Catch-22

Review

Catch-22 has been on my shelf for maybe one or two years, and on my reading list for years beyond that. I’ve been told again and again how much I would enjoy it. For whatever reason, be it timing, expectations, or something else, I was left feeling ambivalent.

I really enjoyed the first hundred pages, finding it terribly funny. I can see the comparisons to Vonnegut, easily. The circumstances, the names, the insane bureaucracy, it all feels like great satire. However, I really struggled to hold focus through the middle third or maybe from about page 120 or so until the last 20 or 30 pages. I felt like I was seeing the same thing over, and over, and over, again. One could say this is intentional, especially given the recurrent deja vu passages. And surely some of it IS intentional, and some of it works very well! What I started to find grating is that I was reading the same joke over and over again.

I wanted the book to be probably 100 pages shorter. I felt that it was dragging on, and I really did struggle to hold my interest until the ending. I found the ending effective, and I think it would have been as effective without 100 pages of the rest.

It is entirely possible that I read this at a different time in my life, where I’m more able to focus, and enjoy it more. For now, it’s going back on the shelf as ‘fine, good, but not perfect.’

Notes

p83 - Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government paid him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce.

p121 - “…You see, my most precious abilities are mainly administrative ones. I have a happy facility for getting different people to agree.” ¶ “He has a happy ability for getting different people to agree what a prick he is,” Colonel Cargill confided invidiously to ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen in the hope that ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen would spread the unfavorable report through Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters.

p243 - The old man laughed indulgently, holding in check a deeper, more explosive delight. His goading remained gentle. “Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million yeas or so.”

p298 - “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?” ¶ “Yes, sir, it has.” ¶ “Then why do you do it?” ¶ “To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.”

p305 - “So?” ¶ “So?” Yossarian was puzzled by Doc Daneeka’s inability to comprehend. “Don’t you see what that means? Now you can take me off combat duty and send me home. They’re not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?” ¶ “Who else will go?”

p320 - “…You’ve come to us just in time, Scheisskopf. The summer offensive has petered out, thanks to the incompetent leadership with which we supply our troops, and I have a crying need for a tough, experienced, competent officer like you to help produce the memoranda upon which we rely so heavily to let people know how good we are and how much work we’re turning out. I hope you are a prolific writer.” ¶ “I don’t know anything about writing,” Colonel Scheisskopf retorted sullenly. ¶ “Well, don’t let that trouble you,” General Peckem continued with a careless flick of his wrist. “Just pass the work I assign you along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call taht delegation of responsibility. Somewhere down near the lowest level of this coordinated organization I run are people who do get the work done when it reaches them, and everything manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my part. I suppose that’s because I’m a good executive.”

p349 - Yossarian’s attitude toward his roommates turned merciful and protective at the mere recollection of Captain Black. It was not their fault that they were young and cheerful, he reminded himself as he carried the swinging beam of his flashlight back through the darkness. He wished that he could be young and cheerful, too. And it wasn’t their fault that they were courageous, confident and carefree. He would just have to be patient with them until one or two were killed and the rest wounded, and then they would all turn out okay…”

p440 - Yossarrian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, and that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.