
2/5 on Goodreads
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