Why this book:  Selected by my SEAL reading group for our July session. I had read it before, when I was in HS and too young to appreciate it.  

Summary in 3 Sentences.  The setting is an Army Air Corps bomber squadron stationed in southern Italy during WW2, flying bombing missions against the Nazis who occupy Italy.  Cpt John Yossarian feels he’s risked death enough and is trying various stratagems to be taken off flight status so that he can survive the war. The book is a satire not only on the unheroic Yossarian but also on the many “interesting” young men in his squadron, whose self-serving actions, fears and eccentricities are caricatures of people we all know.  While the book is a humorous satire of military culture, it is also a serious look at what combat does to men, and the various ways different people respond to military culture in war. 

My Impressions: This is a well known classic that is written in a style that is not always easy to follow.  It’s not simply about the folly of war and the unheroic sides of warfare, but also very much about human folly and human nature- about flawed characters who seem like caricatures of self-centered, small-minded and eccentric people responding in very human, humorous, and even tragic ways to the stresses of combat in a huge event that is hard to fully grasp.  Patriotism and what’s “good for America” are twisted and used to rationalize and justify nearly any action that will serve to satisfy selfish interests.

Joseph Heller has a finely tuned sense for irony and seeing and describing the absurdity and hypocrisy in people, seemingly working together, but mostly pursuing their own interests while claiming pursuit of a larger goal.  The main character, Yossarian sees this self-centered hypocrisy and wants to opt out, but the momentum of the war, the Army, the culture in his squadron, and his ambitious, self-promoting leaders thwart his every effort.

Catch 22 has two formulations: 1. A problem whose solution is denied by conflicting rules, eg “No work unless you have an agent, but you can’t get an agent, unless you’ve worked; and 2. all things are permitted that you can get away with.

Rather than a smooth flowing story,  Catch 22  is more of a collage of events broken up into chapters, which Norman Mailer described as a “crazy patchwork of anecdotes, episodes, and character portraits.”  The main character whose struggles unify the book is bombardier John Yossarian and his on-going effort to have his service completed so that he can survive the war – his primary objective.  He is a competent and capable bombardier – in fact one of the best in the squadron – but he is unapologetic about his fears.  His efforts to get off flight status continue to be thwarted by his squadron commander Col Cathcart who keeps raising the number of combat missions that a flight crewman must complete before being taken off flight status.  In most squadrons, after 40 combat missions, a pilot has risked enough, has done his duty and is taken off flight status.  Col Cathcart raises the number each time many of his pilots reach the required number, so that he keeps his most experienced pilots in the squadron, as he volunteers for the most dangerous missions (which he does not go on) in his quest to be promoted to General. 

Sometimes it seems that Yossarian is the only semi-sane character in the book. I was reminded of the old TV series Green Acres in which the character played by Eddie Albert lives in a community of dimwits and fools –  only in this case, they are Colonels and Majors, and flying airplanes and dropping bombs in war.   Yossarian is the only character who seems to be aware of the irony in their circumstance, the craziness of how they are conducting the war, and is self-aware enough to have a reasonable perspective on what is going on.  He admits his fears, his pain, his cowardice, and unapologetically schemes to use the absurd system to fulfill his goal of surviving the war. 

Yossarian also participated in the craziness and debauchery of the squadron when they go to Rome during their time off, to blow off steam, get drunk, and have orgies with the very available prostitutes who make their living servicing soldiers on leave. These are fun chapters to read, about young men, like young men everywhere, especially in the military, and especially during war, prone to alcohol fueled extremes, ungoverned by reason, wisdom or maturity.  Fun is fun, the crazier the better, and Catch 22 is always in play.

I recently spent an afternoon listening to stories from a retied SEAL friend of mine describing crazy incidents with his SEAL platoon in Vietnam – how they ignored authority and rules, thumbed their noses at common sense, water skiing down the Mekong river with fire-fights going on around them, debauchery that rivaled what Heller describes in Catch 22.  He loved Catch 22.  No wonder the book resonated so well with Vietnam veterans!  

