NOTE: Today’s book review was inspired by another book entitled Letters. That book was a memoir of scientist and storyteller Dr. Oliver Sacks, told through a lifetime of his personal correspondence with friends, family, patients and many other interesting people. Over the course of his letter writing, Dr. Sacks often made reference to the written works of others. Today’s books are an example of one such work that he referenced.
The Context in Which Dr. Sacks Made Reference to Catch-22
***For the fifth time in the same letter between Dr. Sacks and his friends Jonathan and Rachel Miller, Sacks makes a literary reference. This time, instead of making the reference with regard to the Millers, Oliver Sacks decided to close his letter by updating his friends on what books he had been reading for pleasure.
Here is a short summary of the whole letter:
In August of 1963, Oliver Sacks wrote a letter to his friend Jonathan Miller and Miller’s wife, Rachel. In 1963, Miller had resigned his position in the comedy troupe Beyond the Fringe and was laying the groundwork for a move into the world of theatrical directing. Beyond the Fringe had been achieving a great deal of success up until this point and had moved to London to continue their work in a larger market when Miller had stepped aside. All throughout this transitional period, Miller and Sacks had kept in touch via letters and phone calls. As was always the case with these two friends, Sacks was highly supportive of his friend and encouraged him to pursue his ambitions and broaden the scope of his creative expression. In today’s portion of the letter, Dr. Sacks ends his advice to Miller and begins to fill his friend in on what he had been reading lately. It is while doing so that Sacks says the following:
“Catch-22: the best and wittiest and only mature war book I have ever read!” Oliver Sacks, Page #65, Letters.
A Brief Summary of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is a satire that examines the absurdity of modern warfare. The story is written in a non-linear format that follows the lives of a group of Air Force pilots, administrators, cooks, doctors and assorted others who move in and out of the plot lines of the story. For much of the book, the characters find themselves facing impossible conundrums or, as we have come to know them, catch-22s. A catch-22 situation can be defined as one in which none of the options available are suitable. In the book, the main character is a man named Yossarian. He is a pilot who is afraid that he is going to die on a mission and wants to be discharged back home to America. The catch-22 for Yossarian is that in order to be discharged for home, he must be examined and ruled to be insane. However, the very fact that he fears death on his mission makes him the clinical definition of sane. In order to be marked as insane, Yossarian has to willingly want to fly into danger. He doesn’t want to do that anymore and thus, he is caught in a loop of impossible choices or else, a catch-22.
Like many character driven stories that involve soldiers and war, Catch-22 is also about larger concepts than simply what happens to the main character and his friends or enemies. Over the course of a storyline that bounces back and forth from the earliest days of basic training, all the way to the last days of Yossarian’s time based in Italy during WWII, Joseph Heller expertly explores weighty topics such as the absurdity of attempting to achieve peace through the waging of war, how the concept of time bends and stretches and distorts for soldiers during battles and, by contrast, during the slow times between engagements, how the value of our individual humanity varies based upon the rank one may hold, how the intelligence used to make decisions by those in positions of authority, often far from the front lines, can end up putting the lives of frontline soldiers at risk, how the battles soldiers fight are often more than those that happen on fields of battle and so much more.
If you want a pop cultural comparable to Catch-22, take a look at the movie/TV show M*A*S*H. Although the two stories takes place decades apart (Catch-22 happens during WWII, while M*A*S*H is set during the Vietnam War), both are satires that look at the price of war on the nature of our humanity. Yossarian’s character counterpart from M*A*S*H would be Hawkeye Pierce. In both stories, humour is the scalpel that slices into the warmonger’s soul and yet, neither story is told for laughs. In both cases, we have character studies showing how completely sane individuals cope with being trapped in completely insane environments from which there appears to be no escape. There will be no spoiler alert situations in this post. If you wish to know how Yossarian makes out by the end of the book, you’ll have to read Catch-22 yourself. All that I can say is that if you were to speak with any soldier who has survived battle, they will all tell you about the transformative nature of the experience. A soldier may survive being at war but some battles never entirely end and, as a result, being involved in a war changes the core of your being. Consequently, even after the bullets stop flying and the bombs stop being dropped, can a soldier in war ever truly know peace going forward?
