# Help me read 'Catch-22' **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 7, 2008, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084 "2008-06-07T01:14:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/21 "2008-06-07T17:38:34Z")
[QUOTE=Cisco] 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. [/QUOTE] I’m a Harry Potter fan, but I don’t think “muggle” has percolated into the public psyche like “Catch-22” has. I know quite a few people who would have no idea what a muggle was, but I doubt I know anyone – any Westerner – who does not understand what a catch-22 is. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/22 "2008-06-07T17:39:50Z")
[QUOTE=Siam Sam] I’m a Harry Potter fan, but I don’t think “muggle” has percolated into the public psyche like “Catch-22” has. I know quite a few people who would have no idea what a muggle was, but I doubt I know anyone – any Westerner – who does not understand what a catch-22 is. [/QUOTE] Right - I agree, but muggle is in the dictionary, which is what you asked about. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/23 "2008-06-07T17:43:23Z")
[QUOTE=Cisco] Right - I agree, but muggle is in the dictionary, which is what you asked about. [/QUOTE] Really? I had no idea “muggle” was in the dictionary. Good for JK Rowling. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Two\_and\_a\_Half\_Inches\_of\_Fun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ea666f/32.png) [@Two\_and\_a\_Half\_Inches\_of\_Fun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_and_a_Half_Inches_of_Fun)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/24 "2008-06-07T18:16:25Z")
If you forget a character, here is a Wikipedia page with a list and links to separate pages for most of the characters: > **[List of Catch-22 characters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_in_Catch-22)** > > The following is a list of characters in the 1961 novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. > Captain John Yossarian is a fictional character in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 and its sequel Closing Time, and the protagonist of both books. In Catch-22, Yossarian is a 28-year-old Captain (later Major) and the bombardier of a North American B-25 Mitchell in the 256th Bombardment Squadron of the Army Air Forces, stationed on the small island of Pianosa off the Italian mainland during World War II. Yossarian... ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/25 "2008-06-07T18:37:49Z")
[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun] If you forget a character, here is a Wikipedia page with a list and links to separate pages for most of the characters: > **[List of Catch-22 characters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_in_Catch-22)** > > The following is a list of characters in the 1961 novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. > Captain John Yossarian is the fictional protagonist in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 and its sequel Closing Time. In Catch-22, Yossarian is a 28-year-old captain (later major) in the 256th Bombardment Squadron of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and the bombardier of a North American B-25 Mitchell, stationed on the small island of Pianosa off the Italian mainland during World War II. Yossarian's exploi... [/QUOTE] Don’t read that yet, spazurek. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/26 "2008-06-07T18:38:07Z")
[QUOTE=TWDuke] Raving, yes, but I thought he was quite sane. Maybe I need to read it again. [/QUOTE] He didn’t want to fly any more missions, right? He was sane by definition. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/27 "2008-06-07T23:17:53Z")
[QUOTE=Siam Sam] Really? I had no idea “muggle” was in the dictionary. Good for JK Rowling. 🙂 [/QUOTE] Nope, it really predates Rowling. Webster’s New Millennium™ Dictionary of English [muggle](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=muggle) 1 Definition: a marijuana cigarette Etymology: 1920s 2 Definition: a common person, esp. one who is ignorant or has no skills Example: There are muggles in every computer class. Etymology: 1920s CMC +fnord! ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2008, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/28 "2008-06-07T23:35:29Z")
[QUOTE=postcards] Do you see everything twice? [/QUOTE] How can he see that he has flies in his eyes if he has flies in his eyes? [QUOTE=spazurek] [QUOTE=silenus] Just remember that this is a group effort, and we all have a share in your success. [/QUOTE] This is a reference to the mentality of the officers in the book right?? Do I get an A? [/QUOTE] “But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don’t make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.” – Milo Minderbinder [QUOTE=spazurek] 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. [/QUOTE] Actually, it more generally lampoons essentially all large corporate entities and groups which inevitably succumb to bizarre, nonsensical rationalizations for what they do and how they do it under the guise of principles they espouse but don’t follow. For example, Yossarian is criticized for not volunteering to send himself back out into combat because ,“They’re trying to kill me.” When it is pointed out to him that the enemy isn’t shooting at him, they’re shooting at everyone, he retorts, “And what difference does that make?”, a sensible attitude for a man who “had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.” Yossarian doesn’t believe in the social contract, at least insofar as it requires him to senselessly sacrifice himself for some greater good which mostly involves Milo Minderbinder showing a profit