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by Joseph Heller ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 1961

Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.

Catch-22 is an unusual, wildly inventive comic novel about World War II, and its publishers are planning considerable publicity for it.

Set on the tiny island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean Sea, the novel is devoted to a long series of impossible, illogical adventures engaged in by the members of the 256th bombing squadron, an unlikely combat group whose fanatical commander, Colonel Cathcart, keeps increasing the men's quota of missions until they reach the ridiculous figure of 80. The book's central character is Captain Yossarian, the squadron's lead bombardier, who is surrounded at all times by the ironic and incomprehensible and who directs all his energies towards evading his odd role in the war. His companions are an even more peculiar lot: Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who loved to win parades; Major Major Major, the victim of a life-long series of practical jokes, beginning with his name; the mess officer, Milo Minderbinder, who built a food syndicate into an international cartel; and Major de Coverley whose mission in life was to rent apartments for the officers and enlisted men during their rest leaves. Eventually, after Cathcart has exterminated nearly all of Yossarian's buddies through the suicidal missions, Yossarian decides to desert — and he succeeds.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1961

ISBN: 0684833395

Page Count: 468

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1961

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A LITTLE LIFE

by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees , 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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by Hanya Yanagihara

PERSPECTIVES

by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2015

Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.

Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.

Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”

Pub Date: June 16, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

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by Elin Hilderbrand

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Catch-22 by joseph heller [a review].

Catch-22 is a brilliant novel and my personal favourite. True to the themes at its core, its style is frustratingly unique, its message is absurdly sensible and its tone is depressingly hilarious.

Where to begin with Catch-22 ?

A US Army airbase has been built on the small island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean. From here, American B25 bomber crews fly missions bombing Italy during the Second World War. Among them is Captain Yossarian and he’s had enough.

Yossarian only volunteered for the US Army Airforce because he thought he would be drafted eventually anyway and, given the length of training required for bomber crews, he thought the war would be soon over. Now, having completed more combat missions than most men would see, he feels he’s ridden his luck long enough. Yossarian is certain that he’s going to be killed if he stays in this war any longer and he wants out.

His fellow soldiers naturally question his patriotism, his morals, his bravery, but Yossarian has an answer for all of them. If they believe so strongly in patriotism and the war, good for them, but why does he have to fight and die for something he doesn’t believe in? If people have to die to win the war, fine, but why does he specifically have to be the one who dies and not someone else?

‘Open your eyes Clevinger. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.’

Clevinger sat for a moment as though he’d been slapped. ‘Congratulations!’ he exclaimed bitterly, the thinnest milk-white line enclosing his lips tightly in a bloodless, squeezing grind. ‘I can’t think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy.’

‘The enemy,’ retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, ‘is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don’t you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.’

Doesn’t he want to do his duty, his share? Not really. And in any case, he already has done his duty. He’s already flown the number of missions required in order to be sent home. Or, rather, he’s flown the number that was required when he first arrived but his group commander, Colonel Cathcart, keeps raising the required number of missions, always just as Yossarian gets close to being sent home.

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.

Increasingly consumed by fear, Yossarian plots a way out of the war or at least out of combat. His latest attempt is to feign illness and spend his days in the hospital. But that comes with its own problems. Being in the hospital means being in close proximity to other men. Some of whom are seriously wounded and only compound his fear. Others he just can’t stand.

Then there’s the complete lack of sympathy for his situation from Dr Daneeka who refuses to ground him. A fateful day arrives when the Doctor explains to Yossarian that even faking insanity won’t save him.

‘You mean there’s a catch?’

‘Sure there’s a catch,’ Doc Daneeka replied. ‘Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.’

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

‘That’s some catch, that Catch-22,’ he observed.

‘It’s the best there is,’ Doc Daneeka agreed.

As impressed as Yossarian is with the circular perfection of Catch-22, it does nothing to help his situation. If anything, it articulates the helplessness of it.

‘They’re not going to send a crazy man out to be killed are they?’

‘Who else will go?’

Yossarian is without a real friend in the squadron. Some men he can tolerate but most just aggravate him even more. He shares his tent with Orr. Possibly the most crazy of them all, Orr is the best pilot in the squadron, though he repeatedly crashes his planes, and he is continually infuriating Yossarian with his nonsenses and eccentricities.

Then there’s Milo Minderbinder, a former pilot, who has taken over as Mess Officer and makes deals all over the Mediterranean to supply the squadron. The men have, admittedly, never eaten better in their lives’ but it comes at an unseen cost as Milo confiscates their equipment, their necessities, to fund his syndicate. Eating well may be costing men their lives and there are rumours Milo is hoarding money and stashing it in the hills overlooking the airbase.

Yossarian’ most immediate superior is Major Major. He’s the man Yossarian should see about his dilemma except that no one can get past his aide, Sergeant Towser, and into Major Major’s office.  

‘From now on,’ he said. ‘I don’t want anyone to come in to see me while I’m here. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Towser. ‘Does that include me?’

‘I see. Will that be all?’

‘What shall I say to the people who do come to see you while you’re here?’

‘Tell them I’m in and ask them to wait.’

‘Yes, sir. For how long?’

‘Until I’ve left.’

‘And then what shall I do with them?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘May I send them in to see you after you’ve left?’

‘But you won’t be here then, will you?’

As the Allies progress northward through Italy, the men can take their leave on the mainland. They soon become regulars at a bordello in Rome. But even here, amongst safety and pleasure, they are confronted with unsettling questions and difficult choices.

Meanwhile, Colonel Catchcart keeps raising the number of missions.

‘What would they do to me,’ he asked in confidential tones, ‘if I refused to fly them?’ ‘We’d probably shoot you,’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied.

‘We?’ Yossarian cried in surprise. ‘What do you mean, we? Since when are you on their side?’

‘If you’re going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen retorted. 

I first read Catch-22 when I was eighteen years old during the summer after my first year at university. It became my favourite book then, remained my favourite over the years and, having now reread it, it is still my favourite! It is, however, a divisive book; one that people either love or just can’t stand.

A lot of this division, I believe, comes down to its style

Catch-22 is nonlinear, jumping back and forth in time frequently and often extremely. It is very casual about how it does this, with little warning or structure. It is very anecdotal; sometimes during a stretch of story you get more asides and digressions than actual story. Sometimes it’s the asides and the digressions that are the story. And, as if to emphasise the dilemma at its core, it can be circular, coming back to certain events to add a bit more. All this combines to give some readers the impression that this novel of over 600 pages has no plot!

It does have a plot of course but some assembly is required. Its disjointed nature is probably what puts some readers off. Those who persist probably love the originality, the innovation, most of all because, ultimately, it works. The other reason they persist is because it is very funny. But even the humour is difficult to describe and equally turns some readers off because of its absurdity.

Dunbar was lying motionless on his back again with is eyes staring up at the ceiling like a doll’s. He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom. Dunbar was working so hard at increasing his life span that Yossarian thought he was dead.

In the intervening years since I first read it, I would often take the book off the shelf, turn to a page at random and start reading. Its peculiar structure, its unique style, allows you to do that and be immediately transported back. I read Catch-22 again because I have come to believe that life is too short to read your favourite books only once; you ought to experience them again.

What did I get from reading it again?

Apart from the enjoyment of reading a loved book there were several things I noticed on reading it again. The first was that the novel was far darker than I recall. The horrors that Yossarian faces, the pointlessness of his life, the feeling of entrapment, of the inescapable and the tragic fate of other characters, seemed more palpable the second time around. It was more noticeable how the structure changes as the novel progresses to manipulate the reader. Later in the novel, as things get darker, the chapters get longer, the story becomes less anecdotal and more linear, there are fewer jokes and the humour that is there is also longer and darker rather than the witty, punchy, laugh out loud humour from early in the novel.

Catch-22 is often primarily interpreted as a critique of war

There is plenty in the novel to recommend that interpretation. Much of its satire and absurdism is pointed at exposing the hypocrisy, corruption, lack of humanity and faulty logic behind the premises of war and the military chain of command. Though it is told almost exclusively from the somewhat detached point of view of men who serve as bomber crew, as opposed to infantry or civilians, it is frank and unsparing in its depiction of the horrors of the war. If anything, using bomber crew as the focus (like Yossarian, author Joseph Heller was a WWII bombardier), helps underscore the themes and mood of the novel. Death from anti-aircraft fire comes somewhat randomly for the bomber crew, with little they can do to protect themselves, emphasising the sense of fatalism that increases each time Cathcart increases the required number of missions.

Since the men who are killed are usually killed with their entire crew and their remains are rarely recovered, the men who survive each mission are detached from death’s reality. It is as if their friends are not really dead, they just haven’t come back yet. This survivor bias is all over the novel. The optimism, the lack of fear, the sense of purpose, of the men, is all contingent on the silence of the dead, who would probably offer a different perspective of things. Yossarian’s nonconformity gives the dead voice as he sees his fate in theirs all too clearly.

To die or not to die, that was the question, and Clevinger grew limp trying to answer it. History did not demand Yossarian’s premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend upon it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favour was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

Much of the novel takes place after mid-1944 when Germany’s defeat was still distant but increasing certain and the men in the novel face no resistance from enemy aircraft. Again, this setting only helps emphasise Yossarian’s view about the pointlessness of continued war, killing and risking his life. As the main objective of the war diminishes, other motivations are exposed from Milo’s self-enrichment to Cathcart’s hopes for promotion, both of them working without any fear that they themselves are in any danger of being killed.

All that being said, Heller has carefully manipulated the circumstances of the novel to allow his themes to play out. Everything from making Yossarian a volunteer and not a draftee, using airmen who fly in and out of the war from isolation, to the 1944 setting has been done to give Yossarian’s moment its plausibility. It is to Heller’s credit that he has done this so surreptitiously the reader can hardly notice the manipulation. It also means we have to be careful not to give the anti-war interpretation too much emphasis.

Besides, there is also much else going on.

A modern army is, of course, not just a collection of men, leaders and weapons but requires an ever-expanding bureaucracy to support it. Catch-22 has much to say about this as well, to the extent that many interpret it as more of a critique of bureaucracy than of war. Catch-22, as explained to Yossarian by Doc Daneeka is just one of many bureaucratic roadblocks that obfuscate, impede, torment and kill the characters in the novel.

I want to largely avoid spoilers so I will give just one relatively minor example. A new airman named Mudd arrives at the airbase and is assigned a bunk in the tent shared by Yossarian and Orr. As a newly arrived soldier, he is first required to check in at the administration tent. But a blunder means that, before he checks in, he is immediately pulled into flying a mission, during which he is killed. Yossarian is understandably haunted by the presence of Mudd’s bags in his tent, but, since Mudd never properly checked in, Yossarian can’t do much about it.

