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Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" Revisited

© Robert Powers

When Joseph Heller's acknowledged classic Catch-22 hit book stores in 1961, I made a stab at reading "one of the most significant works of protest literature to appear after World War II." That comes from Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. And Margaret Drabble's Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Catch-22 as "comic, satirical, surreal, and apocalyptic."

Heller, who celebrates his 75th birthday on May 1, has suffered the fate of many authors who create sensations with their initial plunge into publishing. Critics have judged Heller's books since Catch-22 as lacking the depth and power of his freshman novel.

A few literary assessors have argued that Heller deserves recognition as one of the most important novelists of the second half of this century. But most critics, using Catch-22 as a guide, complained vociferously that his subsequent books failed to measure up. But Robert Merrill of the University of Nevada in Reno wrote a decade ago that Something Happened, Heller's second book, is "almost as important" as his first, and that his other novels are consistently serious, the works of an significant author.

While fellow critics described Catch-22 as one of the defining tales of a generation, I stayed quiet, somewhat puzzled and chagrined that I didn't get it. despite several abortive attempts. Years ago, it seemed boring. But since the huzzahs were overwhelming, I remained silent, at least in print. Heller's later books, Something Happened, Good As Gold and God Knows all resonated with me, however. Years ago I promised myself to someday go back and give Heller's first child another reading.

If any readers are as interested in writing by and about Jews as I am, God Knows and Good as Gold are wonderful reads, hilarious and disturbing at the same time. Both novels, according to critic John Aldridge, seek "to identify and engage some of the specific social conditions that have caused the vision of the apocalypse to become a defining feature of the present time."

After 40 years of writing book reviews, time for old books must make way for the incessant clamor to catch up with the just-published variety. Sometimes I feel both overwhelmed and chagrined at my inability to find time for the classics that I should have read during my youth, now long and regretfully vanished.

Recently, having watched Heller interviewed by Don Imus on his morning radio show simulcast by MSNBC on cable, I decided to award Catch-22 another whirl. Heller, looking and sounding younger than his years, told the outrageous talkmeister how the title that became a part of the English language originally was to be called Catch-18. Just prior to publication, novelist Leon Uris released Mila 18 and Heller's publisher decided Heller's title had to be changed.

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