Skip to main content

Catch-22 in Various Forms

 




I just finished watching the 2019 television series version of Catch-22 staring Christopher Abbott. Probably 40 years ago, I watched the 1970 movie version with Alan Arkin. Probably like 50 years ago, I read the novel by Joseph Heller.

In Catch-22 we follow Yossarian, a bombardier stationed on an island in the Mediterranean Sea during World War II. Yossarian is told that once he flies 25 missions, he can go home. But as he and his fellow crewmates get close to 25, they raise the line to 30 missions, then 35, then 40, and so on. We see Yossarian trying to navigate this psychological hellscape.

As it has been some 50 years since I read the novel, I would be hard-pressed to say how faithful each screen version was to the original source. That being said, I think it would be hard for a two-hour movie to do true justice to the rich characters from the book. A series should be able to do a better job. And it does . . . but I still think we did not get to know Yossarian’s friends as well as we should. Going on my dim memories of the book, it just seems like I got to know them better in the book. But overall, I did really like the series. It moved me. It made me laugh. It made me think. Abbott does a good job playing the sometimes perplexed, sometimes terrified, sometimes wise Yossarian.

At the same time, and not to throw you completely off base, I am currently reading John Irving’s The Last Chairlift. There are similarities between Irving’s writing and Heller’s. In both we have heavy doses of comedy and tragedy. I like Irving’s novels, and this is a trademark of his work: quirky humor, mixed with very tragic tragedy. Both Irving and Heller like to immerse you in a world of rich, complex, and sometimes bizarre characters. And Irving is a master of foreshadowing. You always know the tragedy is coming. There is a sense of impending doom between the laughs.

With Catch-22, the sense of impending doom is supplied by the war. The comedy is supplied by the absurdity. Yossarian tries everything he can to keep from flying. In one scheme he decides to plead insanity. He tells the doctor he is crazy. The doctor agrees he is crazy, but there is a catch, the doctor tells him: Catch-22. In order for Yossarian to be sent home he has to ask for it, but if he asks to go home, it proves he’s not crazy, because no sane person would want to stay.  “That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” Yossarian says. “it’s a doozie,” the doctor agrees.

It's a doozie.

Star Liner


Comments

  1. marcmaislenJanuary 2, 2023 at 9:58 PM

    Always Enjoy your take on literature. In fact, Catch 22 became an iconic phrase of my generation.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Second Wind

  You have heard about athletes getting their second wind? It is not that they feel better, that they are warmed up and ready to run more easily. It is not psychological (at least, not all psychological). No. There is an actual physiological truth to a second wind. It all has to do with respiration. When I say respiration, I am not talking about breathing. Respiration is a biochemical process that happens at the cellular level. It is how the cell gets energy. There are lots of chemical processes that are constantly going on in each cell, and those processes require energy. Without a constant feed of energy, the cell will die. The more demands there are on a cell, the more energy it needs. For example, every one of your muscle cells need more energy when you are running.   In fact, you won’t be able to run if the cells don’t have sufficient energy for it. The energy currency of the cell is a molecule called ATP. You may have heard that sugar is how our bodies get energy, wh...
1 comment
Read more

Roy Batty Figures it out

  This is written with the assumption that the reader has seen the film Blade Runner . If you haven’t, you may not get much out of it. In one of the last scenes in Blade Runner , the killer android Roy Batty, who holds Deckard’s life in his hands, has a remarkable speech: “I've seen things... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments... will be lost in time like tears in the rain. Time to die.” I am told that the speech that was written was not working very well, and Rutger Hauer was told to just improvise something. Wow. He nailed it. At this point in the film Roy Batty has been the villain throughout. We have been rooting for Deckard (Harrison Ford) to take him out, but it is not going well, and it seems like Batty is about to kill him. At the last second, Roy Batty pulls Deckard up, to keep him from falling to his death. Then he delivers this...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Outsider

  I am reading The Outsider by Stephen King. The first 150 pages or so I found disturbing. Not for the reason you might think. It is not scary, not creepy in a traditional horror way, but disturbing in a tragic way. The first hundred to 150 pages is tragedy on top of tragedy. The most disturbing thing to me (it is disturbing to me anytime I encounter it in any story) is a false accusation. A man is falsely accused and may well be convicted of a horrific crime. That kind of thing disturbs my soul. It makes the whole world seem wrong. I have always been disturbed by stories with that kind of thing. And why not? It happens in real life too. That makes it all the more horrific. In the Jim Crow South, all you had to do was make an accusation against a black man to set the lynch mob in action. No need to bother with a trial. But even if there was a trial, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, innocent or not. We see Vladimir Putin inventing charges against people and they get locked up...
1 comment
Read more