The dead man in Yossarian’s tent was a pest, and Yossarian didn’t like him, even though he had never seen him. Having him lying around all day annoyed Yossarian so much that he had gone to the orderly room several times to complain to Sergeant Towser, who refused to admit that the dead man even existed, which, of course, he no longer did.

No bureaucracy is very efficient, no authority is ever fully checked and where there are gaps, corruption can fester and grow. Add the potential for great individual profits from an unending supply of public money and corruption, conflicts of interest, a military-industrial complex and a motive for repeated and prolonged war are virtually guaranteed if no real resistance is offered. The personification of this in Catch-22 is Milo Minderbinder.

It begins innocently enough. Milo is able to escape combat duty by convincing his superiors to make him the Mess Officer. From there his power and influence grows as he is given planes, equipment and men to expand his operation. Soon his enterprise is so large he can operate with impunity especially since he has arranged things so that everyone has a financial interest in his success. As things continue to escalate, not only does the line between public interest and private profit become blurred but the distinction between allies and enemies is confused as people on all sides start thinking about their own interests and the post-war world. Milo excels at what he does and seems to know the value of everything except human life.

Catch-22 is also a very existential novel. These characters, in the middle of a brutal war, pointedly and succinctly articulate and discuss the problems of explaining God’s apparent indifference to suffering, the purpose of pain and existential questions of their purpose in life and in this war. It is clear most of them had not considered how they would answer these questions or assumed the answers they have been told were sound. Most would probably rather not face these questions. To do so removes the security they had built around themselves, leaves them vulnerable to face what they are doing and what is being done to them. In particular, the squadron’s chaplain finds himself suffering a crisis of faith. Yossarian is one who knows his own answers and it only gives him more assurance of his own sanity and the insanity of war. It is a small but powerful aspect of the novel.

‘And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways,’ Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. ‘There’s nothing so mysterious about it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us.’

The separation and isolation Yossarian feels from everyone else’s way of thinking allows Heller to explore another important theme – individualism. While the modern West can be self-congratulatory in its self-appraisal as a triumph of the individual, that does not extend to the military which remains a collectivist enterprise and probably has to be one. Yossarian’s thinking has led him to question what and who he would be willing to die for and his experience convinces him that only he can act in his best interests. Yossarian is a rebel and a literary hero of the individual spirit.

The country was in peril; he was jeopardising his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

What are the adaptations like?

Catch-22 was famously regarded as unfilmable. Nevertheless, a film adaptation was made and released in 1970 and I have watched it several times. The first thing that needs to be said about the movie is that it is very well cast for the novel’s key characters with Alan Arkin as Yossarian as well as Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, Bob Newhart, Art Garfunkel, Anthony Perkins and Orson Welles (although Newhart was probably too old to play Major Major even if he was very well suited to the part). If you are familiar with the novel, then on first viewing you may find the film to be an adequate attempt, enjoyable to see favourite moments enacted, but understandably lacking. Reading the book again, I was surprised by how many of the key scenes and subplots are actually included in the film. The scene between Major Major and Sgt Towser is wonderfully executed. The film also embraces the back-and-forward nonlinear structure of the novel to an extent without getting too confusing.

After rereading Catch-22 I also watched the 2019 miniseries adaptation and… I was actually disappointed by it. The TV series ditches the non-linear structure and shows events in chronological order. It is very dark, bleak in fact, which adds considerable power but I did not find it very funny compared to the novel and the film. The advantage of a miniseries compared to a film is that the length allows for better pacing, letting the events sink in for the viewer, but much was also omitted too. I also can’t say I agree with the casting choices, the changes made to the plot and the altered ending. The character of Milo Minderbinder was the big winner in the latest adaptation, perhaps reflecting the influence of wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and the evolution of the military-industrial-complex in the interim.

The writers and directors – including Grant Heslov, Luke Davies and George Clooney – justify their choices by saying the humour of the novel might not have aged well. The nonlinear plot too, they say, reflects the style of the period but may not play well now. They all say they are great fans of the novel but their choices make me wonder who they were making the series for. Not for fellow fans apparently.

To put it another way, my wife, who is one of those who could never get into the novel, and never got past the early chapters, enjoyed the miniseries and hopes to see it again. In contrast, I love the novel but am left disappointed by the series. Maybe I need to see Catch-22 twice (sorry, inside joke).

The 1970 film has its faults too, but I actually prefer it. Given the considerable difficulty in procuring B25 bombers well into the 21 st century, one wonders if there will ever be another chance to adapt Catch-22 and I can’t help but feel the makers of the miniseries missed a great opportunity to produce something special.

Has the novel aged poorly?

There are very few women in Catch-22 . The men are almost exclusively white who occasionally and casually throw around the N-word and frequently refer to the women they do encounter, mostly the prostitutes on the mainland, as tarts and whores. All of this is expected. Less because of the time in which it was written and more because of the boundaries of the period in which it is set, the nature of that setting and the focus of the story. In fact, if racism and misogyny were wholly absent, we might instead be questioning the historical accuracy of the writing here. Catch-22 does not therefore set off any alarm bells for me as something that has not aged well or contains nefarious ideas. Especially since these aspects are not championed but are simply part of the setting.

However, there is one aspect of Catch-22 that is worthy of notice and comment in this regard. While the focus of the story is on the tragedy of war from the point of view of the servicemen, they are not the only victims in the story. There is no avoiding the victimhood of the Italian women, working as prostitutes, that the servicemen visit in Rome. Though little of their experience is shared, enough is offered to inform the reader that whatever the servicemen may be complaining of may be less significant than what the civilian women have already lived through. The nauseating irony of their tragedy is that some of them are prostituting themselves to the very men whose bombs are the reason they are where they find themselves. As Rome becomes full of foreign soldiers from a variety of nations, the harassment of the local women only increases and the reader is not spared.

Catch-22 uses satire to highlight the hypocrisy and insanity of war and the men who champion it, but sometimes it also has the effect of softening the tragedy of the story. While reading Catch-22 , it may seem as if anything is open-game for the satire. Yet, if you pay close enough attention, you may notice that there is no satire, no softening, on offer for the fate of the women. It is to the credit of the novel that theirs is a story shown unflinchingly; the one story whose tragedy is offered no respite. 

Catch-22 can be difficult – difficult to read, difficult to adapt, difficult to review. As I write this review, in late May 2020, the lockdown following the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has been relatively eased here in Australia and I have taken the opportunity to browse bookstores for the first time in a couple of months. Though I was not looking for it, it did not escape my attention that each store I visited had Catch-22 on its shelves whereas a number of other 20 th century classics may be harder to find. Despite what the makers of the recent miniseries achieved, it clearly has enduring appeal in its original form and, being my favourite book, I hope I have done it some justice here.

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A well written review. Having just finished the novel myself for the first time, I was eager to read the opinions of others. Will be checking out the 1970 film upon your recommendation.

I hope you like the film. As I say, it’s not a great film but it well-cast and for fans, it is fun seeing memorable scenes and characters brought to life.

Jason, thank you for this review. I just watched the mini series and felt much as you did. Catch 22 is certainly one of my favorite books and has done much to inform my personal philosophy such as it is. Attempts no matter how sincere to distill the book into a format to be viewed logically will eventually fail. Perhaps people will not read the book and appreciate this condensed version pale as it is compared to the novel.

Yes, sometimes I worry that bad adaptations will put people off reading the book. But then they never put me off reading them! But I do think good adaptations do make people seek out the book. So, I don’t know. We might be worrying about non-regular readers who were never going to read the book anyway! Thanks for your comment

At 18, I saw the film. At 65, I read the novel. (I finished it moments ago.) And I read it only because some stranger left a copy behind when they vacated the flat I now occupy. Better late than never I learned why this novel has become a touchstone of American culture and a worn yet ageless paving stone in the (Excuse the clumsy metaphor) Appian Way of Western literature. The humor can be hard to take. This is true satire the way black coffee is true coffee. I do and yet I don’t want some sugar in it. Heller doesn’t spare us the existential horror and that fact is largely what makes for its position as a classic. And your review did what a review should do: only add to my appreciation of this work. I thank you deeply.

Thanks for your kind words, I am glad you liked it. I keep finding new ways to appreciate Catch-22. Some recent political events, for example, have left me feeling a bit like Yossarian – stuck on an island, surrounded by crazy people, anxious and paranoid that I too may be crazy, or, as unlikely and self-serving as it sounds – may be one of the last sane people left!

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Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

One of the funniest—and most celebrated—books of all time

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Genre: Historical Fiction, Satire, Classic

First Publication: 1961

Language:  English

Major Characters: Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder, Doc Daneeka, The Chaplain, Colonel Cathcart, Hungry Joe, Nately, McWatt, Clevinger, Dunbar

Setting Place: Pianosa, off the Italian coast, near the end of World War II

Narration: Third-person omniscient

Theme: War and The Absolute Power of Bureaucracy, The Impotence of Language, The Inevitability of Death

Book Summary: Catch-22

Catch-22 is a revolutionary book by Joseph Heller which was first published in 1961. This book is a one of its kind. Heller uses a non-chronological third person omniscient narration to bind the threads together. Ideas flow into each other through random connections within the story. Events have been repeated through different point of views. The story is situated in the time of World War 2. This story is about the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces bombardier in 256th squadron who has been assigned to bomb enemy posts at eastern France and Italy.

The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp, who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home.

Book Review: Catch-22

Never have I been pulled through the entire spectrum of emotion quite as enjoyably as this, with Joseph Heller ingeniously switching tones on a dime with a magician’s charm. One moment I was laughing like a fool, and the next I was clenching my jaw with agony at the horrors of the World War II ; thankfully for my taste, Heller leaned more on the comedic/optimistic side.

Reading Catch-22 was sort of like watching a brilliantly shining coin flipping through a majestic parabola in slow motion, with one side representing laugh-out-loud comedy and the other an intense exploration of the terrors of war , making its way to the ground with the weight of someone’s fate resting on whichever side it falls on. But this isn’t just a thoughtless experiment. Both tones are equally pleasing and useful to the story. Catch-22 is really a life changing book that you should read at least once in a life time.

Catch-22 definitely wasn’t perfect, but it’s close. It reminded me of a Confederacy of Dunces because there were segments that I know a lot of people simply won’t laugh at if they don’t possess a certain sense of humor. And at times it can be a bit much to wrangle, but if you don’t allow the insanity and chaos to consume you, you’ll enjoy it thoroughly.

I feel that Yossarian and Dunbar have handled the situation–with a sane amount of insanity that’d be necessary in the face of such horror and idiocy. Yossarian has to be the best anti-hero I’ve come across so far, and the way Heller is able to spin illogical conversations, rules, and situations into logical nonsense and back again is fantastic.

