Joseph Heller "Catch-22"
Catch-22 is a novel famous for its iconic logical paradox - a set of self-contradicting rules that trap everyone involved. Read it, and you too can become one of those fun people who casually misuse the reference, just like SchrĂśdingerâs poor cat.
If you try to pin it down by genre, itâs a military satire. And, as it turns out, I donât really enjoy this genre. It made me deeply uncomfortable. But then I thought⌠maybe thatâs still better than Russian war literature, where the âsimple manâ is endlessly glorified while drowning in suffering and heroism. Ideally, we should know different sides of war, so both approaches can be beneficial.
On the tiny island of Pianosa in the Tyrrhenian Sea sits a U.S. Army Air Forces bomb squadron (flying the North American B-25 Mitchell). Captain Yossarian, the protagonist, serves there along with the rest of the crew. The command keeps raising the number of required missions, which prevents the airmen from ever completing their quota and going home.
Yossarian tries every possible way to escape, but each time the target number rises again. He thinks heâs going insane. Or, more likely, that everyone else is already insane for not running away.
You slowly lose your mind with him and then begin to wonder whether madness is the right word at all.
Grown, capable, relatively sane people are thrown into hellish circumstances where they should never have been and told: âwell, live somehow.â And they do - somehow. It looks insane only because the circumstances are insane. Like locking a group of people in a giant box full of random objects and telling them to survive. Theyâll start using what they can however they can - strangely, illogically - yet it will become their new normal.
All they want is to survive the war.
At first, the storytelling is confusing: constant jumps between past and present, lines blurring, chronology falling apart. Then you adjust, get to know the characters, even laugh at the absurdity. The book starts to feel humorous.
Until it suddenly doesnât.
The absurdity grows teeth, turns bloody, and becomes terrifying. And you realize: Catch-22 is about life.
Catch-22 is a law, regulation or logical paradox in which the attempt to avoid a problem only creates the same problem.
You get attached to the characters only to realize later that they are not merely fictional - theyâre shaped out of thousands of real men who were forced to go fight and never returned.
Right after finishing, I thought I hated the book: I felt bitter, hollow, desperate to forget. Somehow it hit me harder than Russian war prose. Thatâs probably the point of satire, I guess?
But with time, I started appreciating it as a monument of American literature.
And I absolutely loved the narrative style: it infuriates you while youâre reading, yet you end up grateful for it.
We also watched the 1970 film and the 2019 series - didnât really like them. Fun to see the charactersâ faces, but the depth evaporated. Nothing new added, plenty lost. Canât recommend.
Overall: recommended for the sake of education, not for pleasure.
A few quotes for the mood:
"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?"
"Why are they going to disappear him?"
"I don't know."
"It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar."
"What do you do when it rains?"
The captain answered frankly. "I get wet."
"You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."
"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."