Sunday, October 21, 2018

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller


Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

This was my selection for Banned Books Week. At 415 pages, it took longer than a week, but I did start it during Banned Books Week.

Just as a reminder, I use the week to read books which have been banned, which means that a government has outlawed sale, publication, or possession of the book. I do not count challenged books - those which citizens or parents have sought to keep out of school curricula or libraries. This isn’t because I think challenges are interesting, but because I wanted to focus my once a year project on those where the power of the state was employed in censorship. I believe that is a different level from a challenge. After all, any library has limited space and budget, and decisions must be made. (Personally, I would have preferred an extra - and local - copy of The Rest is Noise rather than one of the 20ish copies of Eat, Pray, Love.) Likewise, students can only study so many books, and the choice of which to study is a judgment call.

Here are my past selections, plus the introduction to Banned Books Week.


***

This is another book which was - believe it or not - banned by a Western democracy during my lifetime. Several states banned it during the 1970s, as did Dallas, TX (1977) and Snoqualmie, WA (1979.) Ostensibly, the book was banned for referring to women as “whores.” This seems a bit specious, since the women in question were, strictly speaking, prostitutes. While there is sexual content, it isn’t particularly graphic, and it certainly isn’t gratuitous. For the 1970s (seriously, watch a movie from that era…), it is pretty tame. I suspect that two facets of the novel were what really drove the bans: it is somewhat anti-war - and it raises uncomfortable theological questions. With the 1970s as kind of ground zero for the fundamentalist Religious Right, I suspect that a novelist who raised the still-unsolved and debated Problem of Evil was unwelcome.

What Catch-22 is, without question, is one of the most important and influential novels of the 20th Century. I am kind of surprised that I didn’t end up reading any of it in high school, honestly, because at least one chapter seems like a perfect selection. I guess they can’t have you read everything. I can see the influence of the book on our perception of military life. Written in 1961, it is ostensibly set in World War II, but was intended by the author as a commentary not on that war, but on the Cold War - and even more so on the McCarthy hearings. To that end, there are multiple references to loyalty oaths and specific incidents from the hearings.

Catch-22’s vision of military life permeates so much of what was written or filmed thereafter. As a kid, I loved the Beetle Bailey comic strips - which draw a lot from the book, although the comic is more lighthearted. My dad’s favorite TV show, M*A*S*H, reuses a number of tropes - and the idea of using a satire of one war to critique another. As others have pointed out, The Office is to a certain degree Catch-22 without the blood. I suspect that having read this book, I will see even more references in popular culture.

The book isn’t a linear narrative. Rather, the first part of the book essentially tells a portion of the story (which is really the middle of the plot) from the point of view of various characters, filling in the missing pieces. As the story then progresses, more and more is told, but again, not in chronological order. It is rather like building a jigsaw puzzle from the center out, except you can’t figure out what stuff is until near the end.

The setting is the liberation (or invasion...take your pick) of Italy during the height of World War II. At that point, D-Day was in the future, and the outcome of the war was still in doubt, even though the tide had turned. The characters are part of an airborne bomber group flying B-25s. Unline the better known B-17 (one of the best looking bombers of the era, in my view) and the B-24 (much larger, and with a longer range, this was used in the Western Europe and Pacific theaters), the B-25 was a smaller two-engined bomber. The B-25 had a good reputation as one of the most durable aircraft of the war, reliable, and versatile. Because of its roles, however, it ended up being used for lower level bombing runs, which made it vulnerable to anti-aircraft flak, even if (as was the case in the book), there was no opposition from enemy fighters.

 B-25 operated by the Commemorative Air Force, at the Miramar USMC Station, 2018

One of the great things about this book was the realism in the airborne scenes. This is because Heller, like his anti-hero Yossarian, was a bombardier/navigator on a B-25 in Italy. In that sense, the book draws heavily from Heller’s own experiences. I’m a bit of an aviation buff - my dad was was an amateur pilot in his younger days, and was an air traffic controller before his retirement - and I grew up around aircraft. I still love flying (although airport security not so much), and my wife snickers at the way my head swivels whenever I hear or see an airplane.

