Product Description

At the heart of Joseph Heller's bestselling novel, first published in 1961, is a satirical indictment of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it. It is the tale of the dangerously sane Captain Yossarian, who spends his time in Italy plotting to survive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34717 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Synopsis
At the heart of Joseph Heller's bestselling novel, first published in 1961, is a satirical indictment of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it. It is the tale of the dangerously sane Captain Yossarian, who spends his time in Italy plotting to survive.

About the Author
Joseph Heller was born in 1923 in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a bombardier in the Second World War and then attended New York University and Columbia University and then Oxford, the last on a Fullbright scholarship. He then taught for two years at Pennsylvania State University, before returning to New York, where he began a successful career in the advertising departments of Time, Look and McCall's magazines. It was during this time that he had the idea for Catch-22. Working on the novel in spare moments and evenings at home, it took him eight years to complete and was first published in 1961. His second novel, Something Happened was published in 1974, Good As Gold in 1979 and Closing Time in 1994. He is also the author of the play We Bombed in New Haven. Joseph Heller is an honorary fellow of St. Catherine's College, Oxford, which he visits periodically to meet students who are writing fiction. He lives in East Hampton, New York.

Customer Reviews

A classic Great American novel that's worth reading for pleasure
This is a book with a massive contradiction. Any book with a heavy weight reputation is/should be dull, ponderous, difficult and unreadable by anyone without the word Professor in front of their name.

Instead Catch-22 is a stupid, silly, almost without pretension novel with a lot of substance beneath the gags. It took me 100 pages to get into it. I eventually realised that it's a silly romp with lots of second rate jokes and mediocre wordplay. It's the sort of book were characters get tripped up in the complexities of their own words, and everyone gets lost in their own conversations as they insist on ploughing on no matter how confused things get. After the penny dropped it became an enjoyable read.

It's not a totally easy read as I did find chunks of it to be confusing (the brothel visit in Italy when they talk to an old man with loyalty issues feels like it's from a different book), but it's well worth plodding through the dull bits. I'm not even convinced the book's that well written. It's an episodic book that feels almost like a season of sitcom episodes.

There are lots of great incidents like the soldier who at last fitted in socially for the first time in his life, who is then suddenly promoted, losing all his friends within a second. Eventually he becomes a recluse who hides from everyone, even getting between his office and living quarters in secret.

My favourite part is the embarrassingly failed bomb run. They cover it up by making it look like a triumph. They celebrate it as loudly as possible and give a meddle to the man who got someone killed due to his cowardice. What a way to cover up a disaster! Probably explains how Fame Academy, or any dreadful sitcoms, get a second series?

The film version is dreadful and is not representative of the content, or humour of the book. They removed all the details and left just the basic story behind. The good stuff is in the details and the tangents, like Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

It's a book that's well worth reading. It might not be the funniest book ever written, but it's probably the funniest book ever written with a heavyweight literary reputation. How many jokes does Moby Dick have?

not among my favorite novels
I never really got into this book, and I'm not quite sure what all the fuss is about. It's at least semi-creative, and it is well written, but I didn't find it all that funny. And humor is supposedly the main selling point here. I didn't find Yossarian that memorable, or particularly likeable for that matter. Author of Adjust Your Brain: A Practical Theory for Maximizing Mental Health.

One of the best 20th century novels about the absurdity of war
This used to be required reading when I was at school: it wasn't on the syllabus but it was a 'mind-broadener'.

It is incredibly dense and the cast of characters is unwieldly until you settle into Heller's rhythm. At that point, when you're settled, you realise just what a joy the book is and what a superb study of greed, corruption, madness, sanity, vanity, selfishness and humour. Most of all humour, set against the backdrop of a horrible war that always seems to be taking place somewhere else.

Only by retaining his sense of humour does Yossarian, the protagonist, survive the bumbling inefficiencies of his own side and the stubbornness of the enemy.

What war it is, what century it is, what nation it is are almost irrelevant because Heller drills down fast into what makes human beings tick, especially when put into impossible and absurd situations.

If you haven't read this, do yourself a favour and give it a whirl. It is not an easy read, as other reviewers have commented, but it is an immensely rewarding one. It'll have you going all summer long (that is, if we have one - UK readers will understand).