My Thoughts on the Book Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (for what that is worth)
Of the thirteen books that I have read so far as part of my exploration of Dr. Oliver Sacks’ library, Catch-22 has been my favourite and has been the most thought-provoking to me. It is a book whose structure lures you into a false sense of complacency. Right from the opening series of chapters, the notion that Yossarian is stuck in a world in which everything is upside down and inside out and all of the characters he encounters are warped versions of what normal might appear to be in the outside world as a result, causes the reader to quickly understand what a Catch-22 lifestyle might be like. As we meet each new member of Yossarian’s platoon, we find that they are each products of the absurd situation in which they are immersed. Consequently, for the reader, the initial reaction is to wonder if we have the book figured out right from the get-go and that all is it is a longer version of the classic Abbott and Costello “Who’s On First?” comedy routine. But then Heller starts to play with the idea of time. By placing his chapters out of chronological order and yet, by maintaining a sense of continuity with regard to the nonsensical nature of the relationships and experiences each character has, Heller deftly shows us that it isn’t just the consequent of facing death on a battlefield that scars soldiers but rather, it often has something to do with the personal baggage we carry that determines whether we ride those waves of adrenaline or else, stand with arms outstretched to oppose them and blunt them and try to contain them.
I can see why an intense character study of men in battle would appeal to a neuro-pathologist such as Dr. Sacks. He spent the better part of his career studying how the brain works. He became famous for showcasing instances when the brains of his patients became malleable and/or adaptable in the face of intense emotional, intellectual of physical stimuli from their lives. Heller’s masterstroke as a writer with Catch-22 is that he paints pictures of a whole cast of characters who, for many reasons, came pre-disposed to react to the intensity of warfare in their own unique ways. A simple example from the book is a character named Hungry Joe. He is a man who suffers from extreme nightmares during the down times between engagements and only finds peace of mind by climbing back into his cockpit and flying back into the chaos of battle. There is another character with the last name of Major. When he was born, his father did not respect his birth mother so when it came time to fill out the hospital records and give his son his official name, the father named him Major Major for spite. Needless to say, the functionaries in the Air Force couldn’t handle the nature of his name and, despite just having come from basic training, he was listed as having the rank of a Major and, as such, he became Major Major Major. All that Major Major wanted to do was to be “one of the guys” and to bond with the other soldiers but, right from the hop, he is placed in command of the platoon. This causes the men to resent him, in a similar manner to which his birth father had resented him for the audacity of having been born. Major Major Major spends much of his story arc signing false names to the requisition and personnel papers his is constantly being asked to sign. He ends up becoming consumed by the nature of his name and how it shaped his identity throughout his life and how the world came to view him as a result. The whole book of Catch-22 is filled with a collection of characters who react to their surroundings in unique and/or common ways that come to define the nature of their identities. Some thrived in that intense environment and some wilted under the pressure of it all. Thus, I can see why a man whose professional interest is the brain and how the brain functions in reaction to external stimuli, would find Catch-22 to be a very interesting read.
Dr. Oliver Sacks is also Jewish. I am not Jewish so I cannot fully understand how the nature of being a Jew and the history of struggle that defines that religion can come to become such an interwoven, integral part of any Jewish person’s individual identity. But one would have to assume that the idea of being at peace is one that many Jewish people hold close to their hearts. Thus, I am reasonably confident that someone like Dr. Sacks would be less of a hawk in his outlook on life and more of a dove. As such, it wouldn’t be all that surprising for Dr. Sacks to be drawn to books like Catch-22 that possessed an anti-war message. At the time of the writing of his letter to the Millers, it was 1963. While the full counter-culture backlash to the Vietnam War hadn’t erupted into the streets of America just yet, the sentiments that would drive it a few years later were, undoubtedly, percolating away in the halls of academia in which Dr. Sacks would have found himself at the time. The 1960s were a heady political time in the history of America and of the world. Books like Catch-22 by Jospeh Heller became a clarion call for those who marched in the streets, demanding peace and justice in a cruel and seemingly unfair world.
The book Catch-22 is filled with examples of catch-22-type situations in which the various characters find themselves immersed. One of the overarching versions of this can be seen in the idea of living life to its fullest versus dying. Each of the characters in Catch-22 has some version of this situation playing out for them in real time during the story. For each of them, to be most alive means that they must continually face death in battle. While most soldiers will do anything to avoid being killed, there are some who come to view death as a respite from the battles they are fighting and the demons that they face on the daily. To be at peace is to die and to be at war is to live. For any of you reading these words, my hope for you on this day is that your battles be minor ones and that you are able to somehow, some way, find peace in your world, at least for this moment and, maybe, even for this whole day. What a middle finger to the Fates that would be.
The link to the website for author Joseph Heller can be found here.
The link to the website for Dr. Oliver Sacks can be found here.
The link to the video for the trailer for the movie M*A*S*H can be found here.
The link to the trailer for the movie version of Catch-22 can be found here.
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