However, Heller was quick to point out that while his experience in war helped him write the technical aspects of this book, he most certainly did not base his characters on his experiences. Heller said that his fellow soldiers and commanding officers were, by and large, exemplary men, and, while he suffered trauma as the result of war, he had nothing but positive feelings for those he served with. The book was therefore, not primarily a working out of his own baggage from the war, but a veiled commentary on the 1950s - specifically the McCarthy era, as noted above.

Catch-22 doesn’t have a hero in the traditional sense. There are a few more or less admirable minor characters, but for the most part, everyone is badly flawed or outright malevolent. And the central character, Yossarian, is a classic anti-hero. He is a coward, a lazy bastard, an insubordinate son-of-a-bitch, and more. (His commanding officers are certainly right to call him these things.) But, there is some mitigation. At the outset of the story, all personnel are supposed to be furloughed after a certain number of missions. That is the official policy. But Colonel Cathcart, who commands the unit, is determined to get his name into a magazine back home with a glowing story. And so he keeps raising the number of missions. So Yossarian and the others never get to go home. Here is the classic scene which explains the...well… “catch-22.”

“Daneeka was telling the truth,” ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen admitted.” Forty missions is all you have to fly as far as Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters is concerned.”
Yossarian was jubilant. “Then I can go home, right? I’ve got forty-eight.”
“No, you can’t go home,” ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen corrected him. “Are you crazy or something??”
“Why not.”
“Catch-22.”
“Catch-22?” Yossarian was stunned. “What the hell has Catch-22 got to do with it?”
“Catch-22,” Doc Daneeka answered patiently, when Hungry Joe had flown Yossarian back to Pianosa, “says you’ve always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to.”
"But Twenty-seventh Air Force says I can go home with forty missions."
"But they don't say you have to go home. And regulations do say you have to obey every order. That's the catch. Even if the colonel were disobeying a Twenty-seventh Air Force order by making you fly more missions, you'd still have to fly them, or you'd be guilty of disobeying an order of his. And then Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters would really jump on you."
Yossarian slumped with disappointment. “Then I really do have to fly the fifty missions, don’t I?” he grieved.
“The fifty-five,” Doc Daneeka corrected him.

“Catch-22” is never actually stated, but its effects are explained. Here is another mention of it:

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. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

Every absurdity in the book comes back to “catch-22.” Yossarian eventually decides that it doesn’t actually exist - it is just the justification for the impossible situations that abound. The source of the term is fascinating. When Heller first started writing the book, he released a draft of the first chapter as “Catch-18.” His agent, however, requested that it be changed so the book wouldn’t be confused with Leon Uris’ new book, Mila 18. “Catch 11” was suggested - the repetition fit the repeated, circular conversations which abound in the book. Except that Ocean’s Eleven had just been released. (The original, Rat Pack version, not the Brad Pitt and George Clooney remake.) “Catch-17” was too close to Stalag 17, a mostly forgotten WWII movie. Finally, someone realized the obvious: “Catch-22” was the perfect number. Repetitive like 11, but even more fun to say.

And now, nobody can imagine it being anything else.

For those of us who came of age at the end of the 20th Century, it is impossible to imagine life without this idiom. But without Heller’s book, it wouldn’t even exist.

I hesitate to actually try to summarize the book beyond saying that Yossarian is determined to stop flying missions, particularly after one of his crewmates is disemboweled and dies in his arms. He finds excuses, from a vague medical issue to strategic insanity. But even though he is utterly without scruple, there is one thing he won’t do to get discharged. (I won’t spoil it.)

Pretty much all of the characters are major. (And that includes Major Major - see below.) Everyone is important in some way, and each story is developed. The characters are memorable, and you care about them - even as they are systematically killed off. At least the ones you like. The loathsome commanding officers survive, of course - they don’t have to fly missions.

The book is pretty dang dark - particularly in the last fifth. But, at the same time, it is one of the funniest books I have read. There are many lines that are indeed laugh out loud hilarious...and then you feel guilty for laughing. It is that sort of a book. On the one level, it is a mockery of politics and power. The greed of capitalistic sorts - exemplified by Milo Minderbinder’s smuggling racket (another hilarious chapter) - and the lust for power and prestige of the various commanding officers is on full and amusing display. We all know people like this.