I’m rambling now, but this is truly laugh out loud great. Among too many to name, Clevinger’s interrogation and the moaning at the briefing were comedic gold. But have no doubt that this is a “thinking person’s” book as well. It deals with all of the Big questions of life in some manner. There’s plenty of psychology to examine, be it bureaucratic, war, anxiety, etc.; and the final scene with Snowden was incredibly touching.

I really cannot say enough about this beauty, so trust me and see for yourself. This was my second attempt to read it after ditching it 30 pages in a year ago. And part of that was due to my having read all of the bashing reviews and avoiding it. But like beauty, it’s all in the eye of the beholder, so give it a chance. I’m glad I did. And I think Joseph Heller’s prose is underrated; there were some sentences there that simply knocked me out. I will definitely read Catch-22 again and recommend to friends. This one pulled me in so well that it’s one of the rare books that has genuinely made me wish characters were killed off painfully…

• The phrase ‘Catch-22’ was later added in English language referring to a type of impossible logic puzzle sometimes called a double bind. According to this story unstable men do not have to fly aircrafts, but the fact that they can rationally decide for themselves and ask for waiver, proves that they are stable enough. The meaning of Catch-22 explained through below conversation in the book:

”You mean there’s a catch?”

“Sure there’s a catch, “ Doc Daneeka replied. “Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.”

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” He observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.

• Catch-22 was originally entitled Catch-18, but the title was altered just before publication; another novel, Mila 18 by Leon Uris, had been recently released, and publisher feared readers would be confused.

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Revisiting the ‘Emotional Hodge-Podge’ of ‘Catch-22’

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In 1961, the writer Richard G. Stern reviewed Joseph Heller’s satirical war novel “Catch-22” on Page 50 of the Book Review, calling it “an emotional hodge-podge.”

“Catch-22” has much passion, comic and fervent, but it gasps for want of craft and sensibility. A portrait gallery, a collection of anecdotes, some of them wonderful, a parade of scenes, some of them finely assembled, a series of descriptions, yes, but the book is no novel. One can say that it is much too long, because its material — the cavortings and miseries of an American bomber squadron stationed in late World War II Italy — is repetitive and monotonous. Or one can say that it is too short because none of its many interesting characters and actions is given enough play to become a controlling interest. Its author, Joseph Heller, is like a brilliant painter who decides to throw all the ideas in his sketchbooks onto one canvas, relying on their charm and shock to compensate for the lack of design.

Read the rest of the review.

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Book News & Features

'catch-22': a paradox turns 50 and still rings true.

Fifty years ago, a new phrase began to make its way into American conversations: "Catch-22." Joseph Heller's irreverent World War II novel — named for the now-famous paradox — was published on Oct. 11, 1961. His take on war meshed perfectly with the anti-authoritarian generation that came of age in the 1960s. And now, a half-century later, the predicament of a no-win trap still resonates with a new crop of young people distrustful of their elders.

In August 1944, Heller flew on a mission over the French town of Avignon. Sitting in the plexiglass nose cone of a B-25 bomber, Heller faced the very real possibility of death for the first time. That mission, says Heller biographer Tracy Daugherty, shaped the way Heller thought about war, a sensibility that permeates his novel.

"After that mission over Avignon, Heller really understood that this is not an abstraction," Daugherty says. "They are out to kill me personally, and he didn't like it — and Yossarian doesn't either."

Yossarian is Heller's nimble creation — an everyman soldier who is trying as hard as he can to get out of the war. But the more he tries, the more he is caught in the famous catch: "Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy," Doc Daneeka, the Army physician, explains.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. [Bomber pilot] Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. ... Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

When Catch-22 was first released, it wasn't universally well-received. Until then, books about war tended to be serious works, often tragic in tone. Heller's war was a black comedy, filled with orders from above that made no sense and characters who just wanted to stay alive. The novel seemed to offend some reviewers. The New York Times called it an "emotional hodgepodge." But other critics took on the book as a cause.

"It seemed to me like the first genuine post-World War II novel," says Robert Brustein, who reviewed Catch-22 for The New Republic. He says he was blown away by the book and the way Heller's depictions of war turned the idea of heroism on its head.

"He was using a tone that is not normally used when you talk about war, especially wars fought by Americans," Brustein explains. "The language we use when we refer to our soldiers is 'our brave heroic boys.' We don't use language that indicates they might be insane, and that's what Joe Heller was one of the first brave men to do — and he ran into a firestorm as a result."

Joseph Heller, pictured above in October 1974, based Catch-22 on his own experiences as a bombardier in World War II. Heller died in 1999 at age 76.

By the time Catch-22 came out in paperback, the word of mouth was more positive than negative and the book became a best-seller. But Daugherty says it was more than just the praise of critics that turned the tide in its favor.

"Really what turned the tide I think was that the Vietnam War began to heat up and was more and more in the news, and Heller's book seemed to prophesy what was happening," she says.

The young people who took to the streets to protest the war embraced Catch-22 . Heller may have based the novel on his own experiences in World War II, but the voice that emerged captured the tone of a new generation that had lost respect for authority and refused to take anything at face value.

"What was being stated publicly [in the mid-1960s] was clashing so obviously with the images we were seeing on our television screens," Daugherty says. "And so I think in a large sense, the entire culture began to distrust language. We were being told one thing and seeing another, and there's the paradox. That's the heart of Catch-22. "

But young people in antiwar protests and on college campuses weren't the only ones reading the book. Marc Anderson read Catch-22 while serving in Vietnam. He carried it with him on forays into the jungle and lent it to other soldiers who wanted to know what he was reading.

"I would tell people about it and they'd get a kick out of it, and I'd let them have it for a day or two and they'd read sections of it," Anderson recalls. "I think it had a lot of resonance with the Vietnam soldiers because ... they were drafted, they didn't choose to be there. And it was pretty apparent once you'd been there a little while: 'This is silly. We're fighting peasants with BB guns with a 500,000-person army.' "

In the 1970 film adaptation of Joseph Heller's novel, physician "Doc" Daneeka (left), played by Jack Gilford, explains the Catch-22 paradox to Capt. John Yossarian (Alan Arkin): "Anyone who wants to get out of combat isn't really crazy," Daneeka says.

Anderson says Catch-22 took one of life's worst experiences and made it funny. Heller understood completely what soldiers encounter in war and identified with their frustration about getting caught in a situation over which they have no control. He turned that frustration into his famous Catch-22, an idea that perfectly captures the absurdity of war and the mind-numbing bureaucracy that supports it. Heller's humor, says Anderson, is what makes the book work.

"It seems to make more clear and more obvious the futility of the war. ... Yossarian just made fun of everything about it and everyone in it continuously, nonstop," Anderson says. "And he did it in a way that you just couldn't help but laugh out loud at him. And I think the humor is unique, and I think the humor is what makes the book so powerful."

Catch-22 is a concept everyone can understand. That's why it so quickly became part of the language — a phrase to be called upon when there seems no way out of the traps life can set for you and when humor really is the best response. And that, says Brustein, is why the book has endured.

"It's amazing to me that it's 50 years old, because I feel as though it was written yesterday," he says. "I do think that it still speaks to us. I think people should start reading it again and then looking around at our political leaders and they'll see them in a whole new light."

When Heller was first promoting Catch-22, he was interviewed on NBC's Today show by John Chancellor. As it turned out, Chancellor was such a fan of the book he had stickers made up that read "Yossarian lives." Not long afterward, bumper stickers started popping up all over the place. Fifty years later, the message on those bumper stickers isn't out of date: Yossarian lives, and seems to have quite a few years ahead of him.

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Book Review

• Joseph Heller
• Historical , Satire

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• Simon & Schuster

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Catch-22 by Joseph Heller has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine .

Plot Summary

Capt. John Yossarian is serving as a bombardier with the U.S. Army Air Corps on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa during World War II. Yossarian doesn’t understand why thousands of people are trying to kill him. Not only do strangers shoot at his plane whenever he drops bombs on them, but his superior officers also put his life at risk to further their own advancement. Col. Cathcart repeatedly increases the number of missions that the men in the 256th squadron must fly, and Yossarian becomes increasingly fearful that he will be killed in action.

There’s a seemingly simple escape. Doc Daneeka is required to ground anyone who is insane. Since no sane man would continue to voluntarily fly such dangerous missions, all Yossarian has to do is request that he be relieved of duty. But there’s a catch. By requesting to be grounded, he is proving his sanity and is therefore required to continue flying. That catch is Catch-22.

Yossarian copes by taking regular holidays in the hospital, nursing a possible liver condition that causes no real discomfort but keeps his temperature sufficiently high enough to avoid suspicious doctors. He prides himself on his ability to avoid dying, not necessarily dropping bombs accurately. He also feels accomplished when he avoids work in general.

The plot unfolds in a nonchronological manner, as the narrator focuses on dozens of men from the 256th squadron — many of who are killed throughout the course of the book — and how their stories intersect with Yossarian’s. Yossarian, who chose to become an airman because he incorrectly believed the war would be over before he finished training, endures endless marches under the command of then-Lt. Scheisskopf, who is later promoted to general because he invented a new way of marching.

Once in Pianosa, Yossarian lived in a tent with Orr, a mechanically inclined pilot, who was shot down but miraculously survived many missions. Yossarian is a willing participant in his colleagues’ drunken and sexual escapades, which often turn violent. He falls in love with many of his sexual partners, most notably Luciana — a woman he meets while on leave in Rome and to whom he proposes but is rejected — and Nurse Duckett. He also joins volunteer mess officer Milo Minderbinder on his absurdly capitalist trips around the globe.

He receives a medal after bombing a bridge, despite making a grave error that leads to the death of one of his fellow airmen. All the while, more of his friends and acquaintances are killed, and he continues to make fruitless efforts to be relieved of duty. Yossarian struggles to stay sane as he becomes increasingly disturbed by the corruption and self-serving carelessness of his commanding officers and the absurdities and horrors of war.

While visiting a bombed and ruined Rome after his friend Nately’s death in an unsuccessful attempt to find and rescue the younger sister of Nately’s prostitute turned girlfriend (who, upon hearing of Nately’s death, attacks Yossarian and tries repeatedly to murder him), Yossarian realizes that Catch-22 doesn’t exist and never existed. But because everyone thinks it does, it is even more impossible to escape.

After flatly refusing to fly any more missions, Yossarian is offered the chance to return to the U.S. in exchange for public flattery of Col. Cathcart and his other commanding officers. Yossarian is then stabbed by Nately’s girlfriend and hospitalized. The plot flashes back to the death of Snowden, a member of Yossarian’s crew, who was fatally and gruesomely wounded on a bombing mission and who died after Yossarian attempted to offer first aid, before realizing the full extent of his injuries.

