"Major Major immediately switched to American literature, but the FBI has already managed to get a file on it. The faraway farm Major Major called his home was home to six people and a Scottish terrier. Five of the six and the terrier was found to be working with the FBI. Soon they collected so much compromising material on Major Major that they could do anything to him. The only thing they could do, however, was to send him into the army as a private".
I think I've known this book exists as long as I can remember. Although I always thought of it as "Amendment 22", not as "Catch". Not that I thought a lot, for the sake of justice, I just knew that I do not want to read (because I do not want to read about war and political), but someday I will have to - dharma, it is meaningless to evade. Because when an acquaintance said that he was reading Heller now, I thought it was time for me too. Yes - it's a great novel, though not my book at all.
At the external level of the connection "Sewing" with "Officers and Gentlemen": the first pulled himself out of the most severe youthful depression, reading in a circle, the second still remembers with a shudder. Dostoevsky and Kafka are on the inside. "Catch 22" is all so oxymoronic: an alloy of what I nourish with deep tenderness with what causes acute rejection. The second prevails, so most of the reading was painful. Although there is no episode, page or paragraph with which I would not understand - it is very good. It doesn't matter what's not mine at all. Or is it important?
When reading is accompanied by a feeling of what it feels like when someone shorts foam on the blackboard, it is great discomfort. But if you result in more in the world, as if all of them: Josserian, Nitley, Orr with his stupid apples behind his cheeks, the chaplain, the miserable living dead Dr. Deyneka - all of them were people they once knew, and they felt more alive than many of those they encountered in reality. So, if you arrive in the world as a result of reading a book, at least the process wasn't even fun - it was worth it a thousand times. Life is often a process that is not fun, but it is worth living.
What is the novel about? Forty-four years, an American flight regiment based in Italy. It is necessary to say about the logical fork: during the war, Heller was a military pilot and projected his own experience on the events of the book, but the protest ideological component clearly distanced itself from World War II, referring to the Korean and Vietnamese wars. Let's not go into these mazes without the skills of extreme survival, you risk not getting out of them. Let's just take it for granted.
So, the main conflict of the book is that the flight norm for a military pilot is fifty sorties, but when most of the main staff is approaching its implementation, Colonel Katkart will increase the flight norm by another five sorties. For people who have fulfilled their duty, who are determined to return home and understand that the outcome of the war is already predetermined, their own actions are meaningless, but every next flight can turn into injury or death, to realize that you can not do anything about it, is monstrous.
The protagonist Yosserian tries to use any available means to avoid flights. They are few, almost only one, to be commissioned for health reasons. Military medicine even allows him to lie down in a hospital bed from time to time, but then the march left again to come back, to find that during his absence the flight rate has grown by another five flights.
There is a variant of dreams - you are recognized as mentally handicapped and cleaned up. But that's where the trick 22 begins, the point of which is that if you want to continue to make combat missions, you're crazy, but when you try to apply for a medical examination on this basis - then you're quite sensible. A vicious circle from which there is no salvation. Paradoxically, each of the heroes finds its way out. None of them is good enough to fight with the system, it's like bumping a calf with an oak tree. But any trick implies the potential existence of a way to bypass it.
The structure of the novel is quite complex and does not provide reader comfort, almost all the time it is a leap forward and backward in time. The general order is rather gloomy, to the final becomes almost hopeless. And only at the very end is hope shining. So it should be, the night is darkest before dawn. Well, yes, it is a great book.
"- I thought you didn't believe in God.
- Yes, I don't believe it," she sobbed and started crying. - But the god I don't believe in is good, just, merciful. He is not as low and stupid as you said he was".