Catch-22

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We have all taken the message from war novels and combat movies that war is Hell. Certainly this is a recurrent theme in a large chunk of American war literature that depicts the trauma and gruesome travesty of the entire enterprise. It wasn’t until the ‘60s –with the publication of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22- that the presiding images and tones of war novels were completely blown apart.

Catch-22 –now a commonplace term in the English language thanks to Heller- tells the story of aircraft Captain Yossarian who has become overexposed to the ideals of patriotism and a courage to do his duty for his country and has instead started to perceive the war as a personal attack on his life. In a determined effort to evade his missions he concocts a mission of his own: to get sent home… by any means.

If you have ever seen mind-screwing films coated in dramatic irony like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil or the Coen Brother’s Burn After Reading then you will love this book! Written in a delightfully chaotic and fast-paced tone –like meerkats on Redbull- it’s a very visual book chronicling a series of insane events while simultaneously looking at war from an entirely different point of view. 

As the book begins –with Yossarion in hospital faking liver complaints while the doctors wait for him to become diagnosable- there is this wonderful sense of fun in the face of the macabre. For a while it’s a bit reminiscent of M*A*S*H with a whole cast of hilarious and cartoonish characters dominating the scenes. However, amidst the pranks of the enlisted men and the petty and bumbling rivalries of the Majors, Colonels, and Generals there is this mischievously sinister undercurrent. Dr. Samuel Thomas summed it up perfectly in his contribution to Peter Boxall’s 1001 Books Your Must Read Before You Die:

“Heller presents war as a form of institutional insanity, a psychosis that overtakes the machinery of public and private life.”

The book turns away from traditional heroic war tropes and focuses on the war as a playground for psychological, social, and economical warfare where even your fellow Americans are out to get you. There is no character that you don’t hate, pity, or support at least once in the five hundred pages that brutally and wonderfully depict the awful and ironic catch-22 that they are all in.

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Amidst all its intelligent writing and scathing tones, it’s also a very immersive book in that you are transported to the medical tent or the chaplain’s tent or Major Major’s tent and can feel firsthand the frustration, anger, and dismay that plagues the characters. And it’s very easy to while away hours reading this as Heller’s non-linear timeline –that crashes into other ones running parallel- completely eradicates all sense of time passing.

War is Hell and Catch-22 –although wickedly funny in a horrifying and cringing way- is a wonderful depiction of it, being as crazy, bizarre, and irrational as the real thing.

Catch-22 was written by Joseph Heller and published by Simon & Schuster in 1961.