Saturday, 11 August 2018 08:41 pm
Partial Book Review: Catch-22
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deckardcanineHere's a first for me: I didn't finish the book, but I still feel like writing about it. (Despite my slow reading, I wasn't the type to cheat on literary assignments in school.) Note that it is possible for me to respect and even rather like what I read before putting a book aside indefinitely: Brave New World was breathtaking, yet the long absence of plot progression made me think I'd seen enough. I read a lot more of Joseph Heller's best-known novel before making that decision -- just short of half, in fact.
You probably know already that the title alludes to military regulations collectively prohibiting things in a roundabout way, seemingly at cross-purposes. I'd heard that it specifically meant that the Air Force can't ground anyone for reasons of insanity because truly insane pilots don't apply for it, but even within the book, the term takes on broader applications. And while it doesn't come up all that often in narration or dialog, it does pretty well capture things in a nutshell.
There are quite a few focal characters; if any can be called the protagonist, it's Captain Yossarian, who desperately wants out and sees his superiors as enemies for continuing to order him to fly. He comes across as kind of cowardly and paranoid, albeit understandably so. In between missions, he engages in a lot of debauchery, being in "love" with lots of women. (I didn't realize that books published in the '50s could be so uncensored.)
Yossarian is not very likable, but it's hard to find anyone who is. Certainly the one I feel sorriest for is Major Major (one of many improbable names herein), who's thoroughly unpopular for reasons beyond his apparent control. I still wouldn't say I like him, because his solution is to become a dishonest recluse. Pretty much everyone is miserable, crazy, and/or a jerk, none showing obvious talent.
I won't go into details on the rest. In fact, one of my problems lies in the scarcity of details on the rest. I got some idea of how they differ in attitude and behavior, but the narrator skimps on physical appearances. Eventually, I stopped bothering to try to picture them in distinct ways, apart from Chief White Halfoat (whose depiction isn't bad for the period). As far as my mind was concerned, they were just a handful of guys playing multiple roles. Kinda like the Reduced Shakespeare Company, only not half as funny.
Yeah, that's my next problem: For a satire, it's usually too bitter for laughs. And when bitterness isn't the issue, it's an overreliance on irony -- if "irony" is the right word. It's one thing to say the opposite of what's expected and let the reader figure out how it makes a kind of sense, as Oscar Wilde often does; it's another to include self-contradictions so direct, immediate, and irreconcilable that I can only conclude that the punchline amounts to a character not being all there.
Maybe you'll argue that the point is not to amuse us but to convey that the military, or at least the Air Force, is screwed up to a nightmarish degree. Well, that may have been news to readers shortly after WWII, but who today, among those old enough to read Catch-22, doesn't know it yet?
As for the plot progression, not only is it scarce in the first half, but it doesn't come up entirely in chronological order. No wonder many fans of the novel aren't fond of the film adaptation. Maybe Christopher Nolan could pull it off, but he's never done satire to my knowledge.
I understand that there's more of a plot to be found later, but it just keeps getting uglier and uglier. The ending, which I peeked at for a change, is hopeful, at least for Yossarian. It's too late for some others.
I knew it wouldn't be the next No Time for Sergeants, but I was hoping for something a little closer to M*A*S*H, of which I've seen the first four seasons. Even at that show's most plaintive, it felt like less of a chore than any ten pages of Catch-22. Admittedly, I've read worse for school, so I would finish if it were assigned.
Now I've started on The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle. If nothing else, it includes a pet fox....
You probably know already that the title alludes to military regulations collectively prohibiting things in a roundabout way, seemingly at cross-purposes. I'd heard that it specifically meant that the Air Force can't ground anyone for reasons of insanity because truly insane pilots don't apply for it, but even within the book, the term takes on broader applications. And while it doesn't come up all that often in narration or dialog, it does pretty well capture things in a nutshell.
There are quite a few focal characters; if any can be called the protagonist, it's Captain Yossarian, who desperately wants out and sees his superiors as enemies for continuing to order him to fly. He comes across as kind of cowardly and paranoid, albeit understandably so. In between missions, he engages in a lot of debauchery, being in "love" with lots of women. (I didn't realize that books published in the '50s could be so uncensored.)
Yossarian is not very likable, but it's hard to find anyone who is. Certainly the one I feel sorriest for is Major Major (one of many improbable names herein), who's thoroughly unpopular for reasons beyond his apparent control. I still wouldn't say I like him, because his solution is to become a dishonest recluse. Pretty much everyone is miserable, crazy, and/or a jerk, none showing obvious talent.
I won't go into details on the rest. In fact, one of my problems lies in the scarcity of details on the rest. I got some idea of how they differ in attitude and behavior, but the narrator skimps on physical appearances. Eventually, I stopped bothering to try to picture them in distinct ways, apart from Chief White Halfoat (whose depiction isn't bad for the period). As far as my mind was concerned, they were just a handful of guys playing multiple roles. Kinda like the Reduced Shakespeare Company, only not half as funny.
Yeah, that's my next problem: For a satire, it's usually too bitter for laughs. And when bitterness isn't the issue, it's an overreliance on irony -- if "irony" is the right word. It's one thing to say the opposite of what's expected and let the reader figure out how it makes a kind of sense, as Oscar Wilde often does; it's another to include self-contradictions so direct, immediate, and irreconcilable that I can only conclude that the punchline amounts to a character not being all there.
Maybe you'll argue that the point is not to amuse us but to convey that the military, or at least the Air Force, is screwed up to a nightmarish degree. Well, that may have been news to readers shortly after WWII, but who today, among those old enough to read Catch-22, doesn't know it yet?
As for the plot progression, not only is it scarce in the first half, but it doesn't come up entirely in chronological order. No wonder many fans of the novel aren't fond of the film adaptation. Maybe Christopher Nolan could pull it off, but he's never done satire to my knowledge.
I understand that there's more of a plot to be found later, but it just keeps getting uglier and uglier. The ending, which I peeked at for a change, is hopeful, at least for Yossarian. It's too late for some others.
I knew it wouldn't be the next No Time for Sergeants, but I was hoping for something a little closer to M*A*S*H, of which I've seen the first four seasons. Even at that show's most plaintive, it felt like less of a chore than any ten pages of Catch-22. Admittedly, I've read worse for school, so I would finish if it were assigned.
Now I've started on The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle. If nothing else, it includes a pet fox....