Always a Catch

I'm just about to head to the beach, but I wanted to blog for a moment about one of my favorite books: Joseph Heller's Catch-22. I rarely reread books. There's too much new stuff out there, and new-to-me stuff out there, forme to travel backward more than once in a while.

But I hadn't read Catch-22 since the summer before my senior year of high school, when the book was only 20 years old. Now it's almost 40. And it's every bit as good now as it was then, and more and more relevant.

Catch-22 focuses on an air force squadron stationed on Painosa, an island of the coast of Italy, during World War II. The lead character, Yossarian, is a bombardier who may be the one sane man in the world. As the colonels and generals keep on upping the number of missions required (it starts out at 30 -- by the end of the book it's up to 80), Yossarrian comes to believe that it's not just the enemy who's trying to kill him -- his own superiors are, too.

I don't want to talk too much about the book, or give away any of the absurd logical loop-de-loops Heller provides, but I do want to quote from one passage toward the end. Becauseeven with the Bushies up-is-downism, none of us have enough irony in our diet.

Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

We all need exercise; even our rights. Remember to take yours for a spin regularly.

Rob