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| Joe Heller, circa 1983 (from the back cover of his novel God Knows). |
Catch-22 has influenced me more than any other book I've read. A paperback copy was given to me by a fellow college student in 1966: "I think you would enjoy this." Boy, was he right!
What is Catch-22 about? Is it antiwar? Anti-capitalist? Anti-"the system?" Anti-tribal and anti-conformity? Anti-authority?
Yes.
Here's a link to a good panel discussion about Catch-22:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?302675-1/50th-anniversary-joseph-hellers-catch22
The first 12 minutes are the best: actor Scott Shepherd reads Chapter One. In the rest of the 1.5 hour video, Bob Gottlieb (Heller's Editor) and Mike Nichols (who directed the film Catch-22) have some insightful things to say. Christopher Buckley can be usefully ignored: use the slider. The film was fine but, as Scott Shepherd's reading shows, it's Heller's writing that's killer.
Is Catch-22 funny? It's hilarious. But the book's brilliant "circular structure," which Buck Henry's screenplay for the movie mimicked, gradually reveals the dark side of what Heller is about. (One of my favorite sentences is "And if that wasn't funny, there were lots of things that weren't even funnier.") Does Catch-22 have a Jewish sensibility? Do I? Maybe. Bob Gottlieb says "Jews are not neurotic, we're just accurate." My own son says, with a nod to my Mel Brooks obsession, that, if reincarnation is true, that I'm "coming back" Jewish. It's no accident that my other favorite books by Heller, God Knows and Picture This, rely on anachronism. So do my favorite Brooks films: Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men In Tights. The point of anachronisms, as Heller and Brooks use them, is "same shit, different century." History is just (as Barbara Tuchman put it) "the march of folly."
Gottleib says that the only two books that "took a lot out of" Heller were his first two: Catch-22 and Something Happened. The rest of his books were "notional." Heller would get an idea, and develop it. Does this mean that the themes of his later books were trivial? I don't think so. In God Knows, King David is no longer on speaking terms with God because God is no longer speaking to him. In Picture This, Aristotle contemplates 2000 years of Western Civilization. Both books are as savagely funny as Catch-22.
Heller's position as an honored American novelist is far from secure. He is not highly regarded by Lit Crits. One issue the Lit Crits have with Catch-22 is "the problem of the ending." After showing humanity at its worst, Heller suddenly goes all optimistic on us: Yossarian goes AWOL to try to join Orr in Sweden. Maybe escape from insanity is possible? Mike Nichols makes this even more explicit in the film. In the closing scene Yossarian is paddling a little yellow life raft, alone, on a wide, wide sea. I was in the audience in Chicago in 1994 when Heller was on book tour, promoting Closing Time. In the Q&A, I asked him about "the problem of the ending:" Did you wuss out, Mr. Heller? That's what the Lit Crits say. His response: "I don't see how I could have ended the book any other way." (Nice dodge!)
Another Lit Crit complaint has been that Catch-22 is insufficiently edited, too repetitive. Repetition is required by Heller's "circular" organizational scheme, but Gottlieb says, in retrospect, "I can see room for cuts." Heller poked fun at himself in this regard in the book (I believe): ex-PFC Wintergreen threw General Peckem's memos in the waste basket because "they were too prolix."
Kurt Vonnegut is often mentioned in the next breath with Heller, doubtless because they wrote about similar themes. But they were different. Heller was known for a small, tight circle of friends (one of whom was Mel Brooks) and to suffer fools ungladly. Vonnegut liked to go to the Post Office because he could meet people and get into conversations while waiting on line. His relatives in Indianapolis agreed that Vonnegut was one of the most pleasant, considerate, people they knew. They just couldn't read his books. They found some of his words and most of his ideas offensive.
Both "played with" time. Heller used conventional chapters. He might even have been prolix. 😉 Vonnegut learned to write on the Cornell Sun. He liked short sentences and paragraphs, written with punch, and to break up his text into bite-sized bits, smaller than chapters. Both wrote about stupidity and cruelty. But, where Heller saw them as willful and self-interested, Vonnegut was inclined to cut humanity a break. Why was Dresden firebombed? Vonnegut believed it was bureaucratic inertia: the planes were fueled and loaded with bombs and, "we gotta go somewhere on a mission today." (Compare this to Heller's squadron's protest about the mission to Orvieto in Catch-22.)
