Joseph Heller's Catch-22 appears to illustrate the insanity of war. Many have warned about the perverse incentives war creates--Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address (with its warnings about the military-industrial complex) and M. Scott Peck's People of the Lie (with its analysis of the My Lai Massacre and comments on standing armies) come to my mind. Catch-22 illustrates it with mostly-humorous stories of contradiction.
I wish, however, that the fictional stories of wartime insanity hadn't totaled 453 pages in my paperback copy. I had been reading it since finishing Don't Let's Go to Dogs Tonight, and I became bored with the theme. The book club for which I read Invisible Man selected Catch-22 to "fulfill my hipster quotient." Unfortunately I finished Catch-22 in Colorado Springs and so missed the monthly meeting to discuss a book.
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The ending was pretty crazy though. Let me recall the entire book: Crazy thing happens, crazy thing happens, crazy thing happens, sad thing happens, kinda crazy kinda sad thing happens, war is hell thing happens. In no particular order!
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