Ok, I’m about 70 pages in to Heller’s Catch-22 . This is my second time making a go at it (for some reason it often takes me more than 1 try to get into a book), and this time I’m really quite loving it, it’s an incredibly powerful portrayal of the absurdity of war. But there’s one thing that may make it impossible for me to read, and I want to know how important it is before I invest more time.
One of the devices of the book is to introduce characters in a rapid and haphazard manner, especially during the non-combat sequences (which comprise most of the book so far). Often the subject of the story switches around within just a few sentences. I have no idea of the exact number but I bet there have been over 50 characters named so far.
My problem is that I have a hard time keeping most of them straight. Heller sometimes provides reminders by pointing out distinctive quirks, but even then I have a hard time remembering, say, who the guy is who shoots mice and how he relates to the other characters.
So my question is, how important is it for me as I’m reading to be able to recall who each character is and how he/she relates to the others? So far it’s been ok, I think I’ve been following everything, but I’m afraid I’m missing some key ideas by not recalling what Colonel Cathcart thinks of Sergeant Towser, for example. I’m just too lazy to be bothered with developing some kind of relationship web, and frankly novels that require that kind of thing bore me (let’s not make this a debate on that question, shall we?). I’m hoping that the confusion and disorientation resulting from the stream of characters is kind of the point, and that I won’t be missing anything if I just read along and do the best I can to remember who’s who. Am I wrong?
It will become clearer as you read. The relationships develop in such a way that you should be able to keep track. Just remember that this is a group effort, and we all have a share in your success.
This is a reference to the mentality of the officers in the book right?? Do I get an A?
May I add that one of my favorite things is that Heller is out-Orwelling Orwell – the newspeak in Catch-22 is spoken by characters who really believe what they’re saying, making it that much scarier and, scariest of all, true to life. Echoes of the Bush administration all over the place.
Hey, I’m in the middle of it too. I don’t have too much help; I sometimes have to look back to remember who exactly a character is. It might help to group people by relationships or rank. Sgt. Towser isn’t that important of a character, for example, but it might be easy to remember him as Major Major Major Major’s lackey. Yossarian, Nately, and Dunbar hang out together, and Aarfy and Hungry Joe sometimes come along. Also most of the important characters, plotwise, are officers.
You could watch the movie, but it consolidates characters or transfers traits. I saw it before I started the book and I don’t think it has helped much.
The most important characters will delineate themselves in time-but you will be well served even if you finish the book and only have a good grasp on half a dozen of them. As you said, the book is, “an incredibly powerful portrayal of the absurdity of war.” And that is what you will take away from it, or at least what I did on first reading. Yossarian is basically a raving madman fighting his way through a gauntlet of rotating madmen, and your confusion will augment that effect. Hell I’ve read the book probably half a dozen times, and I still can’t tell everyone apart, or even when or where half the stuff happens.
Raving-yes, sane-probably about as sane as a man who has urges to machine gun strangers can be…
For the record, I agree with you. He was quite sane, which, in the context of the book, makes him flagrantly savagely fantastically mad. It’s dichotomous, ya’see.
Catch-22 is one of my favorite books of all time - maybe even my favorite book ever. Keep reading. I also had a little trouble with the character salad but everyone important eventually gets enough time devoted to them that you’ll know who they are.
Here’s my advice (as an English teacher): note cards.
I’ve been teaching my students (it’s summer school here in AZ!) how to keep notes on characters, and they’re able to recall different people much more effectively.
How I envy anyone reading Catch-22 for the first time. It’s one of the great literary experiences of life. Just enjoy the flow, the characters will sort themselves out in your head eventually.
And if you ever launch into the great Russian novelists, hold on to your hat! You’ll be drowning in patronymics, pet-names, etc. Again, perseverance gains the prize, and it’s well worth it in the end.
I both envy and sympathize with someone reading catch-22 for the first time.
Think of yourself as a psychotherapist working with a traumatized veteran. Bit players will get more attention at the start, with mere glimpses of the most relevant events, but as you delve, more will be revealed. The chronology will settle down eventually too. Good luck, share it with us, it really is a masterpiece.
Pardon me for saying so, but that’s precisely the sort of thing I have no patience for any longer (after too many years of being taught to labor over works of literature). I’m in Tolstoy’s camp: great art should speak to you naturally and not require any decoding techniques.
One thing I love about Catch-22 is after the second or third read, you can pick the book up anywhere and just read. Yossarian is a saint to we Discordians (and the big ones, too), so a random peek at Catch-22 is Bibliomancy. I have caught myself going back to reread sections to place a character, but it helps that so many chapter titles are character names.
Catch-22 is a great book. It was #7 on that list of top 100 books of the 20th century that Random House came out with awhile back. I’ve read it twice, decades apart, and enjoyed it both times. (It was almost a new book again the second time around, it had been so long.) Myself, I find notecards and other devices for use in remembering distracting, but one thing I do find helps when faced with any book that contains large numbers of characters is not to read it in bits. Sit down and read large sections at a time. Just sit down and start reading. Read at least 50 pages on your first sitting, and try to read it when you have time to sit and concentrate. It’s really a funny book.
Side note: I once read that the term “Catch-22” was the last term from the world of fiction to make it into common English usage, to the point of having it’s own entry in the dictionary. Have there been any others recently?
Muggle, but I question its lasting power. The term catch-22 has outgrown the book by far*; I can’t see muggle ever doing so.
*A Jeopardy question on which came first - the term or the book - prompted me to seek out the book when I was a teenager. The guy got it wrong, by the way.