But there is something deeper than this. Yossarian eloquently takes on the fates - God himself - for the absurdity of human suffering. This exchange occurs between Yossarian and the wife of Lt. Scheisskopf (one of several not-particularly-subtle names in this book.)

“I bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for.”
“Be thankful you’re healthy.”
“Be bitter you’re not going to stay that way.”
“Be glad you’re even alive.”
“Be furious you’re going to die.”
...
“And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways,” Yossarian continued, hurtling over her objections. “There’s nothing so mysterious about it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about—a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did he ever create pain? … Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! Why couldn’t He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person’s forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn’t He? … What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. …”

This was a particularly sobering passage. I’ll admit this has been on my mind a lot lately. In particular, why God remains silent when a majority of those who claim his name continue to express hate and cruelty toward other human beings. But, really, this has been a major theme of our scripture: why the wicked prosper and are allowed to harm others, and why justice is delayed. And why God delays purging the filth from what claims to be his church.

On a somewhat related note, I was stunned to see a particularly cogent analysis of Right Wing views - and Calvinism - in this book. I mean, this is 67 years later, but it is exactly what I see going on right now.

Major Major is an, um, major character in the book. In a really hilarious way. He manages to avoid actually seeing anyone or doing anything. But his back story is also funny. His father names him, literally, “Major Major Major” when the mother is recovering from a difficult childbirth. And then, he is promoted to the rank of Major, so….Major Major Major Major. Yeah, it’s terrible. But an amusing terrible. But it isn’t this farce which is the most interesting part. Major Major’s father was a recognizable sort. Here are some excerpts of the description:

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.

As it turns out, he is part of the racket whereby he is paid by the federal government to not grow alfalfa. I won’t quote the whole section, but it is both accurate and freaking hilarious. And also a great description of how the Right LOVES socialism...for certain white people. Oh, and it gets better:

Major Major’s father had a Calvinist’s faith in predestination and could perceive distinctly how everyone’s misfortunes but his own were expressions of God’s will.

Can I use “amen” here? Because this is so amazingly true in our own time. The resurgence of Calvinism parallels the embrace of Social Darwinism by the Religious Right. And the two are absolutely connected - as Heller notes here. (This could be an entire blog post.) Basically, the misfortunes of, say, the working poor, or brown skinned people, or those born outside of the United States - all these are God’s will - and judgment on “those” people for being wicked. But the misfortunes of Calvinist whites, well, those are due to the depredations of those dirty poor people, or the dirty brown-skinned people. Heller was right on. Socialism for certain middle or upper class white people is fine. It’s just when you extend that to the less privileged that it becomes “socialism.”

I’m going to end with a lighter note. Yossarian is hardly an admirable character. But he is such a force of chaos and divergent thinking that you can’t really hate him - unless you lack a sense of humor. There is this delightful exchange between him and Major Sanderson:

“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.”

I literally am laughing out loud just typing that one again. This is classic Yossarian: refusing to play the game, turning the rhetoric back on its user, and cutting to the heart of the issue. This is why he is a wonderful anti-hero. You really should hate him...but you can’t, because he is all too right. He sees through the rules of social behavior, the lies of honor and duty, and says what we think, but can’t bring ourselves to articulate. Yossarian (and Heller) tear away the mask, and show that protocol has replaced principle, “alternative facts” have replaced truth, and reason is now just a rigamarole to justify presupposition. It is largely how I feel about the sophistry that has been unmasked within my own religious tradition. Truth and human decency and the needs of real human beings are subordinated to power, culture wars, and self aggrandizement.

I probably wouldn’t have appreciated this book as a teen, and definitely appreciate it more in my 40s, with the sort of experience to make one a cynic, despite my generally sanguine tendencies. I can say for certain that this book is more humorous than I expected, even if dark and philosophical. It was definitely worth reading, and I think it earns its place as one of the best novels of the last century.

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