I finally got through this one, for the second time. Apparently I went through a period where I wrote the date that I finished the book on the back cover. For Catch 22, it was March 12, 2003, just eight days before the Iraq war started. Looking back, I think it definitely shaped the way I viewed the ensuing foolishness. Catch- 22 is follows the tale of Yosarrian, a bombardier stationed in Italy in WWII. He observes the inane nature of the world, not just life in the military, but everywhere else touched by the stupidity of man, except for Sweden (that is like the paradise of sanity Yosarrian aspires to reach) It was as good as I remembered it, but I had forgotten how slow the plot goes. In essence, out of 450 pages, the first 350 pages are sketches of the lives of a couple of dozen characters, with minimal focus on chronology. It is hard to know what was past and what is present in reference with the other tracts of the other characters. The last 100 pages really advance the story to its conclusion. Despite it's humorous slant (kind of M*A*S*H like), there are some incredibly powerfully descriptive images of war; the fear before the raid on Bologna (everyone smelled of formaldehyde), Kid Sampson getting cut in two by a plane, Snowden spilling his secret on Yossarian (one reason why I thought that the NSA Snowden was made up) and Yosarrian's last trip through Rome. The other cool thing about this book are the quotes. There are a ton of really cool ones. Here are some of my favorites:
"She was a crazy mathematics major from the Wharton School of Business who could not count to twenty-eight each month without getting into trouble."
"The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them."
"Nately's mother, a descendant of the New England Thorntons, was a Daughter of the American Revolution. His father was a Son of a Bitch."
"The night was filled with horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts, like a victim through a prison full of thieves. What a welcome sight a leper must have been!"
What is Catch-22? It is the "catch" that explains how we deal with our problems through airtight anti logic. Such as: Orr would be crazy to fly anymore missions and sane if he didn't; but if he was sane then he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.
Sound crazy right? But this is exactly how our society argues every problem we encounter:
Why is everyone so poor? Because unemployment is high. Why is unemployment high? Because everyone is so poor!
Why is health insurance so expensive? Because enough people don't pay in. Why don't enough people pay in? Because it is so expensive!
Why is public education not good? Because everyone that can afford it has put their kid in private school. Why did they put their kids in private school? Because public education is not good!
Why is crime so high? Because there are no jobs and people are poor. Why are there no jobs here? Because the crime rate is so high!
We live in a world of Catch-22, where the solution to and cause of all problems are just another problem with the exact same attributes. It results in a crappy society, but great cable news network ratings. Kind of reminds me of what Yossarian and Doc Daneeka said about it.
"That is some catch, that Catch -22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
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