Fifty years on, Catch-22 still resonates

WASHINGTON:

Satirical novelist Joseph Heller’s hyper cynical anti-war novel Catch-22 turns 50 next month, and considering the situation these days, the author must be chortling in his grave over how relevant the phrase he coined remains today — from the US job crisis to a bottomless war in Afghanistan.

In addition to a fresh edition of the novel, publishers have rolled out new books to coincide with the anniversary, including a major Heller biography and a memoir by his daughter. The absurdist, often cartoonish story, about a hard-to-kill World War II pilot stationed on a small Mediterranean island and trapped in a perverse bureaucratic cycle, has sold more than 10 million copies and introduced to the English lexicon as one of the most penetrating new phrases of the 20^th century.

Released at the dawn of the 1960s, Catch-22 seemed to foretell the ghastly war in Vietnam, and prophesied a counter-culture spirit that would dominate the last half of the decade. Despite its slow pacing and repetitiveness, “remarkably, college students are still reading it,” said Tracy Daugherty, a professor of English at Oregon State University and author of this year’s Just One Catch, a major new biography of Heller.

“But the basic situation, an average person caught in a maddening bureaucratic nightmare still resonates, maybe more than ever as our institutions have only grown more bloated,” says Daugherty.

The professor seems to make a point as the predicaments Heller spelled out in his book 50 years ago are still reflected in America’s war on terror and the continuous bombing of capitalism on its susceptible citizens. The world of today is as much a victim of elitist supremacy and regimented class ideals as it was during World War II that broke out in Heller’s book.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 1^st,  2011.