by Joseph Heller
p. 1961
Catch-22 strikes
me as one of those books that you either love or you hate. Having heard glowing
praise for it over the years, I had high hopes finally sitting down to conquer
this 450-page beast, and I’m sorry to say my feelings gravitate more towards the
latter sentiment.
I wanted to like Catch-22,
I really did. It’s clever and witty and has a lot of interesting quotable bits
that stick with you, but there were too many things I couldn’t get past.
There isn’t really a plot to Catch-22, per se. It’s a war novel and it’s not. While it does
indeed take place entirely in a World War II setting and revolve around themes
of war, it doesn’t dwell on those themes and you could almost lift those
elements out and still have the same novel. It is a loosely connected,
non-sequential collection of stories revolving around the random, often absurd
experiences of Captain Yossarian and his friends and superiors as they navigate
a war none of them really understand their part in.
Since a majority of the chapters are named after a specific
character in Yossarian’s realm, I assumed early on that this would be a
character-driven book, and perhaps in some people’s opinions, it is, but I had
a difficult time differentiating between characters since they all generally
followed one of two types: either they were naive pushovers or blustering,
bombastic jerks and no matter which division they landed in, they were sure to
be totally oblivious. That last commonality is at least excusable to me, since
one of Catch-22’s central themes is
the nonsensical side of war. Everyone, no matter how high they were in a
position of power, usually had no idea what was going on and just pretended as
though they did to get by. I wanted to like the characters, and by the end of
the story, some had stood out enough for me to start caring about them, so of
course at that point everyone was summarily killed in a nonsensical way that had little to nothing to do with actual combat. Just
when I was starting to like them.
My other major gripe with Heller’s classic is the writing
style he chose. It’s not the non-chronological presentation that bothers me—some
times parsing out the order of things can be half the fun of discovering a new
story—but rather the rambling, repetitive, stream-of-consciousness aspect of
the book. Stream of consciousness is hit or miss in general, but the seeming
lack of direction was concerning about 100 pages in when I realized I still had
no idea what type of novel I was reading.
The repetition in the dialogue was amusing for a few pages but about the
50th time I read the exchange between an officer and an enlisted man
where neither side spoke clearly, I started to wonder if I was reading the
literary equivalent of a 3 Stooges bit.
Catch-22 is the
first book I’ve encountered this year that I really struggled to get through.
It’s extremely frustrating and not the least bit direct. I despised most of the
characters and those that amused me didn’t seem to have a point. The abrupt
change in tone in the final ten chapters or so was jarring and didn’t sit well
with me either. Reading this book is more like listening to an old guy with
burgeoning dementia reminisce about the war; he may have some interesting
things to say, but he talks about things as he remembers them and rambles for
far too long about topics that have no relevance.
I will contend that I may not have fully understood this
novel, impatient as I was to breeze through it about halfway in, when I realized I wasn't enjoying it. I’ve heard
that some people who hated Catch-22 the first time loved it the second time around
and maybe that’ll be me, but I’m giving myself a wide berth before I attempt
this one again. On the other hand, perhaps Heller’s style of writing is just
not for me and no amount of time will get me to look back on this one fondly. I
guess I’ll just have to get back to you on this one.
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