A few of the more memorable characters in Catch 22, in addition to Yossarian: 

• Milo Minderbender who used his position as supply and mess officer to create a financially lucrative network trading, buying, selling, speculating across all of Europe and beyond makng lots of money but always claiming that what is good for the the men is good for America. A caricature of the ingenious businessman who’ll rationalize everything for the sake of profits. 
• Major Major who was promoted to Major by a computer glitch, is made a leader because he would be ignored, is only a figure-head section leader, who wouldn’t see anyone or do anything.
• Col Cathcart – the commander whose sole ambition in the war was to become a general.  He distrusted anyone who might get in the way of that ambition, and would kiss the butt of any senior officer who might help him.
• LtCol Korn Cathcart’s hard-nosd, but slimy Executive Officer who is clearly smarter than Cathcart his boss, and is also a self-serving schemer who advises Cathcart in how to get ahead, so that he can get ahead on his coattails 
• Lt Scheisskopf who had been Yossarian’s ridiculously narrow-minded and pedantic company officer in his basic officer training, who, by the end of the novel has been promoted to LtGeneral.
• Cpt Nately from a wealthy family, straight arrow patriot, wouldn’t violate his Christian principles, believed in his service as supporting a great cause, with a traditional view of duty and heroism.  He fell madly in love with a prostitute in Rome – who found him boring and uninteresting.
• Maj Orr – an eccentric outcast, very smart and competent pilot, Yossarian’s tent mate who has a propensity to get shot down and land his plane in the ocean. The one character in the book who outsmarts everyone and the system in the end. 
• Nately’s Whore  when the boys went to Rome for their regular debauch, she was always there, and serviced any of the men who would pay her, much to Nately’s disappointment. In the end, she plays an even more absurd role, trying to kill Yossarian for giving her bad news. 
• Chaplain Tappman An Anabaptist minister, essentially a good man but who is shy, self-conscious and submissive, he is ignored and disrespected, by the men, squadron leadership, and his subordinate, Sgt Whitcomb. He is homesick and yearns for his wife and family.  But Yossarian treats him with respect.   

By the end of the novel it is clear that the humor and absurdity have a very tragic side, and I had already begun to side with Yossarian in his efforts to not be a part of it.  We also see in Yossarian a more humane side, as he gets emotionally involved with his girlfriend(s) sees the horror of what the war has done to Rome, feels the pain and loss of so many of his friends.  There is a chapter toward the end where Yossarian is walking through Rome at night and observes some of the worst in human behavior, of violence begetting violence, of people using whatever power they may have to harm or exploit those who are unable to fight back.

SOME QUOTES from the book representative of Heller’s sardonic wit and insights about the self-delusional way people think: (page numbers from the paper back version pictured above)

• 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. p68
•  Everyone agreed that Clevinger was certain to go far in the academic world.  In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out….He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it. p68
• It was the despair of Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s life to be chained to a woman who was incapable of looking beyond her own dirty, sexual desires to the titanic struggles for the unattainable in which noble man could become heroically engaged.   p73
• Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre.  Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.  With Major Major it had been all three. Even among  men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was. p83
• Open your eyes Clevinger. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead. p123
• “You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.”  p139
• Yossarian laughed and turned her arms loose. “Let’s have a little more religious freedom between us,” he proposed obligingly.  “You don’t believe in the God you want to, and I won’t believe in the God I want to. Is that a deal?” p180
• Col Cathcart lived by his wits in an unstable, arithmetical world of black eyes and feathers in his cap, of overwhelming imaginary triumphs and catastrophic imaginary defeats.  He oscillated hourly between anguish and exhilaration, multiplying fantastically the grandeur of his victories and exaggerating tragically the seriousness of his defeats.  p188
• The colonel (Cathcart) was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.  p211
•  The old man continued, “The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, and with its standard of living that is the highest in the world, will last as long as….the frog?”               Nately wanted to smash his leering face. p243
• The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery.  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 not brains at all.  p263 
• “Catch -22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.”   “…Didn’t they show it to you?” Yossarian demanded. “Didn’t you even make them read it?”  “They don’t have to show us Catch-22,” the old woman answered. “The law says they don’t have to.”    p407
• Catch-22 did not exist, Yossarian was positive of that, but it made no difference.  What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse….  p409
• Colonel Korn nodded approvingly. “That’s good. I like thew way you lie. You’ll go far in this world, if you ever acquire some decent ambition.”  p422

The 50th anniversary edition of Catch 22 that I read concluded with essays about the book by prominent literary figures Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, provided added perspectives, to include how the book came about, Heller’s process, how it was received, controversy and popularity. I would also add that the introduction in the 50th anniversary edition by Christopher Buckley (Wm F Buckley’s son) also provides great perspective on the book.

For me it was not easy to get through the beginning – it seemed unfocused and uninspiring, though often quite humorous.  About half way through, it started to flow for me, and the unfocused beginning started to make sense. By the end, I was truly into it, sensed the humanity of the book, and was very glad I’d read it.