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There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous
insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Echoes of Yossarian,
the wise-ass bombardier who was too smart to die but not smart enough to
find a way out of his predicament, could be heard throughout the counterculture.
As a result, it's impossible not to consider
Catch-22 to be something of a period piece. But 40 years on, the novel's
undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic. Again and again, Heller's
characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad; what
is sensible, is nonsense.
Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning
the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think
is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit
of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give
greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is
anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."
Mirabile dictu, the book holds up post-Reagan, post-Gulf War. It's a good
thing, too. As long as there's a military, that engine of lethal authority,
Catch-22
will shine as a handbook for smart-alecky pacifists. It's an utterly serious
and sad, but damn funny book.
Catch-22 is like no other novel. It has its own rationale, its own extraordinary
character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously
funny and strangely affecting. It is totally original.
Set in the closing months of World War II in an
American bomber squadron off Italy, Catch-22
is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian, who is frantic and furious
because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep trying to kill him.
Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look
to someone dangerously sane. It is a novel that lives and moves and grows
with astonishing power and vitality -- a masterpiece of our time.
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