While trying to decide whether to be court martialed or accept the colonel’s odious deal, Yossarian learns that his tent-mate Orr is alive in Sweden. Despite the fact that it would almost be geographically impossible for him to travel from Pianosa to Sweden, Yossarian decides to desert with Nately’s knife-wielding girlfriend on his heels.

Christian Beliefs

At one time, Yossarian believed he had God on his side.

Prayer is described as an act that is at best ineffectual, at worst dangerous. Col. Cathcart, scheming to use an upbeat prayer that doesn’t mention God or religion as a means to get into The Saturday Evening Post , asks the chaplain if he could lead a short prayer for a tighter bomb pattern — a meaningless metric that doesn’t increase the efficacy of the mission but produces a better photograph.

However, he decides against holding prayer meetings when the chaplain replies that the atheists will have to be excused and the enlisted men be allowed to join, or God may choose to punish them with a looser bomb pattern.

When asked if prayer does any good, the chaplain says that it takes his mind off his troubles and gives him something to do. He feels guilty for praying for his friends’ safety after learning that a dozen men have perished. He thinks by praying for him, he inadvertently was praying for the deaths of men he never met. The squadron prays for rain.

While walking through Rome, which has been impoverished and destroyed by bombs, Yossarian is so overcome by the scope of violence and human misery that he feels he understands how Christ must have felt.

Maj. Major’s father is described as a devout, God-fearing, Calvinist farmer who does not farm alfalfa and who relies on government handouts while quoting Scripture and quasi-Christian truisms to others. But he is abusive to his family. Maj. Major keeps the Ten Commandments perfectly and is directly and indirectly rewarded with a life of shame, isolation, abuse and misery.

The chaplain is shunned because of his faith. Both the chaplain and Maj. Major lie and find sinning to be good. The chaplain questions his faith and ultimately decides to retain his belief, but only because of two events that he perceives as divinely mysterious but which the reader knows have purely natural origins. He often feels helpless to assist others and is unable to stand up for himself against his verbally abusive atheist assistant.

Belief in the Christian God is combined with loyalty to America and other sayings and conundrums, such as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The chaplain believes in an Anglo-Saxon, pro-American God. The violent, immoral Gen. Dreedle wonders how the men will learn to believe in God if the chaplain doesn’t come to the officers’ club. The chaplain lives in a tent because the officers are OK with having a liaison with God but don’t want the Lord hanging around all day.

Appleby believes in God, motherhood and the American way of life despite never thinking about any of those things. When the airmen express that they believe bombing a particular village is cruel, Cathcart encourages them to bomb for God. Cathcart and Korn ask Yossarian if he is for or against them in a deliberate echo of Jesus’ statement. When Yossarian looks at the big picture, he doesn’t see heaven, saints or angels, just people profiting from other people’s tragedies.

Maj. de Coverly is described as having a “Jehovean” bearing. He is wounded when an old man, whom the narrator compares to Satan, throws a rose and hits him in the eye after kissing him on both cheeks. When the chaplain comes to Col. Cathcart with concerns about Yossarian’s well being, Cathcart says that Yossarian should trust in God.

The chaplain is an Anabaptist, but most of the soldiers call him “father.” Clevinger accuses Yossarian of having a Jehovah complex. Men debate whether heaven exists and whether there are atheists in foxholes.

Kraft is killed on the seventh day of a bombing mission — while God is reportedly “resting.”

Other Belief Systems

Atheism is a recurring motif throughout the novel. While spending Thanksgiving having sex in a hotel room, Yossarian and Col. Scheisskopf’s wife fall into an argument about what the God neither of them believes in is like. Among other things, Yossarian describes God as an immortal blunderer, a warped, evil, clumsy, uncouth, country bumpkin.

He wonders why a supposedly all-powerful God would create a world that includes tooth decay, incontinence and pain. Yossarian fantasizes about grabbing God by the neck and making Him pay for what he sees as the stupid mess God made of creation. Scheisskopf’s wife, on the other hand, doesn’t believe in a God who is good, just and merciful, and who, despite not existing, may still punish Yossarian for his views.

Yossarian’s belief in an immoral, incompetent, nonexistent God is echoed in the novel’s climax when Snowden literally spills his guts and reveals his secret — that man is matter and will fall or burn like any other material thing. Once their spirits have been extinguished, Yossarian believes that human beings are no different than garbage.

Dunbar says there is no God. When asked why he would want to live a long life that includes intervals of boredom and misery, he replies by asking if there is anything else. Yossarian tells Clevinger that his commanding officers hate Jews. When Clevinger replies that he’s not Jewish, Yossarian replies that it doesn’t matter. Milo is worshiped as a god in various cultures throughout the world.

A lecherous old man who lives in a brothel considers himself very moral, despite adhering to no principles or loyalties other than to what will best serve him in the moment.

Yossarian prays (but not necessarily to God) for safety, for bombs to fall, for one friend to be quiet, for another to stop voluntarily flying missions and for a woman to have sex with.

Authority Roles

The authority figures in this book are corrupt, incompetent, or — because of some personal or systemic flaw — virtuous but powerless to effect any meaningful action. The commanding officers scheme and threaten violence and their petty, perpetual rivalries take precedence over any leadership role or assistance they might be expected to offer their subordinates. They delegate as much work as possible to the lowest levels and marvel that the military machine can keep running smoothly while they do almost nothing.

Col. Cathcart and Col. Korn, upon learning of Kraft’s death and Yossarian’s error, decide to cover up the mistake by promoting Yossarian to captain and awarding him a medal. Cathcart is hopeful that men will die so he can send form letters of condolence to their families. This eventually backfires, when a clearly very alive Doc Daneeka is incorrectly reported as being aboard a downed plane and his wife is sent a form letter in error. Cathcart attempts to prove his own courage by volunteering his men for the most dangerous missions.

Doc Daneeka is a healthy hypochondriac who cares only about making a profit. He is unwilling to use any of his influence to help the men under his care, except once he briefly but bravely offers emergency medical assistance to the wounded. Everyone sent to the hospital for any reason is given a laxative and gets his gums and toes painted purple with gentian violet.

Incompetent doctors argue and consider making unnecessary incisions to resolve a bet made before doing a surgery on Yossarian. A psychiatrist assigned to Yossarian offers little in the way of treatment, preferring only to talk about himself. Dr. Stubbs wonders what the point of saving lives is, if everyone is going to die someday anyway.

Capt. Black spearheads a loyalty oath crusade where the men are required to sign unending loyalty oaths, sing multiple choruses of the Star Spangled Banner and pledge allegiance innumerable times before receiving food or doing any military service.

Maj. Danby tells Yossarian that Cathcart and Korn can make as many official reports as they like so they can use whichever ones they need. He also explains that it would be for the good of the country if Yossarian were imprisoned, even though he is innocent of the charges against him.

At Clevinger’s farce of a trial, the perversion of justice and authority is on full display. Scheisskopf is the prosecutor and the defending officer and a judge, and the members of the board that chair the trial bicker and threaten throughout. They find Clevinger guilty because if he were innocent he wouldn’t have been charged. They describe justice as sneaky and violent.

Clevinger realizes that even though his superior officers are technically on his side, there is no German soldier who could possibly hate him more than they do. This mockery of justice and due process is echoed near the end of the novel when the chaplain is interrogated for possessing a cherry tomato and other fabricated charges. When Aarfy rapes and murders a maid, he is treated with impunity by the authorities, while Yossarian is arrested for being on leave without papers.

Milo Minderbinder’s highest allegiance is to capitalism and profit. People on both sides of the war and around the world pay him to procure luxury foodstuffs for them. This appears to benefit everyone at first, but after Milo forms an international syndicate, he begins accepting bombing and reconnaissance missions from both the Allied and Axis powers. Most notably, he bombs his own squadron, wounding and killing many.

Outrage, quickly mollified by bribery, results in him continuing to operate with impunity, stealing emergency and first aid supplies, buying and selling from himself, seeking government assistance and making a bad deal to purchase Egyptian cotton that leads to him trying to convince the soldiers to eat chocolate covered cotton despite its obvious indigestibility.

Lt. Scheisskopf is described as a military genius because he develops a way for men to march without using their arms.

The chaplain feels helpless to help anyone. Gen. Peckem enjoys hearing himself talk about himself. Policemen are violent and corrupt. War is described as a force that liberates children from their parents. The military machine itself is riddled with pointless procedures, nonsensical decisions and little regard for human life.

Profanity & Violence

There are a handful of racial slurs including two uses of the n-word , half a dozen instances of b–ch and many of son of a b–ch . A– , h— , b–tard and various amalgamations of the word s— , not including the name of Lt. turned Col. turned Gen. Scheisskopf, which when literally translated means s—head , are used.

God’s name appears with the word d–n a lot, and d–n appears by itself quite a few times, also. The names of God, Christ and Jesus are taken in vain often. There are half a dozen uses of the devil in the context of profanity, a number of crude slang words for sexual activity and various body parts. Prostitutes are referred to as whores, and the f-word is used.

Violence against women, including sexual assault and rape, is a motif that recurs throughout the novel. Aarfy fondly remembers his fraternity kidnapping two underage girls and holding them captive while raping them repeatedly over the course of a number of hours, then physically assaulting them, stealing their belongings and throwing them out into the street. Later in the novel, Aarfy rapes a maid, holds her captive in a closet and then murders her by throwing her out a window. An unknown woman is presumably raped despite her inebriated protests.

Men are killed and wounded, including many of Yossarian’s friends and acquaintances. Their deaths are described in varying levels of detail. Two particularly vivid scenes include the deaths of Kid Sampson and McWatt and the death of Snowden. Kid Sampson is killed when he jumps up toward McWatt’s plane as it flies close to the ground and is shredded by the propeller. Only his legs remain intact and none of the men are willing to retrieve them, so they bloat and rot on the beach. McWatt, horrified by the accident, commits suicide by flying his plane into a mountain. Snowden dies in the rear of a plane after Yossarian dresses a gaping wound in his thigh only to realize that he has been wounded in the torso so badly that when Yossarian cuts open his flak suit all of Snowden’s organs spill out onto the plane floor. Yossarian is unable to do more than cover Snowden’s body with his parachute as he slowly dies, complaining of being cold. Dobbs accidentally flies his plane into Nately’s; both men are killed.

Men fight with fists and weapons, sustaining wounds that are sometimes serious enough to land them in the hospital. (Although in the satirical world of this novel, being in the hospital is not necessarily synonymous with injury or illness.) Yossarian occasionally fantasizes about, threatens or attempts to violently murder other soldiers — usually out of fear or annoyance — including Orr (for repairing a stove valve) and McWatt (for flying too low to the ground). However, when confronted with the very real opportunity to help Dobbs murder Col. Cathcart and thus possibly save his own life, Yossarian finds himself unable to participate or even lend his approval to the plan.

