Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (pub. 1961)
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So, this came out like 14 years before I was born, but I didn't read it until 2019. I can't help wondering what I would have thought of it had I been alive to read it in the 1960s. Then again, the book is kind of timeless (unfortunately for the world), and I don't think the 2010s are all that different from the 1960s, politically and socially speaking (aside from the existence of social media, of course). Anyway, it's something I've wanted to read for a very long time, though I don't think I ever really had a very clear idea of what it was actually about. I knew that the phrase "catch 22" had passed into common usage because of the book, but one of the things that surprised me when I actually read the book is that it seems to have several meanings in the book, not just the most commonly understood one. (Theoretically, it can be used in an unlimited number of ways that all basically amount to those in power fucking over those who are subject to that power. But I prefer the primary meaning, which I'll explain in a bit.) I also want to say I had a vague thought that it would be much more dystopian in nature. I probably got that idea from a short story I read sometime in the 90s, Evolving Conspiracy, by Roger MacBride Allen. There was a single line that referenced this book, and I think I must have unwittingly bundled the full context of the two-sentence paragraph in which it appeared (and the larger context of the conversation in the story) into my interpretation of the passing reference, and therefore my expectation of what "Catch-22" would be about. And that was my mistake. The line was about people being "disappeared," which does happen in this book, but not until very late, and even then it's a relatively minor plot point. (Also, the book has absolutely nothing to do with Argentina.)

So, what does the book have to do with? Well, it's set during World War II. There are a whole lot of characters, the main one being a bombardier named Captain John Yossarian. Aside from him, I think the most memorable character is Lt. Milo Minderbinder, a mess officer who uses his position and his connections to run an international trade syndicate. I also find Major Major Major Major somewhat memorable, but mainly for his name. (Long before I ever read the book or heard of this character, I'd made up a military character in my own book named James Major, whose surname was also a rank he held at least briefly, and once I did read this book, I worried that people might think I chose the name "Major" because of the character in "Catch-22," but I promise you it's a complete coincidence.) Other than that... there are lots of names and personalities in "Catch-22" that I find separately memorable, but I won't always be able to connect all the names with the matching personalities. So anyway... I'm basically just going to focus on Yossarian.

Yossarian does not want to die. This is certainly understandable, especially for someone involved in fighting a war. But he does seem to obsess about it more than most people, even those in a similar situation, and in particular he is obsessed with finding any way he can of avoiding combat missions. Which is particularly difficult, because one of his commanding officers, Colonel Cathcart, keeps raising the number of missions the people in his squadron will have to fly before they're allowed to go home. One of the ways to get out of this would be to be grounded on psychological grounds. That is, if you are sane, you must continue flying missions, but if you're crazy, you will be grounded. It seems like this would be simple enough, since those in charge consider a desire to continue flying combat missions to be a sign of insanity; however, before you can be relieved of duty, you must ask a doctor to declare you insane. And such a request is taken as a sign of sanity, which means you must keep flying missions. Basically, it's a case of "damned if you do, and damned if you don't." That is catch-22. (Before reading the book, I mainly associated this catch with something I'd heard once in a commercial, about it being impossible to get a job without experience, and impossible to get experience without having a job.) Anyway, catch-22 makes it pretty much impossible to avoid combat, but Yossarian can get pretty creative in his efforts.

Aside from that... lots of stuff happens, not all of which involves Yossarian. I also want to mention that the narrative skips around a lot in time, so I was never quite sure of the order in which various events took place. (This is something I found interesting, because the same thing happened in the book I read immediately before this one, One Hundred Years of Solitude. In an unrelated connection between the two books, both of them mentioned the word "daguerreotype," though it was only in passing in this book. I just thought it was strange because these are probably the only two books in which I've ever seen the word.) Anyway... another thing I wanted to say is that very early on in my reading of "Catch-22," it reminded me a lot of the style of Douglas Adams, and I couldn't help wondering if his own writing had been inspired at all by Heller's writing. (I also wondered if M*A*S*H- or the movie that preceded it, which I haven't seen- was inspired at all by this book.) I said I expected this book to be dystopian, and I think in a way it is, but basically it's satire, and most of it is extremely funny, especially if you like absurdism. But there's also a fair bit that's horrific; there is a war going on, after all.

And... I'm not sure what else to tell you. I don't really want to spoil any details, and even if I did, I can't imagine how I'd go about choosing which ones to mention. The story basically seems like a hodgepodge of a bunch of basically random stuff, all of it equally important, whether it's serious or humorous (or both). I'm fairly sure there were things I probably wanted to comment on while I was reading it, which I've now completely forgotten. (It took me around half a year to read the book, then more time to read the essays and reviews at the back of the book, and then more time to force myself to even start writing my own review.) I know I wanted to say that at the end, the tone shifts, and I had a few words I wanted to use to describe it, which I've now forgotten. "Surrealism" was probably one of them. And I know I became uncertain about whether some bits of the story were real or imagined/dreamt/hallucinated by Yossarian. I also know there's a great deal I could say about the influence the book has had on culture, on literature, and how it commented on the absurdity of modern life in general, and how terrible much of what we think of as "normal" actually is. But lots of other people have already written a great deal about all that and more, and done a much better job of it than I could. All I really know how to say is that it's a wholly remarkable book; and if you can read it without panicking, there's probably something wrong with you.

Also I wanted to say that the book was adapted into a movie in 1970, which I haven't seen and probably never will. And it was adapted into a miniseries on Hulu in 2019, which was released about a month before I started reading the book. I'll probably watch that at some point, but I've no idea when. There's also a sequel novel that came out in 1994, called "Closing Time," which I have no idea if or when I might read. But I'm definitely very glad to have finally read this book, even if I've failed to say very much of anything about the actual plot or characters. Sorry.