Heller Joseph: Kvaka 22

Joseph Heller: Catch 22

In military terms: Catch 22 is a satirical, tragicomic anti-war novel. Published at the time of the Vietnam War, it quickly gained cult status among a more liberal readership in the US, and was later embraced by a wider audience around the world. Thus, the story of Yossarian, a member of the bomber crew who tries to free himself from the obligation (obligation?) of flying, in a short time reached multi-million circulation. To this day, it is the most widely read American novel about the Second World War, and the title Catch-22 became, and remains, a universally accepted expression for a frustratingly hopeless situation. This supreme postulate of military logic is explained in the book as follows: »There was only one catch, and that was Catch 22, which specified that taking care of one's own safety in the face of dangers that are real and immediate is a process of the rational mind. Orr was insane and could have been spared the flight. He should only have asked to be spared; but as soon as he asked, he would no longer be insane and would still have to perform combat tasks. Orr would be crazy if he still did combat missions, and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to do them. If he carried them out, he was crazy, so he didn't have to; but if he didn't want to carry them out, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was deeply moved by the absolute simplicity of that Catch 22 clause and whistled in admiration. - It's a terrible catch, that Catch 22 - he remarked. - The best that can be - confirmed the doctor..." Critics generally agree that in the first years of the war, when there was still euphoria in America due to the victory in a just war, readers would not have been inclined to accept a book that so mercilessly and scathingly exposes all the misery and horror of war - that they would even reject it with disgust as an insult and belittling of national feelings in America at the time - if the mood had not suddenly changed at the beginning of the sixties due to the Vietnam War, which brought a kind of sobering and humiliation to the American nation, and in the end, a shameful defeat. Young people refused to participate in such a war and publicly demonstrated against it. In such a situation Kvaka 22 quickly became the Bible of the younger generation... To the assertions of some of his interlocutors that he would never again write such an original and good novel as Kvaka 22, the author laconically replied: "And who wrote it?" After all, how it all came to be, he himself explained best in the preface that he wrote much later and which our readers can also read in this edition...