Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

 Guess what the most started but unfinished book is? (According to Goodreads). 

It's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - just kidding, no, it's Catch-22. 

The reviews of Catch-22 are nothing if not polarized. It is either deemed a bloated monstrosity - a beast of a book, complete with tangled, confusing subplot tentacles and innumerable scaly vestigial sentences, that regularly appears in the nightmares of high school literature students, causing them to wake up sweating with the words 'paradox' and 'irony' clattering around their sorry heads. 

Or it is hailed as the funniest thing that has come out since the 19th century (except of course, the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy), a "razor-sharp satire" or a "biting, incisive commentary on the madness of a certain time period."

I, with my expert opinion, deem it irrefutably to be… (drumroll)… both. (I know you are currently adding indecisive to your characterization of me.).                          
My reaction immediately after completing this book: I?? Loved?? This?? 

Emphasis on all three words. I, being my very picky self with my very short attention span, felt love (of all possible feelings) for this dense, long-winded, exceedingly frustrating book.

As a high school student studying literature, I can confirm that it is long. I have often pored over the Sparknotes sections on themes and literary devices at unearthly hours to try and grasp the full complexity of the author's use of paradox. But as someone who has persevered and completed this book, I can confidently say that it is definitively one of the best books I have read.

Catch-22 was set in World War 2, and the author himself fought in the war. This was the age of the heroic soldier - head held high, shoulders at attention under a crisp uniform, medals gleaming against his chest, fighting for country, honor, and justice. It was the age of "Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori" (it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country).

War has been a subject for books and art since the beginning of time. Conflicts have been both romanticized as 'holy war' and denigrated, as in Picasso's painting Guernica, which portrays war as ugly chaos, as well as Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est. Catch-22 follows in this vein and has received incredible fame because of the sheer brilliance of its style.

Moving on to the novel:

The main conflict of the novel is well known: the eponymous Catch-22. A soldier can be taken out of combat duty if declared insane. However, if he asks to be declared insane, it is taken as proof that he is sane - for surely, any sane person would try to avoid death. 

"Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle." 

(This was the origin of the phrase Catch-22, which, according to the dictionary, means a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.)

However, Catch-22 is not just this single clause. Catch-22 is also the law that means even though the center has declared that men should be allowed to go home after 30 missions and the colonel is not allowed to detain them past that, the men cannot leave - because they are not allowed to disobey their commanding officers. It evolves into a legal device that allows rampant abuse of power. Catch-22 is inescapable, all-mighty. It is a perfect concoction of bent, twisted words; it runs loopholes and circles around all men and all logic. It is, in short, the bureaucracy's finest creation. The bureaucracy, in the novel, is bloated and pompous and ridiculous - but also powerful enough to hold men's lives in the palm of its hand. The bureaucracy is an unwieldy system of endless paperwork and signatures that complicates the simplest task - but also has the power to manufacture reports, to throw men into the most dangerous missions, and even to 'disappear' men.

Yossarian, our protagonist, seems to fight the bureaucracy and the men supposedly on his side, rather than the men on the other side. "The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on." He is extremely ordinary but also exceptional - exceptional for the fact that he sees the madness around him as madness. He is regarded as crazy because he thinks everyone around him is out to kill him. However, 'just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.'

Indeed, those around him seem to harm him more than the supposed enemy.                                        Colonel Cathcart, who is the antagonist, although he seems like an unlikely antagonist because of his infinite anxiety and insecurity, forces men to go on dangerous missions just to get better aerial photos. He forces the men to fly more missions than required merely because he is trying to cross the bridge from colonel to general.                                                                                                                                         Milo Minderbinder, a caricature of a war profiteer, is revered as a hero and a patriot even as he sells supplies to the other side and deprives the men on his own side of medicines and parachutes to sell them for a profit. Men die, not bravely, not even in the service of some higher purpose like country and glory. They die from bureaucratic incompetence, from capitalistic greed, from the overweening ambition of men in power. 

This culminates in the ultimate paradox of the novel: the bravest thing a man can do is refuse to fight. The most selfless thing Yossarian can do is jump ship and look out for his own survival.

However, despite the highly sympathetic nature of its anti-war subject matter, the novel does not beg for emotion,  as novels often do these days. I could name names (cough, cough, Colleen Hoover, cough), but it wouldn't be fair to pin a recurring trend in current YA and non-YA books on a few individuals. Today's novels often prod at us for emotions (jab - feel sadness here, jab - feel pity here, jab - feel disgust here). They are structured to provoke; detail is crammed in to provoke horror; there are flowing monologues at convenient moments to stimulate grief - our emotions are dragged from us. Catch-22, commendably, does not do this. This book is rarely direct. Yossarian is not described as an archetypical hero. However, the fact that the novel does not try makes the novel and its characters much more appealing. The book is exceptionally funny, thanks to the aforementioned high-schooler-tormenting irony and paradox. "He was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them."

Yet, the humor of the novel is the distillation of its tragedy. The life-threatening situations these soldiers find themselves in are crazy and absurd enough to be hilarious. It is funny, the trivial things these men die for.

The author uses this savage humour to tie the novel’s innumerable characters, events and subplots together,  making this is one of those rare books that sears themselves into the memory. It will live with you forever, like it’s protagonist Yossarian, who aims to live forever (or die trying).

All that being said, Catch-22 is not a particularly easy read. One must suffer through very long initial passages about, among other things, the apple cheeks of a certain character. You wonder, among other things, whether the author is currently residing in an asylum as a result of having been driven mad by his own prose. However, when you get used to it, you love it. You realize later that in the first few chapters, the author indirectly introduces us to the recurring themes of the novel and foreshadows the rest of the novel. But this also makes the first few chapters exceptionally bewildering.

Another thing that makes the novel difficult to read is its non-linear time frame. The author talks about the events in seemingly random order, so you are initially met with a bewilderingly large cast of characters without any context. The author thus jumps from character to character, giving you bits and pieces of backstory, referring to events that have happened but you haven't read about yet. Your only measure of time, your only thread through this novel, is the number of missions Yossarian has to complete to go home. The number of missions is constantly being raised just before the men can complete them. The number of missions represents the ultimate goal - going home, always just out of reach. The hope of going home is the sole driving force for these soldiers, the only thing that matters in their dust-ridden warzones. All else is meaningless.

The very frustration of reading this book adds to the experience of the book. The Yossarian's struggle and yours, the readers', almost overlap - his struggle for sanity in his seemingly insane world and the reader's struggle for clarity in the wondrous chaos of Heller's words. Your feelings echo Yossarian's - you almost feel everything twice. The triumph of the ending is all the more glorious for the difficulty.

In conclusion, I believe Catch-22 is definite must-read. Though challenging, it is also exceptionally rewarding, not despite of, but because of that challenge. Heller has meticulously crafted every aspect and theme of this, so that even though you are initially put off by the heat, you soon notice the brilliance of the flame. It, in my opinion, is an absolute masterpiece, and unquestionably has that ineffable ‘classic’ quality. Giving it five measly stars is the least homage I can pay it.