Catch 22

Catch 22

I have been reading Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, published in 1961, a book I have long wanted to read. It is better than I expected, less time worn, more trenchant (and funny). As it happens, I once met Heller at a party in New York, sometime in the 1990s. He was a likeable man, jovial, twinkly. I had read his Something Happened recently, so we had a nice conversation about it—a very astute book. Now I am acquainted with Yossarian, Colonel Cathcart, Nately, Nately’s whore, chaplain Tappman, nurse Duckett, Colonel Scheisskopf (“Shit-head”), and many others. The book is certainly anti-war (how could it not be?), but it is also anti-American—or rather anti-Americans-in-charge. The high-ups are the worst: the heedless brutal generals and colonels sending men on endless combat missions, concerned only with burnishing their own reputations. Here’s a snatch of dialogue: “That’s a very serious crime you’ve committed, Father,” said the major. “What crime?” “We don’t know yet,” said the colonel. “But we’re going to find out. And we sure know it’s very serious.” (380). And it isn’t that only the armed forces that are run by such men; they are depicted as typically American. It reminded me of nothing so much as American universities, in which administrators seem to think of themselves as commanding officers keeping their underlings in line, punishing them as they see fit, not necessarily for anything. They are obsessed with image, headlines, personal rivalries. Justice comes a distant second. Politics rules.