Milo bombs and strafes his own squadron with predictably horrific consequences for everyone on the ground, but none for him. When Doc Daneeka questions the morality of bombing, he is appeased by the bribe of a lawn chair. The chaplain experiences nightmares and intrusive thoughts about his wife and children dying in vivid and gruesome ways. In a bombed and ruined Rome, a young boy is brutally beaten while spectators look on. A dog is beaten with a stick. Yossarian walks on human teeth and pools of blood.

Nately’s prostitute turned girlfriend, upon hearing of Nately’s death, attacks Yossarian with a number of household objects and injures him. Despite impossible odds, she chases him around Europe with successively larger knives in a series of murderous attempts that are still ongoing at the novel’s end.

A rotting corpse washes up on the beach. Havermeyer shoots field mice for sport. A prostitute beats Orr with the heel of her shoe hard enough to give him a concussion. Doc Daneeka fondly reminisces about performing abortions for profit. Hungry Joe tries to shoot Huple’s cat for sleeping on his face after dreaming that Huple’s cat was sleeping on his face.

Hungry Joe eventually dies — suffocated in the night by Huple’s cat. Gen. Dreedle threatens to shoot people. Flume is so afraid of Chief White Halfoat’s threat to slit his throat that he abandons his tent and lives in the woods. Yossarian mentions slave traders, who disembowel and eat children.

Sexual Content

The novel begins by saying that Yossarian falls in love with the chaplain, but in fact the two enjoy a nonsexual friendship. In addition to consensual and purchased sexual activity that the men engage in on a regular basis, and which sometimes ends in violent confrontations, Yossarian and his fellow soldiers grope women without their permission and against their will.

Sexual acts, including intercourse, and female nudity are described in graphic, crude and gratuitous detail. Sex is purchased from prostitutes, and young girls are offered food and lodging in exchange for sex. Some of the sexual activity is consensual. Other sexual activity constitutes sexual assault.

In addition to the sexual content described above which occurs frequently and repeatedly throughout the novel, some of the more notable incidents include the following:

Yossarian has sex with a number of partners throughout the novel. He fantasizes about having a threesome with a countess and her daughter-in-law. He also fantasizes about a general’s sexual partner, moaning audibly during a briefing session. He falls in love with many of the women he has sex with and views this emotional connection negatively. After having sex with Luciana, a girl he meets in Rome, he proposes. She refuses him, insisting that no one would want to marry a woman who isn’t a virgin.

He gropes Nurse Duckett against her will and later has a consensual sexual relationship with her. During a sexual encounter with Lt. Scheisskopf’s wife, he bemoans that there are so many women in the world that he will never be able to have sex with.

Aarfy refuses to sleep with women he sees as nice girls and attempts to change their behavior. However, he fondly remembers kidnapping, raping and assaulting high school girls when he was a member of a college fraternity. He also rapes, kidnaps and then murders a maid without guilt or consequence. An unknown woman is presumably raped despite her inebriated protests.

Nately falls in love with a prostitute. She is indifferent to his affections until she gets a good night’s sleep. However, even after she begins to reciprocate his affection and is offered financial support by Nately, she refuses to wear clothes while around other men and continues to prostitute herself. Nately is disturbed by her liaisons with other men, especially those with Capt. Black, who deliberately seeks her out to torment Nately.

Her 12-year-old sister also aspires to be a prostitute, is often nude and deliberately interrupts their sexual encounters on a number of occasions. Nately wants the three of them to become a respectable family and tries to get his colleagues to get married and settle down. However, he is killed in action before his dream can become a reality. Yossarian tries but is unable to locate Nately’s prostitute’s younger sister and tries but is unable to avoid Nately’s prostitute, as she makes many attempts on his life after he informs her of Nately’s death.

Milo makes an ongoing joke about underage prostitutes. A police commissioner wrongly assumes that Yossarian is seeking to rape young girls and suggests a place where he might find some. A maid with lime green panties is described as virtuous because she will have sex with anyone without even hesitating long enough to put down her mop or broom.

Men swim naked. Yossarian, after deciding that he no longer wants to wear a uniform, wears nothing at all. Lust and sexual desire are described as being in heat. Hungry Joe is continually trying to take lewd photos of women against their will, but none of the photos ever turn out.

Doc Daneeka shows a young married couple how to have intercourse using rubber anatomical models. Maj. Major is so virtuous that the communists think he is a homosexual, and the homosexuals think he’s a communist. References to BDSM sexual practices are made.

Discussion Topics

Additional comments.

Content: The problematic content in Catch-22 is extensive; this review only addresses a portion of it.

Dishonest behavior: McWatt fudges the flying records for Doc Daneeka, leading to him being declared dead when he is still very much alive. Generals and colonels act proud of things they should be ashamed of. There is an instance of nepotism, and Doc Daneeka encourages his patients to pay in cash so he can avoid paying taxes.

Drug/alcohol abuse: Soldiers smoke cigarettes. Characters abuse alcohol. Some become so drunk they vomit and pass out. Chief White Halfoat crashes a stolen car while drunk driving.

Satire: Throughout the novel, the narrator describes characters and plot points in an exaggerated, satirical manner. While some events, such as the death of Snowden, are plausible and told in graphic and gory detail, others, such as Milo’s impossibly complex global syndicate or Nately’s prostitute turned girlfriend’s murderous attempts, are impossibly nonsensical. Sometimes the absurdity lends itself to humor. At other times hyperbole is used to highlight more serious themes.

Literary significance: Catch-22 is considered to be one of the most significant American novels of the 1900s.

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The Literary Edit

Review: Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

I first attempted to read Joseph’s Heller’s Catch 22 when in Cuba a number of years ago. Approximately two-thirds of the way through with no idea of what was actually happening, I traded it in for the somewhat easier read of Little Women, and have since avoided returning to it.

Many a conversation has been had about Catch 22 between myself and one of my dearest friend Kim’s stepfather Colin, who cites it as one of his favourite books and has put a great deal of effort into convincing me of its merit. But alas, it is only now, with just a handful of books left from the BBC Top 100, that I’ve found myself returning to it.

A satirical novel by American author Joseph Heller, Catch 22 was published in 1961, and – at number 11 in the BBC Top 100 – is thought of by many as one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century. Coming to it a second time – having since struggled through a number of books – was certainly easier than the first, and while it’s outside the spectrum of what I would usually enjoy; that of course is the reason I started my challenge in the first place.

A story steeped in satire and slapstick; the appeal for so many is its absurdity. Heller’s crazy hareem of characters leapt around the pages; one event bore no relation to the next and the dance of insanity kept the main lead. The ending was poignant; both in the revelation of Snowden’s secret and in that – slightly older and wiser – I was not only able to finish Heller’s most beloved novel but also able to appreciate Catch 22 for exactly what it was; a contradictory classic as relevant today as it was when first published.

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Book Reviews

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: Book Review

This is the story of Captain Yossarian, who is serving in World War II as a navigator on a bomber based in Italy. Yossarian is caught in a “Catch-22” where he wants to be grounded, but he can only get out of flying more missions if he’s crazy, but if he was crazy, he wouldn’t mind flying missions.

The book really skips around, so that you’re never quite sure whether you’re reading something that happened in the past, or if the story has now moved forward from the beginning point. But it’s not really confusing, it all does make some sort of sense in the end. Don’t let the whole “World War II bomber” thing mislead you. The book is generally one big farce, that, to me, has an underlying theme about the absurdity of war.

I read this when I was a senior in high school. I remember enjoying it then, and I enjoyed it this time. It was a little bit of a different experience this time around. The first time I had no idea what to expect, so the humor was generally more humorous and the suddenly serious parts were definitely more of a slap in the face. This time, I have a few more years on me, so I can appreciate the frustration of bureaucracies and “superiors” who don’t have any idea what they’re doing. And, knowing what it was that broke Yossarian gave everything a little bit of a different feel.

There was one part that just went on too long. It moved past funny and got into tiresome.

Other than that, I just loved it.

Reviewed December 6, 2007 and slightly revised September 24, 2010

Okay, that was a while ago, but I can’t imagine that people have changed that much. Do I object to the word whore ? Yes. Do people say it? Yes. I’m guessing that soldiers in WWII probably threw it around pretty easily.

You can’t sugarcoat people and still try to make the point that Heller was making with this book. He needed to put us in the war with his characters, and to do that he needed to reflect their experiences. He was a WWII vet himself, so he knew what he was writing about.

Life isn’t always pretty and politically correct, and our books have to reflect that sometimes.

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i literally JUST had this book in my hand at a tag sale in vermont over the weekend…and i put it down! argh. i 'read' it while in high school but know that i need to give it another chance. i can't believe i passed it by only to read about it online the next day! typical. thanks for the review. 🙂 you've inspired me to give it another try.

I have never read this one but would like too. Great banned books week choice!

I have had this on my owned TBR forever!

I tried reading Catch 22 in high school, but could never really get through it.

Maybe this will be the year I actually read it, your review is quite convincing after all!

Great review! I started reading this a few years ago and for some reason got distracted from it, although I remember enjoying the third or so I did read. I must start it again sometime and this time actually finish it lol.

Regarding the reason behind the ban on this book, I agree that while certain words can be offensive, people do use them and books need to be realistic in this way.

I can imagine this book getting banned. I object strongly to the word 'whore' but the reality is that people still use that word excessively and women still get called that for any or no reason. Like you said, life is not always pretty. The earlier people accept it, the better.

I haven't read this one to-date, but I love the title and how it spawned a whole new phrase that stuck! Looking forward to it.

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By Joseph Heller, An incisive classic war satire

It’s been a source of embarrassment to me that I never actually finished reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller . I read the beginning many, many years ago, but that’s about it. So, with the Hulu adaptation of it due to be released this week, it seemed like a good a time as any to cross this off my to-do list.

Still, I decided to read it more because I felt I should and less because it seemed like there was any pressing reason to do so. I’ve always known more or less what the crux of it was, so it’s been less of a priority for me — what can a 50-year-old story have to say that’s worth thinking about now? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

George Clooney as Scheisskopf in Catch-22 (Hulu, 2019)

Plot Summary

If you’re not familiar with it, Catch-22 tells the story of Yossarian, an Army Air Force captain and the lead bombardier stationed on a small island near Italy during WWII. It’s a war satire, and the term Catch-22 (used to describe no-win situations) was coined by Heller because of this book. It’s a story about bureaucratic absurdities and the paradoxes of war.

There’s a jarring contrast in the tone of book, which is sort of absurdist and humorous, and the content of the book itself, which deals primarily with an army pilot who simply wants to survive the war. Yossarian is a man who does not really want to die for his country — is that really so crazy, asks Catch-22?

While Yossarian comes off as playfully but determinedly trying to save his own skin in the beginning, as the book progresses, it’s clear that Heller’s comedic tone and playful dark humor are a diversion from the more serious issues the characters are facing.

