Catch 22, by Joseph Heller ***

This book was enjoyable but problematic. It's funny how most reviews of this book were either extremely positive of relatively negative. I found a lot of the material good, but some of it was annoying, and there was just a little too much of it. The book would have been better served 100 pages shorter. Even though I really like long books, I felt that this one didn't really improve with the extra time spent. It was just longer. There were just more crazy characters and bizarre scenarios.

I like the book's design - a bunch of wacky characters being funny and strange without much of a plot - and I like the book's style, but it didn't add up to as much as it should have. When the book finally starts to move in a direction, it seems forced, and the emotional material lacks real punch as a result. Furthermore, the very end is unsatisfying, and I thought a bit out of character for our lead. But it was certainly worth reading, not just because it's a classic but because it's a good book with lots of very good moments. The first quote I have included from the book is a pretty good example of the kind of logic followed throughout the entire novel - constant paradoxes, ironies, and impossibilities. There are some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments as a result of some of these situations, and Heller is very adept at making them all come together. Really, the book is exceptional in a lot of ways, it just feels like the form is all messed up, and Heller makes some bad decisions (one in particular that I don't want to ruin for you, but really, it just spoils the believability) that undermine his credibility, It kind of reminds me of Alain de Botton's On Love in that respect, in that the really good moments are rendered less good because of the bad ones surrounding them, though I liked both books because there are enough really good moments. I just didn't love them.

pg. 39: "[Life] is longer if it's filled with periods of boredom and discomfort."

pg. 274: "There was no way of really knowing anything, he knew, not even that there was really no way of knowing anything."
(fall-winter 2002)

Close this window