Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

“...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.” 

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is set during WWII on island of Pianosa (though the setting is of little importance). It follows the story of a common soldier, Yossarian, and his friends. Yossarian has lost many of his colleagues and friends to the war. His problems are further perpetuated by Colonel Cathcar, who keeps raising the number of missions the men had to fly to complete their service. No matter, how much Yossarian longs to be sent home, he is trapped by a ‘Catch-22’. The term, coined by Heller, refers to the paradoxical set of circumstances that the characters are often faced with; especially, the idea that any soldier who is willing to fly is insane and could be sent home if he asked for it, however, as soon as he asks to be sent home he shows concern for his safety and is therefore of a rational mind.

Heller’s satirical book is, despite initial controversy, a defining novel of the 20^th Century. Despite it being set during WWII, the book concerns postmodernist ideas. The book is still taught in schools and contains important critiques that can still be applied to modern society. Any reader has to be prepared to face the absurdity of Heller’s work. Personally, I did not enjoy the book. However, this is because I prefer the structure and predictability of Victorian literature. But I am glad that I read this book. I thought Heller presented very important ideas and I agreed with many of his values; some of these ideas will be explored later in this review.

The novel has become representative of postmodernist literature by its subversion of form to represent the zeitgeist of the time. The book uses an ‘anti-novel’ structure and an ‘anti-hero’. The book rejects many of the traditional novel formats. The book is not written in chronological order and does not follow the structure of introduction, climax and conclusion. Instead the reader is introduced to Yossarian in a hospital talking about events that will only occur at the end of the book. Yossarian talks about the death of Snowden during a mission that isn’t described until the second last chapter of the book. The novel also has an ambiguous ending, living questions unanswered. Yossarian, the protagonist, is not a ‘hero’. Yossarian has many faults and is quite insane – or at actually he is quite sane in an insane world. Yossarian does not have the courage and intengrity that heroes often display. The whole plot follows Yossarian’s plan to escape, including the lies he creates to stay in a hospital where he can escape his duties. These are two of the main ways that Heller changes the format of books in order to represent the new values of the postmodern world.

Themes

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

“A man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than the ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions . . . if one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try . . .  to be gained from his observation when looking back over one's life."

Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World, follows the story of Masuji Ono, a propagandist artist for Japan Imperialism during the war. Following Japan’s defeat in the war, Ono becomes a discredited figure; his daughter, evermore influenced by her husband, criticizes her father for his past. To make it worst, Ono’s wife and son were killed and his youngest daughter was in her mid 20s and having trouble finding a husband. Ishiguro manages to provide a peek into post-war Japan and how the paradigms were shifting. The old tradition and ideas had to adapt to the new way of life, one that closely followed the USA. Ono is caught between worlds; he is ‘an artist of the floating world’.

This story is short, flowing and presents an interesting view, there is no reason why anybody shouldn't take a few hours (or less) to read Ishiguro’s, ‘An Artist of the Floating World’. The whole story is told in Ono’s point of view, I found this quite different as many novels don’t place an old retired man as the protagonist of the book. However, I found this technique captured perfectly the hypocritical state and the imbalanced state that Japan was left during the war. Ono had been considered a very patriotic Japanese. Now, he still had pride, he did what he believed was right and he was a well-known artists, however, he being forced to change his views and his whole history in order to be a ‘loyal’ Japanese. Ono’s mind quite often strayed and spoke about different ideas, but I think that he was, inherent to Japanese culture, very structured and the novel never became a stream of consciousness. At times, I did get lost as there were so many names and so many really similar names – I found it more confusing when Ono’s story would stray for five pages and he would suddenly remind himself to get back to the story. However, this way we are taken into the mind of the retired man, he has a lot of time to reminisce and he lives in a very tranquil state of mind even with everything going around him.