Book Discussion

Catch-22’s events are the result of the multitude of failures — failures of the bureacracy, failures of courage, failues of character, and the many Catch-22’s that crop up. Plus the nature of war itself is also at issue. Catch-22’s satire of these shortcomings and how they interplay with each other is relentless. And as incisive as it is, it’s also, quite frankly, kind of depressing.

I didn’t realize until now how deeply cynical Catch-22 is. As much as I have respect for this book, I’m not sure reading it could exactly be described as enjoyable .

The characters in the book all operate in a tangle of cross-purposes with any sincere, well-meaning intentions easily defeated by bureaucratic absurdities. While the book is largely devoid of anyone resembling a hero (with one exception), the officers and army leadership get the most withering portrayals, all acting solely out of self-interest and cowardice.

In Catch-22, Heller pens a quote that is just as true and relevant now as ever, and it sums up perfectly what bothers me about the world and the many, many immoral and self-serving people in it: “What does upset me, though, is that they think I’m a sucker. They think that they’re smart, and that the rest of us are dumb. And, you know, Danby, the thought occurs to me right now, for the first time, that maybe they’re right.”

Yossarian in Catch-22 (Hulu, 2019)

Book Structure

One of the strongest aspects of the book, regardless of your level of interest in war satire, was the structure of the book and the way the story is old. The story is told somewhat achronologically with various flashbacks filling in the details. What initially seems to be kind of a zany, satirical story about a mischievous army captain slowly reveals itself to be a lot more (and quite a bit darker).

I thought Heller’s way of providing a timeline was particularly clever — while various events are revealed out of order, the book gives us updates on the number of missions that Yossarian has gone on and the number still he still needs to hit in order to be released, which keeps changing. It serves as a way to point out his inability to escape from the situation, but also provides a guide to the chronology of the story.

Read it or Skip it?

As far as “classic” literature goes, Catch-22 is not a particularly difficult read and worth reading at least once at some point. Still, it’s not exactly a beach read. I wouldn’t recommend it for general pleasure reading, since it’s a bit of a downer for most of the book.

Also, I would add a caveat that while I still think it’s worth reading and the points it makes are all still valid and important (pretty much all its criticisms about bureaucracy, capitalism and self-interest will ring true for anyone who has ever worked in an office before), the book is not quite as topical now as it was when it was released. As discussed in this very well written article , part of the reason Catch-22’s caught on and became so ingrained in our national consciousness had to do with the political environment when it was released. It was ideal reading material with the Vietnam War debate heating up and anti-establishment-ism on the rise.

(In 2019, the biggest questions about war probably have more to do with whether the use of drones is ethical, whether sending our country’s poorest populations off to die for us and then failing to take care of them is ethical and what type of role the U.S. should be playing, especially when it comes to distributing arms to other countries. )

However, Catch-22 is a book that wants to challenge your worldviews and does so adeptly with a hard dose of dark and absurdist comedy. Its place on the “best books” lists is well deserved, even if it is a very cynical ride. I’m glad I finally got to read this, and I’m interested to see how the adaptation goes — though I’m thinking I’ll follow up this book with some lighter fare!

Did you read this book? If, so was it for school or on your own? What were your thoughts? See it on Amazon .

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23 comments

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Incisive review! I’m interested in seeing how Hulu adapts the novel. So many shows are nonlinear today, so the novel seems like it’d lend itself well to the series format.

Thank you! I haven’t seen the show yet but based on the reviews, it sounds like they made it somewhat more linear, which sounds like it’s probably easier to follow but also seems like of disappointing to me. I’m going to try to find some time to watch it soon!

Interesting. I read this for my A-levels in comparison with Captain Corelli’s mandolin. I think I was the only person in the class who read it cover to cover. It is dark and sad and funny and ludicrous all in measure and I think it was a very apt measure of the madness of war and the sheer nerves that air crew lived on- considering many didn’t make it through the expected flights each flight could be their last was it any surprise that a kind of nihilism emerges? I wouldn’t necessarily choose to read it again but it’s one of those, glad I did books.

Yeah, I think I ended up with the same feeling that it’s definitely worth reading once and thinking about, but probably not something I’ll end up diving back into again. Even knowing that it’s supposed to be a classic, I was still surprised how well it seemed to capture both the absurdity and darkness of war though.

No I never read it. I really need to it’s a classic. Do you know when the show starts?

It’s worth reading once for sure! The show is available on Hulu now! I haven’t watched it yet but I want to find some time to do it soon!

I did read the book many years ago, it was the only thing available at the time! The book did keep me reading, I wanted to know what would happen, and yes, it is mostly a downer. I think the book is still relevant and has important insights into the absurdities of war culture. I should read it as a fully-formed adult..hmm, maybe.

Yeah, I think it’s probably a very different book it you’re reading it as a kid vs. an adult. It does seem like a hard book to want to read twice since it is kind of a downer.

I’m not sure if this book will ever make it on my tbr list; it doesn’t seem like a book I’d enjoy. However, I did enjoy reading your review!

Thank you! Yeah, it was a better book but a less enjoyable book than I was expecting. Definitely not one I’d recommend to everyone, though I do think most people could get something out of it, if that makes sense.

Nice review. I had no idea there is a new adaptation coming. I will be looking for it. Thanks for the post.

Thank you! Yes, the adapation is on Hulu now, but I haven’t watched it yet. Thanks for reading!

I read this book last month I didn’t really think it was that good, a bit too repetitive for me and annoying at times.

hmm yeah I could see how it could get repetitive — thanks for our thoughts!

I read it in high school (1964) was drafted into the US Army in 1965, went to Vietnam in 1968 and began living the book. You made a good point about the topical nature of the book. There are different concerns today and the US military is an all “volunteer” force. Many volunteer out of economic necessity. I stayed with the military for a full career, enjoying and exploiting the ridiculous bureaucratic absurdities a military structure offers. The book affected my life and worldview greatly although I don’t think it influenced my decision to remain in Southeast Asia. The ridiculous can be found anywhere.

Hi Ron, thanks so much for sharing that — I was definitely curious what people in the military would think of it, so I appreciate your input. It’s interesting to know that you feel the book truly affected your worldview. Thank you for your insightful comment!

The same has happened with me with The Book Thief. And Catch – 22 is on my TBR. Though I do plan to pick up The Book Thief, again!

I actually haven’t read The Book Thief, but I saw the movie. Not sure if I ever plan on reading it, though I know lots of people really love it.

Really interesting to read your review. I have never read the book but although I often considered it, I prefer to read books I will enjoy.

Yeah, I don’t know if Catch-22 is for everyone. I do think it genuinely has something interesting and important to say, but I don’t think I’ll revisit it again in the future, or at least not for a long time. Thanks for reading!

It’s one of those books I’m happy to know about but I don’t care if I ever read it or not :)

I never finished it either, and always felt bad about it. Glad I’m not the only one. Though I should finish before I watch it! It always felt like a long episode of MASH to me…

The author of this review has CLEARLY never been in or even loosely affiliated with the United States Department of Defense in any way. Had they had even the most passing familiarity with how even the smallest sub-division of this bloated bureaucracy operates to this day, they would consider the book both totally relevant and absolutely hilarious. The “dark” aspect is apparently lost on those of us for whom the darkness is just part of the job. It is dark. But, that’s just the nature of the entire setting of this book. Those who are familiar with it (and apparently there are fewer of us now than there were when the book was written) will scarcely note it, focusing instead on the absurdity of it all. For veterans, this is a comedy. If you’ve ever been in, considered being part of, or been inclined to opine about the military, you must read this book. No recruiting film could prepare you better for what you will experience on a daily basis.

(The movie has been around for decades. I have not seen Hulu’s version – it may well just be the original movie aired in a new media form. Regardless, as always, the book is superior to the movie. Read it first. See the movie later if you must.)

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Catch-22 by Joseph Heller—Book Review

I finished Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 many months ago — I’ve kept pushing the review further and further off because this is one of the classics, it’s loved by many, disliked by some, downright hated by a chosen few. I find myself decidedly in the camp of the first, as this novel illustrated the absurdism of war through examples that will have you either grasping at your sides with laughter or blinking slowly, trying to comprehend what the hell just happened.

It is a difficult book to penetrate, at first. Heller thinks little of chronology, the structure of his chapters a mess that is at once brilliant and confounding; the opening begins in media res, with Yossarian pretending to be both sick and crazy for who-knows-which time. Unafraid to hop from one character’s circumstances to another, Heller uses an omniscient narrator to sketch out the daily life of the soldiers of the U.S. Air Army. He does so in a way that extends to far more than just these characters, encompassing the entirety of the army, of any army, even of every army. The objections to war, after all, should not be examined in a case-by-case basis.

Once you become acquainted with the military and its maddening mechanisms, Heller’s thesis statement begins to fall into place:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. “That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed. “It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.

Ironic, isn’t it? This circularity is the bread and butter of so much of Heller’s seminal work, and though other examples of this never failed to garner a laugh, chortle or chuckle from me, these became ever more histeric as I continued my sixteen-hour journey across a text that is increasingly pessimistic about the nature of modern society in all its paradoxic, violent and capitalistic glory.

There is something of a postmodernist precursor to this book, something that so well captures the pulse of a movement that was just beginning to arise in the sixties ( Catch-22 was published in 1961) that you can’t help but applaud Heller for taking the measure of so much of the postmodernist essence:

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

This codifies so much of my experience with postmodernism!…And the distance from this to Angela Carter isn’t that much of a stretch, is it?

I listened to Catch-22 as narrated by Trevor White whose reading brought the characters to life and made the dialogue jump off the page. I recommend you give that particular audiobook a listen — it’s well-worth the Audible credit!

And, before I close this review off, may I say that Milo Minderbinder is one of the most brilliant characters used to satirize capitalism and the notion of free market, ever? The Mess Officer of the Air Force base that most of the book is set up at, is the beating heart of a pyramid scheme that puts all others to shame; Milo is a hell of a guy, and he’s almost as funny as he is scary.

I could write about Catch-22 ‘s insane cast for days, but alas, I’ve got plenty of other reviews to write. This is one I’ll be coming back to, reading and rereading, and something tells me no two reads will be the same. Just writing this review is enough to fill me with excitement over the possibility of experiencing the narrative Joseph Heller constructed with such impeccable care. If you’ve heard that this is one of the finest novels of the 20th century…well, you’ve heard right.

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I tried reading this many years ago but had trouble getting into it. I’ll have to give it another try or listen to the audio book. Thanks for the insightful review!

