I just finished Joseph Heller's madcap satire about an American bomb squadron stationed in Italy during WW2 and I loved every minute of it. Heller deftly weaved biting satire of military bureaucracy with genuinely laugh-out-loud comedy and shocking dark moments. "I SEE EVERYTHING TWICE!"
Despite its humor, it is definitely an anti-war book. The characters all symbolize archetypes you find in the military, from the self-serving leaders, to the jingoistic officers, to the sane men who are preoccupied with self-preservation and are seen as insane for the audacity of not wanting to die.
When the book wanted to be brutal and disquieting, it delivered. When Yossarian returns from an aborted bomb run by an act of self-sabotage, the base is eerily still. Yossarian never felt this way before. He wanders around and is chilled by the stillness because his brothers are up in the air, potentially losing their lives and he is racked with guilt. It was beautifully poignant.
And then there are the shocking deaths, like Kid Sampson being destroyed by propeller blades as a consequence of hubris from McWatt flying too low to the ground, that exemplified how tenuous life can be. But perhaps the most notable death is the fate of Snowden, who keeps appearing in the novel as a ghastly reminder in Yossarian's mind. We don't know what truly happened to him till the very end, when its revealed that Snowden was eviscerated by flak fire and he's lying in the back of the bomber plane moaning "I'm cold….I'm cold."
Yossarian tries his best to patch him up, but in a tragic twist of irony, he discovers he was treating the wrong wound. He opens up Snowden's suit and his guts come spilling out, and it breaks Yossarian. The scene of him standing in line for inspection completely nude is played for laughs in the beginning, but then you learn at the end why he was nude, why he refused to wear his flight suit: because his friend's guts were all over him and it broke him.
I could go on and on, like Yossarian's gloomy walk through Rome at night, and seeing the plight of the poor people and the wanton violence, but i'd be here all day.
I absolutely, positively, thoroughly enjoyed this book. My only fear is that it has ruined other books for me. It's going to be a while before I find a book this good again.
I also want to mention the Hulu adaption, which I am currently watching. I'm a bit disappointed by it because it leaves a lot of the black comedy out in favor of a more traditional drama. I don't recommend watching the adaption without reading the book first.
by ihohjlknk
26 Comments
I loved this book at 18, declared it my favorite book, and thought it was a hilarious brilliant satire.
I got a job at a company, lived a little, and reread it at 40. The ridiculous satire no longer felt ridiculous, it felt like a documentary of my workplace with more bombs.
Still my favorite book, but it’s hard to read now.
One in each cheek
“Suppose everybody else thought the same way.”
“Then I’d be a damn fool to think otherwise.”
Superman! SUPERMAN!!
It’s the funniest book I’ve ever read.
It’s also multi-layered, and deep, and covers such topics as PTSD, and survivor’s guilt.
It’s bold, silly, extreme, and makes me feel all the feels. All of them.
And it is also MY favorite book. Ever.
I’m glad you enjoy it too.
Saw the play at University of Maryland, around 1976 when I was in high school. That was a good production and I read the book about 2 years later.
I loved this book when I read it for the first time, I should read it again…
My favorite. Wonderful, hilarious, insane, dark and insidious book.
I love how it’s told in disjointed, out of time segments following different characters; you have to read it once to be able to put together the pieces you’re given. And so many delightful characters! Nately, Orr, Milo, the chaplain, the soldier in white, major major major major…
I refuse to try to watch the show, because it’s not possible for it to live up to my expectations and enjoyment of the book.
Yossarian is such a great character. I’ve read Catch 22 twice. Once when I was young because my Dad was always quoting it and talking about how it was one of his favorite books. He was in the Military during Vietnam and doesn’t exactly have a high opinion of ” military intelligence.” I read it again when I was older and enjoyed it even more than the first time I read it. Laughed out loud throughout the entire book. It’s also very sad in parts. The only thing that really compares is Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut. If you haven’t read that, I feel like you must. It’s similar in tone for sure.
Read it in school, then again during Army basic training. I saw humor in school, then the black humor and the solidarity we adopted in the madness of FTA; it made it easier for me to find my reasons to disrupt the paradigm. Got fired as a squad leader for getting URI during a spinal meningitis outbreak. Came back, shot sharpshooter, started getting saluted by my former squad, got assault and battery on graduation day from my drill sergeant. That got him busted.
Years later, I went to work as a project leader in an insurance company IT department. One of my staff had a poster of himself in front of a fighter. He had been in Heller’s squad, was the guy who cleaned his pistol at night then shot the mice that ran through the light in his tent. He was maintaining a badly written nest of IBM assembler code, the policy file update for a workers comp business. He was unflappable.
Bill Convis was his name. https://www.americanairmuseum.com/archive/person/william-douglas-convis
I have read the book several times since high school. It never stops being relevant.
The only book that I have reread as many times is huck Finn.
I read it once in college, I thought it was hilarious. I read it again when I was in the military and found it way more depressing because like you said, those people all exist. I still find it very humorous but at the same time it holds a subliminal note of sadness. Behind the satire is the reality.
I need to reread it but I often cite this as a monumental read for me.
Also, I got sidetracked in terms of the whole “Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were friends in real life” thing. But mostly I’m just glad that the Snowden scene made as big an impression on others as it did me. Witnessing life-threatening events can trigger PTSD all on its own, even when your life is not directly threatened.
My favorite quote (unbelievably poignant):
“It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”
I feel like this book turns so hard at about the 80% mark. Up until then it’s all hilarious and good times and nothing bad ever happens and the war is more like a goofy exercise that gives all these zany characters a chance to spin around the screen, and then the trip to Rome happens, and the hooker incident, and the ending, and it just gets so fucking real.
I mean I never for one second doubted that this book was vehemently anti-war, it’s the most anti-war book I’ve ever come across, but it’s so much more powerful for giving you like 10 hours to laugh at the mind-boggling absurdity of it all before shit gets real and the head count starts to go up. It shifts so hard. So abruptly. I don’t know why, but it hit me so much harder this way. It’s like the book asks you to laugh along with it for most of the way, and then it reveals that you’ve been laughing alone all this time and there was nothing fucking funny about this.
Anyway. Masterpiece.
“Too prolix. “. — ex-PFC Wintergreen
It’s very funny but extremely terrifying in its accurate depiction of the world we live in.
This has always been one of my favorites! And it still stands up. Whenever someone tried explaining NFTs to me, my brain shifts to Milo Minderbinder selling eggs.
I need to read this.
I bought a physical copy of this four years ago and still haven’t read it. I’ll move it up the ranks in my TBR lol
I hated this book. Couldn’t get into it. I tried twice. And I’m one to dislike bureaucracy. Just didn’t land. Too repetitive
I’ve re-read it so many times it’s probably my favorite book. That Hulu adaptation was straight up terrible!!! I couldn’t believe it was just a basic period piece, without any of the humor. It was like they missed every single thing. The older movie is better because Bob Newhart is Major Major.
“He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt”
It’s a damn near masterpiece
You should read his other stuff so I have someone to talk to about them
Is the humor relays on puns?