The power of Catch-22, for me, is the way in which it plunges into that emptiness at the end of the novel, when the source of its comedy is finally revealed. The effect, which accumulates over hundreds of pages, is a merciless, absurdist comedy which hints at the awful emptiness at the heart of things. (For instance: 'Dobbs and Captain Flume were so deeply disturbed by Hungry Joe's shrieking nightmares that they would begin to have shrieking nightmares of their own.') Nothing is allowed to reside in meaning something: instead, everything is mocked by its own echo. Words and phrases are continually paired up so that everything plays snap with everything else. It also manifests in Heller's gleeful use of repetition. And where Milo, an entrepreneurial officer, bombs his own airfield after striking a deal with the Germans. And where Doc Daneeka asserts: 'It's not my business to save lives'. He creates a whole universe of folly, one where Colonel Cathcart 'had courage and never hesitated to volunteer his men for any target available'. Madness runs through every exchange absurdity informs every character. (I can't remember another book which I've had to put down so frequently to get on with the serious business of guffawing.) Its core paradox – that insanity is sanity – burrows inside everything.įor Heller, delineating the foolishness of war – and perhaps of bureaucracies more generally – becomes an ecstatic project. It's hard to describe briefly just how gloriously, envelopingly hilarious this logic becomes as the novel unfolds. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.' The result, put simply, is that no one can get off the ride. As it's described in the novel: 'Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them.

But he's thwarted by Catch-22, a clause which states that pilots don't have to fly if they are certified as insane, but that being driven mad by fear is fundamentally rational. Driven half-mad by his will to live, he wants out. Desperate to impress his superiors, Colonel Cathcart keeps raising the number of missions his men have to fly. As many of you will already know, the novel is set on a made-up island off the coast of Italy during the second world war, where an American bombing group is stationed. The Catch-22 itself is a bureaucratic idiocy so sublime it leaves you staring out the window with wonder. Well, having arrived 50 years late to the party, I'm pleased to finally be able to answer that question with a wide-eyed, emphatic, rapturous yes. So did I really need to bother reading it at this late stage?

But let's face it, it's 500-plus pages long, there are more than 50 characters, and everybody knows what a Catch-22 is – it's one of those things where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Catch 22 book explained