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Bookwormex - Book Reviews for Avid Readers

The First Stop for Literature Lovers

“Catch-22” by Joseph Heller – Where Rational Thought goes to Die

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

• Short Summary

Joseph Heller forever gifted humanity a slightly deeper understanding of human nature and the utter folly pervasive in war when he published the eternally-current Catch-22 . The novel, drawing in part on Heller’s experiences as a bombardier, follows the story of Captain John Yossarian and his mates who experience the incongruous insanity of the Second World War as they fly their missions over Italy.

Table of contents

Joseph heller describes a satirical war, comrades in irrationality in catch-22, reality behind the mask of senselessness, the final verdict.

War is something mankind has unfortunately known since ancient times, and probably even earlier if we count our ancestors who were too primitive to lead records. With thousands of years of hindsight and historical knowledge we’ve paradoxically only grown worse, capable of dishing out death on unprecedented scales. Throughout all those epochs, one idea seemed to unite all wars: their utter absurdity. This is the core of Joseph Heller ‘s unforgettable classic, Catch-22 . Though the name of the book is certainly held in high regard, having even managed to become part of the English lexicon, it is increasingly becoming the type of modern classic work more people know about than have actually read it.

In my humble opinion, it’s a sad state of affairs which we would benefit from reversing for one simple reason: it holds the sort of truth capable of making us think and changing us on a core level, and there are very few books I could attribute such a characteristic to. Anyhow, the story follows Captain John Yossarian, an American bombardier flying missions over Italy as the war draws closer and closer to its end. However, his experience of war is quite different to how he imagined it. The number of combat missions he needs to fly is constantly increasing, and soon enough his own army proves to be more troublesome than any enemy in the field.

What’s perhaps even worse, he keeps running face-first and smashing his nose into the unbreakable wall of war-time bureaucracy as it finds reasons time and time again to refuse him the simple pleasure of going home. His comrades are no better off, and together they make a place for themselves in a world gone completely mad, all while the reality of war seldom ceases to show itself.

It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead. ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

There are far too many things to say about the novel to condense it into a review, likely meriting another book matching its own size for an in-depth study. Nevertheless, I will do my best to shine the spotlight on the elements which caught my attention and stuck with me after I had finished it.

While Captain John Yossarian is indeed the protagonist of the story, he often takes a back-seat to his army comrades, many even having entire chapters dedicated to them, and let me assure you, they are all equally fascinating to read about. Each one seems to be facing his own personal difficulties or realizing his own ambitions in the war, showcasing the many ways it can affect people.

In most books, these characters would be fairly sombre and dealing largely with tragedy, but this is where Catch-22 , one of the bestsellers of the 60s , sets itself apart from the fold. Heller writes with a sharp sense of sarcasm and imbues the stories of these men with healthy doses of humour, often stemming from the ridiculous lengths they are willing to go to accomplish their goals.

While it is obviously normal to have your favourites among them, as we see more and more of them while the story unfolds I think it’s inevitable for us to develop a certain kinship with them, or at least a sense of understanding. While at the onset they might have seemed utterly insane, slowly they turn into regular boys trying to make the best of an impossible situation, in a world they haven’t even had the time to properly know yet.

It’s not all fun and games though, as there very much is a war going on, one they are forced to participate in to kill people they’ve never met for reasons they cannot understand. Tragedy does befall them again and again, and when it does all the humour preceding it makes it powerful, impactful, and to me at least, unforgettable.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Looking at them literally, on a surface level, many of the situations, actions, rules, thoughts and decisions presented in the novel feel completely senseless, as if the author’s desire was to create a situation as absurd as possible for the mere sake of a thought experiment. While this is definitely be something many modern authors are pulled towards, this isn’t Joseph Heller ‘s way in the slightest.

It is very important to note Heller himself was a bombardier for the United States Air Force and flew sixty combat missions during his service. He does describe most of them as being “Milk Runs” (missions where minimal enemy resistance is expected), but it nevertheless gave him some invaluable insight most of us are fortunate enough not to acquire through first-hand experience.

All the absurd twists and turns of the story are often meant to mirror the real world, even if in a rather general sense. As these elements accumulate without any intention of stopping, the large picture forms more and more clearly, spelling out the overarching idea hiding beneath the veneer of satirical comedy: war is completely insane in all of its aspects.

While Heller isn’t the first person to ever express this idea, I’ve personally yet to get my hands on a book which portrayed it as convincingly, lightly, and yet still poignantly enough to cut deep when true tragedy begins to seep in. He never beats you over the head with it, instead expressing the motif naturally through the extremely varied and entertaining stories of Yossarian and his many friends.

As entertaining as the novel might be, to me it feels more like a cry to the entire world, to realize the senselessness in our conflicts and the way we handle them, to lay down our weapons and take a moment to think about the future we’re erecting for our children. This is, perhaps, its great value in literature: it has the real capacity to make the reader think, especially if they don’t feel like it.

So is Catch-22 a good book? In my opinion, this novel by Joseph Heller is an incomparable work of dark humour set in the Second World War, one which does it all, from laughter-inducing sequences, to profoundly emotional and tragic ones, ending all the way at the station of thought-provoking satire. I believe it’s a unique, one-of-a-kind work which doesn’t lend itself to any comparisons and could stand to be treated more like a priceless relic. If you enjoy war-time satire and want to see what the absolute height of the genre has to offer, then I strongly urge you to get this book. It’s the kind you’ll keep getting more and more out of as you reread it over the years.

Joseph Heller

(May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999)

Joseph Heller was an American author who wrote novels, screenplays, regular plays, and short stories. His best-known work is by far Catch-22 , a poignant satire on war whose title became a term the English jargon to describe absurd and contradictory situations. His other well-known works include Something Happened , God Knows and Picture This .

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David Ben Efraim (Reviewer)

David Ben Efraim is a book reviewer living in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and co-owner of Bookwormex , as well as the Quick Book Reviews blog, along with Yakov Ben Efraim. With a love for literature reaching across all genres (except romance), he has embarked on the quest to share its wonders with the world by helping people find their way to books which truly speak to them, whether they be modern sensations or relics from a bygone era.

1 thought on ““Catch-22” by Joseph Heller – Where Rational Thought goes to Die”

Great review. I just finished the book today. I loved it! Few books make me laugh out loud, but Catch-22 did.

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Seeing Catch-22 Twice

The awful truth people miss about heller’s great novel..

Read Walter Kirn’s appreciation of Joseph Heller here.

I still fondly remember the day my father told me, “Hey, I just got a letter from Joseph Heller.”

Now, my father wasn’t a big reader and rarely wrote letters, much less to authors. But when I went through a phase in high school of constantly carrying Catch-22 around and quoting from it and writing things like, “There was only one catch and that was catch-22” in magic marker on phone booths in the supermarket parking lot where I worked as a shopping cart retriever (superdistinguished summer job!), my father asked to borrow my copy and, to my surprise, became an instant fan.

I guess it shouldn’t have been so surprising. He had served as a wartime second lieutenant and was fond of quoting to me and my sister such profound military maxims as, “There’s a right way, a wrong way and the army way.” (Which meant: Do things my way, right or wrong. )

And I think he was impressed when I stumped him with what I would later come to think of as Joseph Heller’s hilarious refutation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative.

There’s a scene in the World War II novel when some officer or other reproves the novel’s anti-hero, Capt. Yossarian, for trying to escape another of the ever-escalating number of dangerous bombing missions he’s ordered to fly.

“Suppose everybody on our side felt that way,” the officer demands, echoing Kant’s imperative—that one should decide how to act by envisioning the consequences if everyone else acted that way. It’s a maxim much beloved by parents. Mine, anyway.

So, if everybody else acted that way? “Then I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way,” Yossarian says.

Beautiful! It was one of the reasons I fell madly in love with the novel. Almost the way Yossarian says he fell for the chaplain in the first lines of the book. (Heller said he found a way to start writing Catch-22 when he heard in his head a version of the first lines: “It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.”) It’s one of the novel’s amazing achievements that it may be the darkest, most profoundly negative vision of existence in modern fiction, yet it leaves you with a feeling of mad love for its crazy beauty.

Anyway my father was moved enough by his love of the novel to write a letter to Heller telling him how perfectly he had captured the absurdity of military life (“the army way”) and how much it had moved him that someone understood . And it moved me that we could share this literary affection. So I was even more affected that Heller would take the time—a year after publication, just when Catch-22 was taking off and becoming the multimillion-copy best-seller it would be—to write a letter to my father thanking him for sharing his experience with the war and the military mind.

Every time I recall that, I think about the way reading Catch-22 changed my life. Maybe not for the better. Sometimes I think the book predisposed me to tangle with authority, and made me think that all authority was a joke founded upon pretense. (It’s not?) But even though the book shaped me from a young age, the way I think about it changed, somewhat abruptly, about a dozen years ago.

If you remember the novel, you’ll remember the chapter in the middle of the book about the soldier who “sees everything twice.” (If you haven’t read it, you really should get yourself a copy, and now is an optimal moment: The book is 50 years old; a biography of Heller and a memoir by his daughter are both just hitting bookstore shelves; and there’s a 50 th anniversary edition already in stores with an affectionate and perceptive introduction by Christopher Buckley, who became a close friend of Heller’s later in his life.)

Curiously enough it was something Christopher’s father, William F. Buckley Jr., published in his magazine the National Review some years ago that caused me to rethink why I like Catch-22 — led me, in effect, to see Catch-22 twice. And even more curious than that was the fact that what Buckley pere had published was an attack on the novel by Norman Podhoretz, who had something of a negative obsession with the book.

Before I seek to explain my second sight (my new vision) I should probably mention that Simon & Schuster, which is publishing the 50 th -anniversary edition, also published my most recent book —about what you might call the catch-22 of nuclear deterrence.

Most people see Catch-22 as an “anti-war novel.” But I’m not sure that’s exactly right, or that it goes far enough.

There’s a brief passage in Chris Buckley’s introduction to the new edition in which he quotes from a letter written to Heller by Stephen Ambrose the historian: “For sixteen years,” Ambrose wrote, I have been waiting for the great anti-war book which I knew WWII must produce. I rather doubted, however, that it would come out of America; I would have guessed Germany. I am happy to have been wrong. Thank you.”

This is a bit puzzling: Wasn’t World War II supposed to have been “the good war,” one of the few in history in which there was relative moral clarity? And didn’t Ambrose write Band of Brothers for Spielberg, a script that was realistic about war but not anti -war. We were seeking to defeat Adolf Hitler after all.

This was the point that Podhoretz was making in his attack on the novel:

In due course even World War II fell victim to the onslaught of the antiheroic ethos that was resurrected in the Sixties and given even greater currency by Vietnam. Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 is the key document here. Though published in the early days of American involvement in Vietnam, Catch-22 was a product of the new climate, and so powerful was this climate already becoming that Heller not only got away with but was even applauded for what a few years earlier would have been thought virtually blasphemous—showing up World War II as in effect no different from or better than World War I. As Heller portrayed it, there were no heroes in that war; there were only victims of a racket run by idiots, hustlers and thieves.

