Bibliofreakblog

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

It’s been a while since I read this book.  I checked it out of the library with the expressed purpose of refreshing my memory and writing this post.  I also went and looked it up on Wikipedia, to help remember some of the funnier bits.  Reading the Wikipedia article is like being in on a bunch of really good inside jokes.  It’s good that nobody is home right now, because just remembering characters and story lines that I see on Wikipedia is a making me LOL for real.

Of course, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.  Or in this case, gets blowed up.  Or raped.  Or whatever…you know, it’s war.  But then, the characters move on, because like I said, it’s war, and then it’s all fun and games and silliness once more.  

The plot follows Yossarian, a WWII American bombardier, stationed in Italy, trying to wrap his head around, you got it, catch-22.  Catch 22 is many things.  Most importantly for Yossarian, it is the rule that the only way to get out of flying planes is to be crazy.  But You’d have to be crazy to fly a bomber.  But if you say that you are crazy, then obviously you are sane.  So the only way to prove that you are crazy is to say that you are sane and go fly the bomber.  Of course, that’s what the military wants you to do, so you’re not going to get grounded for that.

Accompanying Yossarian are several quirky characters with their own storylines–both dreadful and funny.  The story is told from their POV as well as Yossarian’s, all in a non-linear fashion.  Many of them will tell you different sides of the same story and sometimes the punch line doesn’t really pop up until a few chapters later.

But when it does, God, is it funny.

There’s so many jokes I want to say to entice people to read this book.  The problem is, I can only say little bits, which won’t really come off as that funny.  So instead, I’ve devised another solution. 

I’m going to list my little bits, with not enough to give anything away, but I am addressing not those who’ve not read the book, but those who have.  Then, those of you who haven’t read it will see us laughing, and want in on the joke.

So, remember:

• Major Major and Corporal Whitcomb forging documents with Washington Irving, Irving Washington, John Milton, and Milton John as names?  And the CID men who come–and want to kill each other?
• Milo Minderbinder’s syndicate, where everyone supposedly owns a piece and he’s practically worshipped in various parts of the Continent?
• Major —- de Covey, pronounced, Major [pause] de Covey?
• Scheisskopf’s love of parades?  And Mrs. Scheisskopf’s love of cadets?

OMG, I have to stop.  I’m afraid of spoilers, or literally falling over laughing.

If you like this book/author, you might like:

Closing Time (F) by Joseph Heller
The Good Soldier Švejk (F) by Jaroslav Hašek 
Slaughterhouse-Five (F) by Kurt Vonnegut
A Farewell to Arms (F) by Ernest Hemmingway
Sula (F) by Toni Morrison
1984 (F) by  George Orwell
The Trial (F) by Franz Kafka
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (F) by Ken Kesey
The Things They Carried (F) by Tim O’Brien
All Quiet on the Western Front (F) by Erich Maria Remarque
The Vintage Book of War Stories (F) by Sebastian Faulks and Jörg Hensgen (editors)
The Good War (NF) by Studs Turkel 

Other works by Joseph Heller:

Closing Time (F)
Catch as Catch Can (F)
Something Happened (F)
Good as Gold (F)
God Knows (F)
Picture This (F)
Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man (F)
Clevinger’s Trial (D)
We Bombed in New Haven (D)

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