Book Review: Catch-22

 “Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.” 

 Another book review!  We will get through this.  Just as long as I don't read them as fast as I review them.  But to be honest, I really do enjoy doing this book review thing.  In case you were not aware, I really love books.  I don't think that comes as much of a surprise to you all.

At work, I have a few coworkers who I will discuss books with.  This one comes out of these discussions, as someone told me that I had to read Catch-22.

Basically, guys, I need to stop judging whether or not I'd like "high school English" books.  I thought that'd never like this book.  For a few reasons: 1) I was told that it was smutty.  It's not.  It has some more mature content, but I wouldn't call it smutty.  2) Some people who read it in high school English said that they hated it. Well, I liked a lot of books people hated in high school, so why did I care?

Captain Yossarian has a problem.  He's in the army for one. For two, everyone is trying to kill him.  Yossarian needs to find a way out of the military before he dies. Whenever he tries to fly a plane, people try to shoot him down.  Unfortunately, his efforts to leave are always hindered by the Catch-22s of the military policies, and Colonel Cathcart won't stop raising the number of missions required! 

When I was in high school, one of my teachers made us do a unit on absurdism, based around The Bald Soprano by Ianesco, and then in senior year we backed it up with Waiting for Godot.  Perhaps I'm stupid or something, but I find absurdism to be the most pointless movement in all of literature. But then I read Catch-22, and I realized that absurdism has a place.  Because Catch-22 has an absurdist streak in it, but in a way that makes you laugh and go, "That is so ridiculous, but that's how bureaucracy works."  It's lack of reality that hearkens to reality, and so then you like it.

The absurdism was so on point, the emotions had such a depth and the descriptions had a haunting quality. The portrayal of war was quite simply gorgeous and haunting at the same time. That's really the best word--haunting. Some authors writing about war go for horrifying. But the almost-surreal descriptions of death, war and wounds took it to a deeper place than terror, to Heller's credit. I loved the story of a sane man in the world of the insane. His walk through Rome watching the misery was, I think, one of the most gorgeous passages in literature.

To be honest, I was bothered by the way that women in this story seem to be nothing but objects (though at the end, Yossarian does condemn that too, showing that he is a decent human being), but I suppose that was part of the story, and somewhat the time.

I really did like this one a lot.

5 stars.