Re-reading Catch-22

Catch-22 written by Joseph Heller was first published in 1961 and I must have first read it when I was about fourteen when the Viet-Nam war was raging and our lives were shadowed by the Cold War. For me and my friends who had grown up after WW2 but with the stories our parents told us about it; my dad was in the parachute regiment and was called up in the summer 1939 and not demobbed until 1946, so he saw a lot of fighting and a lot of terrible things, and rarely spoke of it.

Catch-22 had a huge impact on me, and as soon as I had finished reading it I read it again, and must have reread many, many times since then. A film was released in 1970 and I was really looking forward to it, but although no doubt it was a great film, it could not match what my imagination had created from Heller’s writing.

The phrase has now entered the language,although sometimes it is misused, but the true definition is given in the book; set in Italy during WW2, the only way an airman can be grounded is if he is insane; to be grounded he has to be asked to be grounded, but if he asks he is obviously not insane. Catch-22 is used in other ways in the novel, but the idea is always the same, there is no logical way out of a dilemma.

The actual story in Catch-22 was gripping to me as a young reader, the intrigues, the plot, the action, the frustrations; the characters leapt off the page with their evocative names. The main character is Yossarian who is understandably desperate to escape from the conflict; his friend Orr keeps crashing the planes he flies into the sea, but it is only near the end of the book that Yossarian realises that the crashes are all part of Orr’s plan to escape. other characters with splendid, almost Dickensian names are Colonel Cathcart, Milo Minderbinder, Snowden, Captain Aardvaark,  Major —— de Coverley, General Dreedle, Gus & Wes,  Major Major Major Major, Colonel Moodus, Lieutenant Mudd, Piltchard & Wren, Corporal Popinjay, Kid Sampson, Corporal Snark and Chief White Halfoat – and that is only a sample!

I found the novel hilarious, laugh-out-loud funny even after reading it so many times, exciting, upsetting, moving, it made me angry, it made me sad, in places it horrified me.

All through my student days, Catch-22 was with me, and when the copy I had fell to pieces through wear, I bought another which before long was equally battered. There were times when I could quote whole dialogues, and knew the names of every single character, even those with no names like the old man and the girl with lime green knickers.

About a year ago I thought it was about time I read it again… I only got as far as chapter 2 and I had to lay it aide… It seemed to have lost its magic… maybe I should try again…