Book Review (Rucksack): Catch-22

Catch-22

Written by Joseph Heller in 1961

The Raccoon: The non-linear writing of Catch-22 mocks the stupidity of war as it tells the story of air force pilot Captain John Yossarian and his desperate efforts to be sent home.

UNMASKED: Catch-22 reads like the ramblings of a madman, which is precisely why it’s so compelling.  Heller is trying to convince us that war is unnecessary and irrational, and, as I explored Heller’s imagined U.S. Army base on Pianosa, the message became more and more clear.

Every character is fundamentally disturbed in some way, and even the simplest conversations made me laugh as I watched these crazy personalities collide.  The individual chapters dedicated to certain characters go even further into the skewed logic that they each possess.  The most memorable of these is the saga of Milo, the personification of capitalism, who has three chapters named for him that describe the rise and fall of his market syndicate.  Heller sets this up with a conversation in which Milo explains how he buys eggs for seven cents apiece and sells them for five cents apiece, yet makes a profit because he smuggles them into another city to sell to himself, and the arc evolves into Milo fighting battles from both the American and German sides to make money from each army separately.

Among the multi-layered satire, however, Catch-22 holds a disturbing lesson.  The law of Catch-22 itself, appearing repeatedly as Yossarian’s main obstacle, reveals the power of fear and how the government utilizes it to further its own ends.

Strong Points:

• Heller knows when the humor has to stop to avoid disrespecting the trauma of war.
• All of our grievances with the government are addressed and justified.

Weak Points:

• Almost all of the characters are clearly defined as good or bad, and several of the officers lack depth.
• The writing style of Catch-22 is identical to Neal Shusterman’s Challenger Deep, with Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as a close sibling. Having previously read the other two, the humor was too repetitive for me to fully enjoy this one, and I warn you not to oversaturate this type of humor.
• Many conflicts are left unresolved.

Rating: 17/20 /35/50/80 missions

Ideal Setting: Read this after your girlfriend claims to have no preference for dinner, then rejects every one of your ideas. Or when your boyfriend complains that you took too long to get ready, but somehow he didn't find the time to put on something more presentable than yesterday's shirt and the sneakers he’s had since college. Your buddy Joseph Heller gets that.