I
had no memory of this novel at all, although I know I read it all
those years and years ago. Of course I know what “catch 22”
means, and I had some vague memories of pilots having to fly more and
more missions, but I am not sure whether I remembered it from the
book or from the film. I know for sure that I remembered the most
gory detail from the film and was waiting for it to turn up in the
book. It did, at the very end. I don't know whether the knowledge
spoiled my reading experience.
I am
confident that I didn't understand anything of the novel when I read
it fifty years ago, and as with most books on my re-reading list, I
wonder how much I bluffed then. The plot is non-existent, and at that
time plot was more important than anything else. The book is
exceptionally repetitive, and an inexperienced reader – as I was
then – would certainly get bored, unaware that repetition is the
most prominent and of course deliberate narrative device. It is used
in conjunction with another powerful device: omission, or paralipsis,
to use a fancy word. The same episode is told over and over again,
each time slightly differently and each time omitting the most
significant detail that would explain everything that is going on.
How clever! It also employs an intricate temporality as events follow
upon each other randomly, as deviations, by association, connected
solely by a reminiscence, or even without any tangible connection at
all. Each chapter seemingly focuses on a secondary or sometimes
completely peripheral character, and only in hindsight do we
understand why the story had to be told at all. If I were still an
active academic I would write an article on this novel and include it
in my courses. Not as a war novel, but as an example of exquisite
storytelling.
However,
the greatest surprise to me was that the novel is so wonderfully
hilarious. Of course I remembered, more from criticism than from
actual reading, that it was a satire on war. Yet a satire is not
necessarily funny, and the novel is. I don't often laugh outloud when
I read, but I did. Pity nobody was listening except my cats. I would
almost claim that
Catch 22 is the twentieth-century reply to
Alice in Wonderland with its twisted logic and magnificent
wordplay. Maybe this is the only possible way to write about the
horrors of war.