Another trait they shared as writers was indifference to "literature." Which may be another reason they are disrespected by Lit Crits. They did not think that their writing needed to be deep, or profound, or subtle, or mysterious. Gottlieb says that Heller was easy to edit. If Gottlieb suggested changes, Heller was all in for revisions and trying to make them work. No "writer's ego." Vonnegut's history as an established author was only slightly different. He says somewhere in Palm Sunday (I paraphrase) that "nobody edits me any more, and I don't want to be. My publisher just relies on me to turn in stuff that will make the cash register ring." Vonnegut's take on "literature" was that stories are like Model T Fords: you just tinker with them. If a writer has to be "difficult," for his editors or his readers, to be great, Vonnegut and Heller fail the test. All I know is that I vibrate like a tuning fork to the ideas and prose of Vonnegut and Heller. Especially Heller.
The first 12 minutes are the best: actor Scott Shepherd reads Chapter One. In the rest of the 1.5 hour video, Bob Gottlieb (Heller's Editor) and Mike Nichols (who directed the film Catch-22) have some insightful things to say. Christopher Buckley can be usefully ignored: use the slider. The film was fine but, as Scott Shepherd's reading shows, it's Heller's writing that's killer.
Is Catch-22 funny? It's hilarious. But the book's brilliant "circular structure," which Buck Henry's screenplay for the movie mimicked, gradually reveals the dark side of what Heller is about. (One of my favorite sentences is "And if that wasn't funny, there were lots of things that weren't even funnier.") Does Catch-22 have a Jewish sensibility? Do I? Maybe. Bob Gottlieb says "Jews are not neurotic, we're just accurate." My own son says, with a nod to my Mel Brooks obsession, that, if reincarnation is true, that I'm "coming back" Jewish. It's no accident that my other favorite books by Heller, God Knows and Picture This, rely on anachronism. So do my favorite Brooks films: Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men In Tights. The point of anachronisms, as Heller and Brooks use them, is "same shit, different century." History is just (as Barbara Tuchman put it) "the march of folly."
Gottleib says that the only two books that "took a lot out of" Heller were his first two: Catch-22 and Something Happened. The rest of his books were "notional." Heller would get an idea, and develop it. Does this mean that the themes of his later books were trivial? I don't think so. In God Knows, King David is no longer on speaking terms with God because God is no longer speaking to him. In Picture This, Aristotle contemplates 2000 years of Western Civilization. Both books are as savagely funny as Catch-22.
Heller's position as an honored American novelist is far from secure. He is not highly regarded by Lit Crits. One issue the Lit Crits have with Catch-22 is "the problem of the ending." After showing humanity at its worst, Heller suddenly goes all optimistic on us: Yossarian goes AWOL to try to join Orr in Sweden. Maybe escape from insanity is possible? Mike Nichols makes this even more explicit in the film. In the closing scene Yossarian is paddling a little yellow life raft, alone, on a wide, wide sea. I was in the audience in Chicago in 1994 when Heller was on book tour, promoting Closing Time. In the Q&A, I asked him about "the problem of the ending:" Did you wuss out, Mr. Heller? That's what the Lit Crits say. His response: "I don't see how I could have ended the book any other way." (Nice dodge!)
Another Lit Crit complaint has been that Catch-22 is insufficiently edited, too repetitive. Repetition is required by Heller's "circular" organizational scheme, but Gottlieb says, in retrospect, "I can see room for cuts." Heller poked fun at himself in this regard in the book (I believe): ex-PFC Wintergreen threw General Peckem's memos in the waste basket because "they were too prolix."
Kurt Vonnegut is often mentioned in the next breath with Heller, doubtless because they wrote about similar themes. But they were different. Heller was known for a small, tight circle of friends (one of whom was Mel Brooks) and to suffer fools ungladly. Vonnegut liked to go to the Post Office because he could meet people and get into conversations while waiting on line. His relatives in Indianapolis agreed that Vonnegut was one of the most pleasant, considerate, people they knew. They just couldn't read his books. They found some of his words and most of his ideas offensive.
Both "played with" time. Heller used conventional chapters. He might even have been prolix. 😉 Vonnegut learned to write on the Cornell Sun. He liked short sentences and paragraphs, written with punch, and to break up his text into bite-sized bits, smaller than chapters. Both wrote about stupidity and cruelty. But, where Heller saw them as willful and self-interested, Vonnegut was inclined to cut humanity a break. Why was Dresden firebombed? Vonnegut believed it was bureaucratic inertia: the planes were fueled and loaded with bombs and, "we gotta go somewhere on a mission today." (Compare this to Heller's squadron's protest about the mission to Orvieto in Catch-22.)
