By DANIEL SWIFT [New Statesman] –Catch-22, Joseph Heller’s funny, sad and powerful novel, was first published on 10 November 1961. That day, an article in the New York Times reported: “Increased efforts by Washington to strengthen another part of the world against communist threats also became known. The US air force has inaugurated a huge supply and training programme in South Vietnam.”
These were the hot days of the cold war. The main news event was the Berlin crisis, the stand-off between the USSR and the US that had ended in August with the erection of the Berlin Wall. The disastrous US invasion of Cuba through the Bay of Pigs had taken place the previous April. Four days after the novel was published, the New York Times reported: “Saigon – the quiet, tropical capital of South Vietnam – is suddenly teeming with American officers.” But, the article continued, “United States spokesmen insist it is only coincidence”.
Catch-22 is set on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa in 1944. The island is real but the novel imagines a base there for US bombers during the Second World War. Our hero is Yossarian, a bombardier with the 256th Squadron, which is engaged in bombing southern France and Italy. The story begins with Yossarian in hospital; we follow as he and the other airmen go out on raids, bicker and misbehave. Yet even to attempt a plot summary is fraught with dangers. Yossarian, who runs from the war, is hardly a hero, and the strange, circling motion in which the story unravels is scarcely a plot. It jumps from place to place and from time to time; scenes are repeated and only slowly unfold. The only indication of the passage of time is that, every chapter or two, the squadron’s commanding officer raises the number of bombing runs that the men must fly before they can be relieved of duty. The figure is first 25, then 30, then 35, then 40, then 45, then 50, then 60 and then 70 – the end is never at hand.
Continued in The New Statesman | More Chronicle & Notices.
