Critic Douglas Winter rightly compares The Ninth Configuration to both Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (book, 1961; motion picture, 1970) and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (book, 1962; motion picture, 1975; see separate entries) as classic texts of social, military and civilian madness. Cutshaw— as well as, in some ways, Kane— is as absurdly helpless as Catch-22's Yossarian or McMurphy, the protesting rebel of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest's. Most importantly, both books would have shown Blatty some ways to combine the humorous, ranging from very dark to at times madcap, with the serious. Blatty's novel and Kesey's even share a theme of self-realization and self-sacrifice, although Blatty's religious concerns are very far from Kesey's approach.

Each of these novels influenced a line of descendants, both written and, perhaps more influential to Blatty, filmed.

Catch-22's heirs certainly include M*A*S*H: A Novel...