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I ignorantly have no clue whether Vonnegut came before Heller or vice versa, but one of those guys certainly owes the other a lot. At it's best, this is Vonnegut without an editor, but at it's worst, this is Vonnegut without an editor.
You'd have to be crazy to write a 450-page satirical deep-dive into World War II where every other page is just Abbott and Costello-level verbal slapstick, and you'd have to be genius to make it somehow ooze with feeling and insight. Anyone crazy enough to write the book couldn't possibly be genius enough to make it mean something, and anyone genius enough to inject meaning into it couldn't possibly be crazy enough to write it in the first place. That's the only catch, but it's a doozy.
Of course, just as Yossarian (and the book around him) manages to pull a miraculous, sublime ending out of all the lunacy of his world, so too does there exist a third option, an escape clause to this catch-22. Perhaps one man could be crazy enough to write this and genius enough to make it count, by simply hanging all the funniest and most infuriating contradictions inherent in Yossarian's world and ours out to dry, leaving us to laugh until the truth of it all settles in. Then again, if Yossarian could make his getaway, why can't we?
You'd have to be crazy to write a 450-page satirical deep-dive into World War II where every other page is just Abbott and Costello-level verbal slapstick, and you'd have to be genius to make it somehow ooze with feeling and insight. Anyone crazy enough to write the book couldn't possibly be genius enough to make it mean something, and anyone genius enough to inject meaning into it couldn't possibly be crazy enough to write it in the first place. That's the only catch, but it's a doozy.
Of course, just as Yossarian (and the book around him) manages to pull a miraculous, sublime ending out of all the lunacy of his world, so too does there exist a third option, an escape clause to this catch-22. Perhaps one man could be crazy enough to write this and genius enough to make it count, by simply hanging all the funniest and most infuriating contradictions inherent in Yossarian's world and ours out to dry, leaving us to laugh until the truth of it all settles in. Then again, if Yossarian could make his getaway, why can't we?