First off...I'm going to start by being honest. I already don't like this book. It is going to take a major emotional shift near the end (much like the one that happens at the end of Catcher in the Rye which no one pays attention to anyway for how to interpret the book) for me to agree that this is one of the 100 Books You Should Read Before You Die.
From the very first chapter it has all the flavor of the play "Waiting for Godot" which is a play best summed up in the review "Ninety minutes, nothing happens, and nobody learned anything".
The first nine chapters are some fairly decent character studies on different people that the main character, Yossarian, has come into contact with both in his flight group and at the hospital. Yossarian has a naturally high temperature and he complains of pain in his liver which gets him out of having to go back to war. Since he is an officer he spends his hospital time, when not annoying or being annoyed by his fellow patients, with the job of redacting letters. He doesn't follow any specific protocols in redacting said letters. Sometimes he has a ban on adverbs, other times he blacks out everything in the body of the letter leaving only the closing. Why? Because it entertains him to do so.
Every officer who does the redacting must sign the redacted document. He signs not his name but instead Irving Washington, or Washington Irving so that they can't trace it back to him.
And it's about this time that I realize this is a book of Post Modernism. It isn't labeled as such. Some people call it Black Humor, others Absurdist Fiction, but ultimately it has the saccharine likability of Post Modernism. It screams from every page, "Ooooh, I'm clever. Look at me!! I'm Clever! Wasn't that writing clever? Here, I'll even spin round and do the same joke with different words because I'm so effing Clever. That's right. I'm clever with a capital "c"! That's how clever I am."
Imagine Abbott and Costello performing "Who's on First" except with knowing "didja get it" nods to the audience, and then if there was even an iota of doubt they would repeat the whole line again, stomp after the punchline, and hold out a hand to signal that the audience should laugh.
Yossarian is not at all a likable character in my estimation. Like many in Post Modernist fiction, the man has no heart or consideration beyond himself. He is not a passive observer so much as a vindictive observer. Each good thing he sees he pours his derision on. And this is my issue with Post Modernism in general. It says, "Let's tear down and destroy anything good and noble...and then not replace it with anything." It is vanity.
For instance when Yossarian describes the, "Texan who was from Texas." Ok, I will admit happily that it was the one line that actually got a laugh from me. I mean, who hasn't met a Texan who would happily tell you with overpride "I'm a Texan from Texas"? However the line later follows, "The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous, and likable. In three days no one could stand him." In speaking of Clevinger, another patient who seemed nice enough, "The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with." These other guys are decent men who simply aren't in on the joke, so let's deride and mock them. Why? Cause we're bored and there's a war on that we are trying to avoid going back to.
In the aspect of criticism of war I do have to give it props. It echoes much of my own sentiment as a pacifist. The military sends a C.I.D. man to catch Washington Irving or Irving Washington in the hospital and in chapter two it begins, "In a way the C.I.D. man was pretty lucky, because outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals. All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their lives."
All sorts of horrible things happen in war that are against all rationality. I could never volunteer for such a thing. If I was drafted I would be more of a liability than anything because of certain sensibilities like not being able to put away rationality and that would cause me to hesitate. I tend to over think especially when the pressure is on. However, the difference between myself and Yossarian is the fact that when called upon I would go, and once there I would do my best to protect the one on my left and my right. I would fight with everything rather than sit in a hospital criticizing others and childishly redacting love letters with no thought to those on the other side of them.
"Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who belived in God, Motherhood, and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him. 'I hate that son of a bitch,' Yossarian growled."
A few back and forths later Yossarian reveals his "Rebel Without a Cause" style philosophy.
"What son of a bitch do you hate, then?"
"What son of a bitch is there?"
Many of the men got together to build a sort of Officer's Club that ended up taking a lot of work which Yossarian never went to help at until it was already finished. "It was truly a splendid structure, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his."
In the world of Catch 22 everyone hates someone, everyone is trying to scam everyone else, there is nothing to live for, nothing to die for, and nothing worth anything. Every hero is torn down, every man with any value despised and held in contempt. It's very much the world we live in now fifty five years later. This mentality has spread everywhere to the point that schools are stopping teaching the founders of this country as "Great Men". They are being taught as average guys who didn't really do anything special. We tear down our heroes, eviscerate virtues, call truth a lie. We are swinging a sledgehammer at anything solid in a two story house and expecting it to magically stay in tact.
I don't believe war to be a virtue, or even something glorious. War is, as has been famously said, hell. War is madness. But it is sometimes a necessary madness. Even I, pacifist I am, have to admit that.
In these first one hundred pages the only real thing I got from any of this were brief moments where PTSD shown through the murk. Chapter 6 on Hungry Joe had a lot of really good moments where the damage of war was clear and made me think differently about those coming home. Naturally Doc Daneeka ruins plenty of moments by bemoaning how he had to go to war and left behind a 50k a year medical practice with plenty of tax free income on the side. "I gotta laugh when I hear someone like Hungry Joe screaming his brains out every night. I really gotta laugh. He's sick? How doesn't he think I feel."
Consumed with self, zero empathy, null compassion is what characterizes much of this novel. The book casts a microscopic lens on the cracks in any seemingly good individual while neglecting to cast it upon those deriding such individuals. It casts promiscuous wives of higher ups as blessed saints. Literally says "He had sinned, and it was good..." "Major Major had lied, and it was good" in a bit of mockery of God declaring the different phases of creation "and it was good".
I don't hold out much hope for my enjoyment of this novel. It tears down everything and affirms nothing which is pretty much the opposite of the novels I've loved in this series.
Well...I do have to admit it taught me what the word "furgle" means so...that's something.
Pax.
W
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