and Colonel Cathcart trying to get “feathers in his cap” by alternately impressing General Peckham and General Dreedle. This abandonment of the imposed responsibility to participate in violence against strangers (and accept violence from the same strangers in return) makes him sane, and therefore unqualified to not participate in the madness of warfare. Then there is the concept of the loyalty oath: “To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, [Captain Black] replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to.” The utter pointlessness of the entire exercise (except, of course, in not permitting Major Major to sign a loyalty oath, demonstrating his disloyalty) is unquestioned despite spiralling out of control until one obstinate individual beyond reproach–Major – de Coverly, whose essential function seems to be acquiring rooms and whores in every city that is taken–refuses the oath and demands, “Gimme eat…Give 'em all eat!”, upon which the whole scheme collapses. The novel is hardly a satire of one limited political process or approach; the context is much larger and encompassing. [QUOTE=The Sonoran Lizard King] Too bad Heller peaked with his first novel. [/QUOTE] Although _Catch-22_ is his most accessible, I think that many of his other works are underrated, especially _Good As Gold_ and _Picture This_. _Closing Time_ has flashes of brilliance but like many a Kurt Vonnegut novel, just never really comes together. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2008, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/29 "2008-06-08T01:21:15Z")
From a simple-minded reader, without any knowledge of literay theory, I just have to tell you that once you finish it you will have a “Oh! So that’s what he was talking about” moment. And it is all worth it. You may be tempted to read it again almost immediately, just to see how the author played fair with us all along. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2008, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/30 "2008-06-08T01:54:33Z")
[QUOTE=crowmanyclouds] Nope, it really predates Rowling. Webster’s New Millennium™ Dictionary of English [muggle](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=muggle) 1 Definition: a marijuana cigarette Etymology: 1920s 2 Definition: a common person, esp. one who is ignorant or has no skills Example: There are muggles in every computer class. Etymology: 1920s CMC +fnord! [/QUOTE] I had never heard of “muggle” before Harry Potter. A lot makes sense now. JK Rowling is promoting drug use among youths. :eek: Or perhaps the Harry Potter series is a literary _Reefer Madness_, warning against drugs while pushing children toward them. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2008, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/31 "2008-06-08T07:49:44Z")
[QUOTE=crowmanyclouds] Nope, it really predates Rowling. [/QUOTE] Uhh, [Rowling’s definition](http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk/newsid_2882000/2882895.stm) doesn’t. > [@The BBC](#): > > JK Rowling’s word for non-wizards - “muggle” - has made it into the new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). > > It’s the first time the word has made it into a major dictionary, two Scottish newspapers report. > > But its meaning has been extended to also mean a clumsy person or someone who can’t pick up a particular skill easily - like computing. > > The draft definition according to the dictionary’s website says: > Muggle: invented by JK (Joanne Kathleen) Rowling (b. 1965), British author of children’s fantasy fiction (see quot. 1997). > > In the fiction of JK Rowling: a person who possesses no magical powers. Hence in allusive and extended uses: a person who lacks a particular skill or skills, or who is regarded as inferior in some way. > JK meets a muggle > The dictionary is being updated for only the third time in 146 years. It’s quite unusual for a living fiction writer to have one of their words included. > > But an OED spokesperson told the Scotland on Sunday newspaper they included “muggle” because it was being used everyday by so many people all over the world. ---
**Author:** ![Khampelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Khampelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khampelf)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/32 "2008-06-09T00:39:52Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] Although _Catch-22_ is his most accessible, I think that many of his other works are underrated, especially _Good As Gold_ and _Picture This_. _Closing Time_ has flashes of brilliance but like many a Kurt Vonnegut novel, just never really comes together. [/QUOTE] I’ve read _Good as Gold_, and _Closing Time_. _Picture This_ doesn’t sound familiar, but I read one other, God in the title? _God Knows_. None grabbed me like ‘Catch-22’. Hence, ‘Peaked on the first novel’ not, ‘never wrote anything worth reading again.’ I agree with you about _Closing Time_. Heller and Vonegut were friends, I understand. ---
**Author:** ![A.I.Wintermute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@A.I.Wintermute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A.I.Wintermute)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/33 "2008-06-09T14:56:40Z")
I love _Catch 22_. It’s probably my favorite book. I read everything else he wrote some time afterward and enjoyed _God Knows_, but IMO his second best was _Something Happened_. It’s sort of a _Babbitt_ of the 1950s rather than 1920s but a good deal darker and more desperate. ---
**Author:** ![jali](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecae2f/32.png) [@jali](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jali)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/34 "2008-06-09T15:08:16Z")
I’m inspired to try reading this again. Thanks all! ---