I think I can speak for my father in saying that Podhoretz, who has written repeated attacks on the book, has missed the point, or lets a lack of a sense of humor obscure it. But sometimes an attack can have a clarifying effect on why one really values a book and this was the case here. I remember being indignant when I when I first read it. For Podhoretz, Yossarian was not the lovable, shambolic, subversive anti-war anti-hero I (and almost everyone else, particularly of the Vietnam generation) thought him to be. He was a shameless, shameful shirker.

In refusing to go on bombing missions after the requisite number kept being raised by self-serving commanders every time Yossarian came near fulfilling the quota, and by causing the scrubbing of planned missions, Yossarian was either condemning others to die or risk death in his place. He was undermining, Podhoretz argues, in an immoral, cowardly way, what was generally agreed to be a virtuous cause, however bungled its execution.

The people who defended Heller, Yossarian, and Catch-22 from critiques like Podhoretz’s tended to say, Well, the war was just about all over! Already won! The missions were hardly even necessary; the commanders were foolishly and unnecessarily condemning the fliers to death by ordering extra missions.

I was satisfied with that for a while, and I kept on rereading Catch-22 with even more defiant pleasure. But after a while, probably after the time I spent writing Explaining Hitler , I began to rethink that defense, and to find it deficient. And re-examining the book opened the door to a new way of looking at Catch-22, one that saw it as even more profound.

First the factual background: If you examine the state of the war at the time when the novel is set more closely, you have to concede the war wasn’t “over,” in the sense of having been definitively won. (I’ve just done a new introduction to the 50 th -anniversary edition of William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich , which sensitized me to the chronology of the war.) There is no mention of Normandy in the novel, the Herman Goering Division is still a force to be reckoned with, even the Italian campaign was not a done deal. Mussolini is still in power in the novel, so its time frame must be 1943. Which means there was a lot of significant, potentially disastrous fighting yet to be done and that those bombing runs that Yossarian is shirking—even if they were ordered by preening idiots with no concern for the air crews or the war beyond the opportunity for self-promotion—had significance.

Which means that on strictly moral grounds, Podhoretz may have had a point. If you want to admire Catch-22 as an anti-war novel, you can only reasonably do so from a strictly pacifist position. What if everyone acted like Yossarian? Well, maybe he’d be a fool not to have done so, but Hitler might well have remained in control of Europe.

So where does that leave us? It left me thinking that to regard Catch-22 merely as an anti-war novel is a mistake. Even to regard it, as many critics do, as about “mortality” diminishes its scope. After all, Yossarian’s much ballyhooed “discovery” of mortality at the end of the novel is not much of a discovery, however “hands on” it may be. (Spoiler alert: His fellow crewman Snowden suffers a horrendous flak wound and literally spills his guts into Yossarian’s hands; the incident, recounted at the end of the book, takes place early on in the chronology and may well be what triggered the overt symptoms of rebellion we see in Yossarian throughout.) Even so, there’s no shortage of novels that dwell on the tragedy of mortality.

I think Heller’s argument was not with war or with death but with God. That the novel is less about the death of Snowden than “the death of God,” as that theological tendency was known back then. That what the novel is really about is theodicy. Theodicy being of course the subcategory of theology which attempts (and studies the attempts) to reconcile human suffering, cruelty, and evil with the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God. Heller doesn’t think it can be done.

He makes this extremely daring, radically blasphemous argument—essentially that God is, if not evil, then hopelessly incompetent—most explicitly in the chapter about the soldier who “sees everything twice.”

It’s in Chapter 18. (Purely coincidence I’m sure, but by now everyone knows the story of how Heller had originally titled his novel Catch-18 but—because he learned at the last minute that popular novelist Leon Uris was coming out with a book entitled Mila 18 —he and his editor and publisher decided to change the title to Catch-22 . There has been much speculation about why they chose 22 , as opposed to another number, and I have a theory I shall relate in a moment.)

But to set the stage: Chapter 18 takes place in the airbase hospital to which Yossarian has once again repaired, hoping to convince the doctors he’s sick enough to avoid flying any more missions even though he’s perfectly healthy.

This dodge has been wearing thin, which is all the more reason Yossarian is impressed by the scam invented by a fellow airman in his ward. The guy suddenly sits up and shouts, “I see everything twice!”

Chaos follows. “A nurse screamed and an orderly fainted,” Heller writes, “Doctors came running up from every direction with needles, lights, tubes, rubber mallets and oscillating metal tines. They rolled up complicated instruments. …”

It’s in keeping with the novel’s trademark absurdist genius that everyone seems to take terribly seriously the condition of “seeing everything twice” even though, if you stop and try to think what that means, it makes no logical sense at all. (It’s not double vision.) And yet it seems incredibly suggestive, whatever it is. Perhaps a distant reference to Marx’s version of Hegel in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon : Everything in history happens twice: First time as tragedy, second time as farce. Not a bad definition of Catch-22 ’s literary genre: tragedy/farce.

The doctors struggle to decide which specialist should get to treat this unique but inexplicable syndrome and the airman gets to stay in the hospital. Before long Yossarian tries this gambit himself:

“The leader of this team of doctors was a dignified, solicitous gentleman who held up one finger directly in front of Yossarian and demanded, ‘How many fingers do you see?’ ” “Two,” said Yossarian. “How many fingers do you see now?” asked the doctor, holding up two. “Two” said Yossarian. “And how many now?” asked the doctor, holding up none. “Two”” said Yossarian. “The doctor’s face wreathed with a smile. ‘By Jove he’s right,’ he declared jubilantly. ‘He does see everything twice.’ ” “They rolled Yossarian away on a stretcher … and quarantined everyone else in the ward for another fourteen days.”

I always loved this scene for its Marx Bros. refusal of logic and the fact that everyone accepts it as logically possible. And I think the scene is a key analog to another instance of the genre of black humor/aburdism that was so influential in American culture of the latter half of the 20 th century. I have a strong feeling the awareness of the “seeing everything twice” line crept into Bob Dylan’s absurdist “Stuck Inside of Mobile (With the Memphis Blues Again)”. In those lines Dylan sings: “An’ here I sit so patiently/Waiting to find out what price/You have to pay to get out of/going though all these things twice.” It’s no fun going from tragedy to farce.

But for me, the high point of the “I see everything twice” chapter, perhaps the thematic high point of the book, is Yossarian’s astonishingly scathing denunciation of God.

It comes between the first time he sees the soldier who sees everything twice and his decision to pretend that he does, too.

This is the key theodicy (or anti-theodicy) passage that makes Catch-22 in its own way a religious (or anti-religious) novel. It grows out of an argument Yossarian recounts having the following year (time schemes are not rigidly adhered to in Catch-22 ), an argument with the wife of his commanding officer Lt. Scheisskopf. (Occasionally, subtlety isn’t either.)

It’s Thanksgiving Day and she’s reproving Yossarian for not being thankful, and he says, “I bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for.”

Among her responses: “Be thankful you’re healthy.”

“Be bitter you’re not going to stay that way,” he says.

“Be glad you’re even alive,” she says.

“Be furious you’re going to die,” he counters.

They continue until Yossarian launches into a pagelong denunciation of God that I think is the blasphemous heart of the book:

“And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways,” Yossarian continued, hurtling over her objections. “There’s nothing so mysterious about it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about—a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did he ever create pain? … Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! [to warn us of danger] Why couldn’t He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person’s forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn’t He? … What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. …”

Wow! It’s a tour de force of anti-Deism. People speak too narrowly when they talk of Catch-22 as a satire of humanity. It’s that, yes, and there are few better. But it’s really a vicious satiric attack on God, as much as his poorly made creatures. This denunciation of God comes from the heart—Yossarian’s, anyway—and transcends any denunciation of the evil of war. It’s about the evil of existence itself and the creator of that existence and that evil.

I actually think that the importance of this passage dwarfs the obviousness of the passage about Snowden’s death, which critics tirelessly tell us is the supreme moment of the novel. Yossarian’s supposedly shocking discovery of mortality just does not live up to the metaphysical venom of this novel. OK, it’s horrible to have someone’s guts spill into your hands, but give me a break, he’s been through war, he’s seen death.

But the passage in the “I see everything twice” chapter is far more caustic, scathing, and deeply shocking and disturbing. Because it’s not saying “death is bad.” It’s saying life is bad, existence is horrible. Why, in fact, get all upset about leaving the shambles of existence this deranged “country bumpkin” Creator has bequeathed us?

Once you get this you see Catch-22 twice or maybe for the first time.

I still love the book the way I used to, I still find it funnier than almost any other piece of literature. But there is a hidden “what’s so funny here, anyway” aspect to the book as well, once you get beyond the war-is-hell and the officers-are-idiots. Life is hell. What kind of God created a world in which we’d have a Hitler to fight in the first place? Oh, it’s a test, you say? Give me a spinal tap (in fact, give me Spinal Tap ) instead.

Indeed, thinking about it in this way I wonder if both my father and I were touched by the same intuition that the novel is both tragedy and farce with a bleak vision of existence that encompasses far more than mere military madness.

And rereading the “everything twice” chapter for maybe the 10 th time I had another intuition, perhaps a bit far-fetched: I think this passage is so fundamental I’d speculate that the choice of Catch-22 to replace Catch-18 can perhaps be linked to the “I see everything twice” chapter. Maybe it was unconscious, but think of the number 22 : It’s seeing two, twice. I rest my case.

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Table of Contents

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About The Book

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About The Author

Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923. In 1961, he published Catch-22 , which became a bestseller and, in 1970, a film. He went on to write such novels as Good as Gold, God Knows, Picture This, Closing Time , and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man . Heller died in 1999.

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (April 5, 2011)
• Length: 544 pages
• ISBN13: 9781451621174

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Raves and Reviews

" Catch-22 is the only war novel I've ever read that makes any sense." —Harper Lee

“One of the most bitterly funny works in the language . . . Explosive, bitter, subversive, brilliant.” — The New Republic

“To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past fifty years. Catch-22 is one.” —Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

“This novel is not merely the best American novel to come out of World War II, it is the best American novel that has come out of anywhere in years.” —Nelson Algren, The Nation

“It’s the rock and roll of novels . . . There’s no book like it. . . . Surprisingly powerful.” —Norman Mailer, Esquire

“To call it the finest comic novel of our day is faulting it. If Joseph Heller writes no other book, he will be well remembered for this apocalyptic masterpiece.” —Studs Terkel, Chicago Sun-Times

“Wildly original, brilliantly comic, brutally gruesome, it is a dazzling performance that will probably outrage nearly as many readers as it delights.” —Orville Prescott, New York Times Book Review

“One of the greatest anti-war books ever written.” — Vanity Fair

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