A Short Review of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22"

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(Note: this review is posted here only because it pertains to a work of fiction which I imagine most followers of Sam are naturally inclined to appreciate.)

It didn't change my life, the way everyone said it was going to. I guess if I'd read it when I was 15 I might have felt differently. Certainly it isn't fair to judge a book that was ground-breaking in 1961 with the criticism that it has become so deeply ingrained in our culture that it is no longer possible to read it with innocent and unjaded eyes.

It's a complex and deeply flawed work of unexpected genius. There are moments in the book when Heller's prose flows out elegantly and magnificent, and there are moments in the book when he is painting a piercingly accurate snapshot of a man's soul... and then there are far more moments in the book when he is romping about, erratic and boisterous like a Mad Magazine writer on crack.

There are also a ton of repetitions of the above. I suppose the latter was part of his grand scheme to drive home one of the central themes of the book: the obdurate and unavoidable stupidity of mankind, even during what we now whitewash over in awe-hushed tones of heroic adulation as "the last good war" fought by "the greatest generation."

This is a thinking man's book, a philosophical, historic book. It is a book for people who are ready to have their benignly Amerocentric world-view stress-tested. It is not a book for people who are looking for touching portrayals of interesting relationships.

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