Catch-22

When I'm asked what my favorite book is, I have two answers: Portnoy's Complaint, by Philip Roth, and Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. Both were written in the 1960s by Jewish Americans from the greater New York City area, and both can be classified as black comedies. And now I can say I have read both of them three separate times.

I first read Catch-22 when I was about thirteen or fourteen. I'm sure I didn't understand it all (my father saw me reading it and was amazed, saying he tried to read it but couldn't get through it) but I immediately cottoned to its irreverent, humorous tone. I read it again in my early thirties, and was struck that time by the underlying sense of horror--the book is certainly not all laughs.

This last time I didn't dare read my original copy purchased in about 1975, since I'm sure the pages would fall apart in my hand, so I purchased the fiftieth anniversary edition (the book came out in October of 1961), with an introduction by Christopher Buckley and all sorts of scholarship in the back of the book.

For those who don't know, Catch-22 is the story of a bomber squadron stationed on the fictional island of Pianosa off the coast of Italy during World War II. The main character is Yossarian, a bombardier who is mainly concerned with staying alive. Along the way another approximately fifty characters are introduced, and the madness of the military bureaucracy blazes like a comet through its pages. This is ultimately expressed in the Catch of the title:

"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 he 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 do. Yossarian was moved very deeply moved by 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."

The phrase Catch-22 is one of the book titles that has entered the English lexicon. The book was originally titled Catch-18, but earlier in the year Leon Uris published Mila 18, so Heller and the publishers scrambled to come up with a new number, considering 11, 14, and finally 22, which seems more appropriate given its palindromic nature. Heller later had to hear people who thought the phrase came first, and he appropriated it for the title.

This circular logic has its origins with Lewis Carroll, and Catch-22 does seem like an amalgamation of Alice in Wonderland and a hard-core war book like The Naked and the Dead. It permeates the book--in a chapter in which Yossarian falls in love with an Italian girl named Luciana, he wants to marry her. She tells him she won't marry him because he is crazy. When he asks why he is crazy, she tells him he's crazy because he wants to marry her.

Ultimately, Catch-22 boils down to the sinister, "They will do to us everything we let them do." The military, in many ways, is Yossarian's enemy. The Germans are mentioned, but Yossarian considers his commanding officer, the vain and bumptious Colonel Cathcart, his enemy, because it's the Colonel who is trying to get him killed by sending him on missions. Cathcart also keeps raising the minimum number of missions men must fly before they are sent home, until it becomes a Sisyphean exercise. At the start of the book it is forty, by the end it is eighty.

Yossarian refuses to fly more missions and says, in a key passage in the book "'From now on I'm thinking only of me.'

"Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile, 'But Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way.'

"'Then I'd certainly be a damn fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?'"

If a word cloud were made of the text, the words "crazy" and "love" would be prominent. Everyone is described as crazy, even the most sane, who are crazy because they are sane. Love is in the very first line, "It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him." Yossarian is always falling in love with people, whether they are Roman whores or fellow soldiers, he wears his heart on his sleeve. He is so haunted by the death of a colleague, Snowden, whose blood stains his uniform, that he receives a medal wearing nothing, saying he will never wear his uniform again.

The book is full of memorable characters and scenes. My favorites are the Kafka-esque trial of Clevinger, who is told to be quiet, and to say "Sir," when he does; Major Major Major, who is resented because he looks like Henry Fonda, and decides he will see no one, and instructs his sergeant to never let anyone in his office while he is there, but to let them in when is not; Orr, who stuffs crab apples (or horse chestnuts, when he can find them) into his cheeks, Scheisskopf (literal German translation--Shithead) who rises from Lieutenant to General and has an obsession with parades, and Milo Minderbinder, the mess hall officer who ends up running a syndicate, managing to make a profit by buying eggs at seven cents and selling them at five. He ends making a deal with the Germans and bombs his own squadron, but is not disciplined because he is too valuable to the American war effort. The syndicate is the most important thing of all.

This book can be classified as a comedy, but it is full of horror. Characters die with sudden and unsentimental swiftness, particularly the pilot who is out on a raft and gets halved by the propeller of a low-flying bomber. The pilot of that plane, riven with remorse, then flies into a mountain. One of the last chapters, "The Eternal City," has Yossarian in Rome, without a pass, wandering the war-torn streets: "... a nursing mother padded past holding an infant in black rags, and Yossarian wanted to smash her too, because she reminded him of the barefoot boy in the thin shirt and thin, tattered trousers and of all the shivering, stupefying misery in a world that never yet had provided enough heat and food and justice for all but an ingenious and unscrupulous handful. What a lousy Earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane?"

Later in the chapter Yossarian finds his colleague, the clueless Arfy, who has just thrown a prostitute out a window, killing her. He is horrified and tells the chuckling Arfy that he will go to jail. Arfy scoffs, even as the sounds of police sirens come closer. Authorities bust into the room, but they leave Arfy alone--they arrest Yossarian for being in Rome without a pass.

When Catch-22 was released it received some marvelous reviews, but was not a bestseller. It was Heller's good fortune (and America's misfortune) that the Vietnam War followed shortly thereafter, and the absurdities of the military, and even the American way, were cast in a new light. The book went through more than thirty printings in paperback, "Yossarian Lives" bumper stickers were seen on cars, and Catch-22 was a certified classic. I'm sure in another twenty years, if I'm still around, I'll read it again.