Catch-22: My kind of humor.

As it turns out, Catch-22 is a very random, rambling book that goes off into all sorts of complicated tangents faster than Colonel Cathcart can increase the required missions to fifty. Someone better be glad that I like Monty Python, because the humor between the two is very similar--spontaneous, downright illogical, stream-of-consciousness like. Thus, a reader like me who likes structure in a novel but finds little in Catch-22 still finds the book very captivating because of the utter random circumlocutory hilarity that alights the following pages. When I read it in the train I could do nothing but suppress my smile or else be shot down with stares by other passengers. When I read it in the comfort of my own house I find myself laughing at intervals. The book is brimming with sarcasm and witty irony I just couldn't find myself to put the book down because it was my kind of humor. This lighthearted humor, when juxtaposed with the graphic images of death and destruction, such as The Soldier in White, makes me think of the absurdity of the war and of the events in this book.

To quote as evidence, this is one of the lines that never fails to crack me up:

"Who is Spain?"

"Why is Hitler?"

"When is right?"

"Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke down?"

"How was trump at Munich?"

"Ho-ho beriberi."

"Balls!"

All rang out in rapid succession, and then there was Yossarian with the question that had no answer:

"Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"

Genius.