Review: Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

I remember reading sections of Catch-22  in highschool English, but I hadn’t gone back to read the whole thing until a week or two ago. It’s a book that comes in at #7 on the Modern Library’s list of 100 greatest novels, and whether or not you agree with that ranking, I think it’s safe to say that it belongs on the list. I mentioned this yesterday, but I think Heller gets unfairly pidgeonholed as a whacky satirist rather than as a top-notch writer or a storyteller.

Still, there’s no denying the man has a knack for humor. Take the prosaic progression and punchline in this line, for example:

"There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma, there was a pathologist for his pathos, a cystologist for his cysts, and a bald and pedantic Cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard, who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the medical corps by a faulty anode in an IBM machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him."

The absurdity of a poor cetologist landing in the medical corps near the frontlines of WWII is typical of the crazy conundrums that fill the novel- from Milo Minderbinder’s syndicate (Everybody’s got a share!) to the political maneuvers of the dastardly military brass.

There were  a couple spots where the attempt at humor gets to be a little much, where the dialogue starts to resemble an old Abbott & Costello or Groucho Marx routine, where every line is a punchline, but by and large the satire is hilarious and effective.

And here’s what I really loved about the book. The chapters present a disjointed and non-chronological timeline where past events are referred to, then placed like puzzle pieces into greater context, and finally dealt with in-depth later on in the narrative- some of it a pretty gruesome counterpoint to the funny material that surrounds it. It all has the effect of throwing the reader into the same confusing and seemingly endless loop that the characters themselves are stuck in- with one key exception: the ever-climbing number of combat missions the men are required to fly. This last fact provides a common thread for the entire book, and gives an ominous crescendo to the unfolding action. It’s brilliant how it all comes together.

From the Pen of Joseph Heller

For all the attention Catch-22 gets for being a "hardee har har," laugh-a-minute, military  satire, I think Joseph Heller often gets short shrift as a wordsmith. Here are just a few highlights from my recent turn through his masterpiece. All highlights are mine. They're just a few of the lines that struck me as particularly powerful.

The only end in sight was Yossarian’s own, and he might have remained in the hospital until doomsday had it not been for that patriotic Texan with his infundibuliform jowls and his lumpy, rumple-headed indestructible smile, cracked forever across the front of his face like the brim of a black ten-gallon hat.

Havermeyer was the best damn bombardier they had, but he flew straight and level all the way from the IP to the target, and even far beyond the target until he saw the falling bombs strike ground and explode in a darting spurt of abrupt orange, that flashed beneath the swirling pall of smoke and pulverized debris geysering up wildly in huge rolling waves of gray and black.

Each day’s delay deepened the awareness and deepened the gloom. The clinging, overpowering conviction of death spread steadily with the continuing rainfall, soaking mordantly into each man’s ailing countenance like the corrosive blot of some crawling disease. Everyone smelled of formaldehyde.

Major _ _ DeCoverly was a splendid, awe-inspiring, grave old man with a massive, leonine head and an angry shock of wild white hair that raged like a blizzard around his stern, patriarchal face.

Major _ _ DeCoverly straightened with astonishment at Milo’s affrontery and concentrated upon him the full  fury of his storming countenance with its rugged overhang of gullied forehead, and huge crag of a hump-backed nose that came charging out of his face wrathfully like a Big 10 fullback.

Along the ground suddenly on both sides of the path he saw dozens of new mushrooms the rain had spawned, poking their nodular fingers up through the clammy earth like lifeless stocks of flesh, sprouting in such necrotic profusion everywhere he looked that they seemed to be proliferating right before his eyes.

Title Chase: Catch-22

We’ve all come across certain frustrating situations where you’re “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” Those of us born after the sixties probably came to know the term “catch-22” long before we were introduced to the book that gave its own name to these classic no-win situations. Here’s how Joseph Heller described the self-contradictory bureaucratic blooper that condemned Yossarian to an endless string of combat missions:

“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 were 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.”

But did you know that this circular puzzle was originally known as Catch-18? Here’s what wikipedia has to say about why it was so hard to land on just the right title:

“The opening chapter of the novel was originally published in New World Writing as “Catch-18” in 1955, but Heller's agent, Candida Donadio, requested that he change the title of the novel, so it would not be confused with another recently published World War II novel, Leon Uris's Mila 18 . The number 18 has special meaning in Judaism (it means Alive in Gematria) and was relevant to early drafts of the novel which had a somewhat greater Jewish emphasis.

“The title Catch-11  was suggested, with the duplicated 1 paralleling the repetition found in a number of character exchanges in the novel, but because of the release of the 1960 movie Ocean's Eleven, this was also rejected. Catch-17  was rejected so as not to be confused with the World War II film Stalag 17, as was Catch-14 , apparently because the publisher did not feel that 14 was a "funny number." Eventually the title came to be Catch-22 , which, like 11, has a duplicated digit, with the 2 also referring to a number of déjà vu-like events common in the novel.”

I think Catch-22 has a nice ring to it, but come on, calling the number 14 unfunny? 14 is a hilarious number: the glottal stop right there in the middle? The only “teen” without an e or an i sound?… Catch-14  would have been comedy gold.

In the nose with CaptainYossarian

I’m making my way back through Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and wanted to get a better handle on the layout of the B-25 bomber that Captain Yossarian and his squadron fly on an ever-increasing number of combat missions.

Several times we get references to how Yossarian, as the bombadier in the nose of the plane, shouts instructions to the pilot and navigator in the cockpit in order to avoid incoming flack from the anti-aircraft guns below. I couldn’t quite grasp why the pilot would be blind to this danger, but this picture clarifies it a bit:

It also helps you understand why Yossarian wouldn’t be able to squeeze through the tiny passageway into the nose while wearing a parachute (and why he would be so angry with Aarfy after the latter sneaks into the nose behind him to calmly smoke his pipe.) Here are another couple diagrams showing where the rest of the crew would be stationed, and where poor Snowden would have been, alone, in the back of the plane.

Author Look-Alikes: Vol. 10

The narrow-set eyes under a straight, low brow hovering over a long nose and pursed lips… I’d say O Henry bears an undeniable resemblance to that dude from Parenthood (Sam Jaeger):

And while we’re on the subject of hit tv shows, can anyone tell me that Mary Shelley doesn’t have a little Lady Edith Crawley in her? Eyes, nose, lips- it’s almost spooky:

And here’s Ambrose Bierce, who disappeared mysteriously during the Mexican American War. Perhaps he found the Fountain of Youth that Ponce de Leon never could, and resurfaced some years later as actor Tom Skerritt:

Joseph Heller’s wooly coiffure and playfully squinting eyes conjure up images of a pudgy Art Garfunkel. Like a bridge over troubled water, he will lay him down:

And doesn’t off-beat children’s author Roald Dahl remind you just a little bit of that quirky speech pathologist of the late king of England (Geoffrey Rush)?