Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (3.5 stars)

It's clever, very clever. Comedy in the form of a novel is one of the toughest gigs around. Getting someone to laugh with just the written word, without the benefit of the body language and expression that comes with images or a live performance, requires a special talent. Heller has that talent, although I confess the best he got from me was a few 'heh's.

Heller wields absurdity, irony, and hypocrisy as weapons to expose the absurdity, irony, and hypocrisy of war and military bureaucracy. In effect it feels like a really, really long Monty Python skit written down in words. Clevinger's mistake in asking the audience for questions after a briefing would also fit perfectly as a Blackadder scene, with these responses:

"Who is Spain?"
"Why is Hitler?"
"When is righ?"
"Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke down?"
"How was trump at Munich?"
"Ho-ho beriberi."
and
"Balls!"
all rang out in rapid succession.

Heller brings his acid touch to a wide range of subjects from the meaningless military pennants awarded for meaningless activities:

Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

to the agricultural subsidies that benefited Major Major Major's family (and yes, he is promoted in the novel to Major, making him Major Major Major Major), which pretty much fits exactly with the republican position on US corn subsidies:

Major Major's father was an outspoken champion of economy in government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all.

The plot is complex. It dives down tangent after tangent and continually introduces new characters while jumping all over the place. Despite all that confusion it is in fact highly structured. Early in the novel Heller writes as if the reader is intimately familiar with a series of events which have not yet been described. These story threads are eventually explained and tied back in much later in the novel, finally providing the context for a joke that was already told.

And of course the novel gave birth to a phrase that is now common vernacular. Not many novels can claim such an obvious effect on popular culture:

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 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.

The characters are excellent, and you come to realise that despite some unusual behaviour (such as perching naked in a tree to watch a funeral), Yossarian is extremely rational and entirely sensible to be trying to avoid getting killed.

A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishman are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.

Heller's portrayal of Milo's black market empire and the market forces that eventually bring him to bomb his own troops is absurd and masterful.

Towards the end of the novel we are brought roughly into the horror of war as Yossarian has a dream-like walk through a Rome soaked in violence and we finally witness Snowden's death that pushed Yossarian over the edge. This is the section I liked the least. The final chapters lose all comedy and become a series of long discussions, such as the one between Yossarian and Major Danby, that seem very direct and out of character. It's almost like Heller got to the end and decided: quick, drive the point home!

This was my second time through this novel and it isn't an easy read. I'm giving it a fairly low score to match my level of enjoyment, but I think it is definitely worth reading.

3.5 stars.