**Author:** ![Staggerlee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/staggerlee/32/3134_2.png) [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/35 "2008-06-09T15:29:57Z")
[QUOTE=A. I. Wintermute] I love _Catch 22_. It’s probably my favorite book. I read everything else he wrote some time afterward and enjoyed _God Knows_, but IMO his second best was _Something Happened_. It’s sort of a _Babbitt_ of the 1950s rather than 1920s but a good deal darker and more desperate. [/QUOTE] Catch 22 is up there amongst my favourite books, but I have to say that \*\*Something Happened \*\* was the most tiresome book I’ve ever read. Was I missing some great ironic joke? Is it called ‘Something Happened’ because barely anything happens in it at all? ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/36 "2008-06-09T16:32:08Z")
[QUOTE=thelurkinghorror] 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. [/QUOTE] I’m in the middle of re-reading it again for probably the fifth or sixth time. I’ll echo the others who have said stick with it, things start to sort themselves out after a while, although it is hard to follow all the jumping around at first. I’ve also seen the movie once or twice although it’s been a number of years. Believe it or not, it actually does help me keep some characters straight by remembering who played them in the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/37 "2008-06-09T17:21:58Z")
[QUOTE=Staggerlee] Catch 22 is up there amongst my favourite books, but I have to say that \*\*Something Happened \*\* was the most tiresome book I’ve ever read. Was I missing some great ironic joke? Is it called ‘Something Happened’ because in the beginning “something happened” barely anything happens in it at all? [/QUOTE] The title is a double entendre; before the beginning of the book, “something happened” to the protagonist, Bob Slocum, that made him slowly lose enthusiasm and hope for life; he’s just toiling away at some mid-level job at an anonymous insurance company; his biggest dream seems to be giving a speech at the annual convention, which is dashed by his boss to decides to give the speech himself, despite being a poor speaker. (The topic and content of the speech is unstated, but it’s clearly one of those things that is intended to fill up space and mean nothing to anyone.) Once you make it all the way to the end “something happens” that is dramatic and shocking, reveling Slocum into action. Up to then, it is caustic and wryly self-eviscerating meditation on the futility of, well, pretty much everything in Slocum’s life. It doesn’t make for easy reading to be certain, nor does it permit narrative distance from the madness. Whereas _Catch-22_ invites you to observe Yossarian sympathetically (as he is the only character who acts with sane self-preservation in the middle of madness), _Something Happened_ has Bob Slocum narrating his stream of consciousness about the pointless absurdity of his life, which is not a comfortable message for readers who enjoy a similar lack of drive or purpose. The prose is witty but the jokes fall flat, not because they are poorly written but because of the utter despair behind them; even when Slocum is joking with himself, or patently lying to the reader, he knows how truly and hopelessly desperate he is to escape from his self-imposed morass. This was reportedly Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite of Heller’s novels, and here is [his _New York Times_ book review](http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/home/heller-something.html) of it. I liked _Something Happened_, but to be honest it took me two or three stabs to really get through it. It is not a novel of plot or action, and isn’t intended to please the reader with artifice or saccharine resolution. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/38 "2008-06-09T18:04:51Z")
I love Catch-22 although now the book is not as funny as it used to be. Milo’s got nothing on Haliburton. Picture This and God Knows are also very good. imho ---
**Author:** ![Gadarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/39 "2008-06-09T22:30:25Z")
**Stranger:** > [@](#): > > Whereas Catch-22 invites you to observe Yossarian sympathetically (as he is the only character who acts with sane self-preservation in the middle of madness), I don’t think that’s quite true. I’d include Dunbar and the Chaplain under that rubric, at least for the most part. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2008, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084/40 "2008-06-09T22:58:42Z")
[QUOTE=Gadarene] I don’t think that’s quite true. I’d include Dunbar and the Chaplain under that rubric, at least for the most part. [/QUOTE] Dunbar wants to extend his life by making it as boring and unpleasant as possible. The Chaplain (A.T. Tappman) is so neurotic about pleasing people and trying to get along, even with his assistant, Corporal Whitcomb, who mocks and heckles him at all times that he won’t stand up for himself at all, even when there are no consequences. Clevenger is pretty much sane, but he’s also a complete dupe who staunchly believes in principles that are completely out of place in the the context of the novel, or indeed, in the real world. Of course, since the reader is allied with Yossarian, he sees Clevenger as just being part of the madness, justifying with his slogans and insistence that everything will be made right, and that no one is trying to kill Yossarian. Stranger [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-read-catch-22/452084.md?page=3)