Catch-22

By Joseph Heller

Bombardier Yossarian has a problem...people are trying to kill him! He is determined that they will not succeed. Who is trying to kill him? The Germans and the US Army.
Yossarian is a bombardier flying out of a small island off the coast of Italy during World War II. He has flown the maximum allowable number of combat missions several times and should have been sent home months ago. But every time he gets close to reaching the maximum number, his superiors increase the number. They want to earn brownie points with the big brass, even if it means sacrificing their troops. But Yossarian knows he can't continue to cheat death and so he flatly refuses to fly any more missions. He is determined to get out of the war alive.

This is a kind of hard novel to read. The story jumps around a lot, from the past to the present and sometimes it is rather hard to follow. Also, it is filled with a kind of double talk, where just accusing someone of doing something wrong is as good as a conviction. A sample of the sort of double talk the novel is filled with:

"I'm sorry, sir. But I don't know how to answer it. I never said you couldn't punish me."
"Now you're telling us when you did say it. I'm asking you to tell us when you didn't say it."
Clevinger took a deep breath. "I always didn't say you couldn't punish me."

This kind of nonsense is the basis of most of the humor found in the novel, if you can call it humor. Mostly, I would say the perspective of the book is like this, to quote from the book:

'Nothing warped seemed bizarre any more in his strange, distorted surroundings. The tops of the sheer buildings slanted in a weird, surrealistic perspective, and the street seemed tilted.'

Which pretty much describes the book: warped, bizarre, strange, distorted, weird and surrealistic.
Did I like this story? Yes and no. As much as it is hard to follow and as much as the twisted perspective is rather irritating and oft times frankly unbelievable, still, somehow, this book tells the truth about us. And it is unforgettable.