I finished Catch-22 yesterday, bringing to an end my active participation in Matthew’s NaNoReMo project. I’m a little bit ahead of the schedule that Matthew set out for those of us in this virtual book club, but I have to go off to a conference for work on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and I don’t know what kind of Internet accessiblity I’m going to have in my hotel, so I thought I’d put down a few thoughts on this book now. Anybody who happens to be visiting from the defectiveyeti community and browsing, beware: there may be spoilers after the jump and I don’t want to potentially ruin the book for you!I found the last ten or eleven chapters of this book absolutely gripping. I have to admit that when NaNoReMo first started, and people were kvetching about the repetition and circularity of Heller’s writing, I didn’t get it. I had read this book at least twice before, and what I remembered about the book was the laugh out loud moments. I confess to a fondness for absurdist humour, which no doubt gives me a bit of a boost in the Heller-enjoyment column, but I truly couldn’t understand it at first when people were talking about how hard it was to get through this book and mentioning many previous failed attempts to finish it. Somewhere near the middle of the book this time through, though, I could kind of see it – the repetitive nature of basically the same absurd joke being phrased and rephrased was starting to play a little bit on my mind, a phenomenon no doubt aided in no small measure by the fact that – as I have already pointed out – I have read the book at least twice before. I have an excuse for feeling my own sense of deja vu about this book.
Then, though, I got to the last few chapters and I felt the love for this book all over again. Favourite passage:
The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilirated by his discovery. It was miraculous. 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.
(Chapter 34, “Thanksgiving”; p.363 of the 2004 Simon and Schuster special edition paperback).
The inexorable resolution of the plot details – the sudden and shocking death of Kid Sampson and McWatt, and the preposterous “death” of Doc Daneeka; the offhand, almost parenthetical brutality with which Aarfy rapes and murders the woman in Rome – building towards the terrible climax that had been hinted at and foreshadowed so many times in the scene with Snowden. Although it was the humour I remembered so clearly, this was the stuff that made an impact on me.
In the final analysis, I think the best thing that can be said about Catch-22 is that it is art that is in that “one of a kind, instantly recognizable” vein. You could pluck virtually any three pages of the book, completely at random out of the middle of the story somewhere and you’d still recognize the passages as having come from Catch-22 even if you forgot the names of the characters (something I have never had any difficulty doing with any book, I might add).
Junior, thanks for the encouragement — I actually sat down and read through a good third of the book over the last weekend, and wrapped things up on Tuesday night (procrastinator = took me until Friday to write it up of course). Very thoughtful, the ending: entertaining, profound, surprising. Have you ever picked up the sequel?
Yeah, I quite liked the ending too. I’ve never read any other books by Joseph Heller – everything I’ve read about them suggested that they were disappointing after Catch-22.
I have read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut, though; obviously, the writing isn’t “the same” but there is a child-like quality to Vonnegut’s writing (its simplicity) that stylistically is like an echo of Heller’s writing. I came to Vonnegut first and have read and enjoyed almost all of his work; it has occurred to me before that that has a lot to do with finding Heller like a comfortable chair.
I am thinking about picking up Closing Time now – on this read through of Catch-22 I found my curiosity piqued about what ‘happens’ to Yossarian. Have you read it?
Haven’t read Closing Time, sorry — but have read a few things by Vonnegut (okay, Slaughterhouse Five, and only because I remember the title — I’m sure it’s on the shelves somewhere …). My tastes skew a little more sci-fi-y and so I end up browsing selections by Bradbury, Dick, and Zelazny.
From what I’ve heard Heller suffered from the sophomore (junior, senior, grad school) slump — but how would you top something like Catch-22 anyways?