Am I Missing Something (Catch 22 - Joseph Heller)

Member Name: Bridgend boy

Product:	Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Date:	09/08/01 (29 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Anti war

Disadvantages: Not as good as they say it is

I'm sorry. I bought this in great anticipation of a great book. In my experience, if a book achieves the status of a classic 80% of the time it is. There are a few exceptions, Robinson Crusoe being one of them, and now Catch 22.

This book is far from great. OK it's mildly amusing for the first 100 or so pages but it's generally full of odd characters doing odd things. OK, that may have been the point. Anti-war and all that. But these guys are seriously off the wall and IT WOULDN'T HAPPEN!!! A major who can't face anybody and so jumps out of his office window when anybody needs to see him. A mess manager who operates a huge organisation profiting from the war and even bombs his own camp to make money. I realise that these characters and situations are magnified to expose the futility and stupidity of war, but it's so far off the wall that it loses it's chance to deliver a very powerful message.

It's set in an American air force base in the med during world war 2. It's basically about the lives of the men based at the camp and focuses on one in particular, Yossarian. The whole premis behind it is this.... Yossarian doesn't want to fly any more missions. The only way he can be grounded is by being crazy. However, the mear fact that he doesn't want to fly more missions, means he sane and can't be grounded. Hence, catch 22.

The book does have a saving grace however. During the last 100 pages it gets very serious. People start to die and the whole tone of the book changes. This is where the message hits home and this is where the book is at its best.

Someone, once said, that if my only criticism of the book is that it's unrealistic, them I'm missing the point of fiction. Wrong I'm afraid. It's fictional, yet set in a situation that actually happened. It's not science fiction. Sci-Fi can never be unrealistic because we don't know what the future holds. This is unreal
istic because, as I've already said, the characters make it so, not the situation.

Summary: