Heller satirizes among other matters: militarism, red tape, bureaucracy, nationalism, patriotism, discipline, ambition, loyalty, medicine, psychiatry, money, big business, high finance, sex, religion, mankind and God. Catch 22 (Paperback) Joseph Heller (author) Sign in to write a review £11. Joseph Heller’s key sentence is this: ‘Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.’ His story is a satirical denunciation of war and of mankind that glorifies war and wages war cruelly, stupidly, selfishly. One can relish his delirious dialogue and his ludicrous situations while recognizing that they reflect a basic range and disgust. And perhaps ‘enjoy’ is not quite the right word for anyone’s reaction to Mr Heller’s imaginative inventions. Its humor, I think, is essentially masculine. “ Catch-22 is a funny book-vulgarly, bitterly, savagely funny. Those who are interested may be reminded of the Voltaire who wrote Candide and of the Kafka who wrote The Trial. Heller’s story rises above mere realism and soars into the stratosphere of satire, grotesque exaggeration, fantasy, farce and sheer lunacy. In any case, it is one of the most startling first novels of the year and it may make its author famous … Catch-22 is realistic in its powerful accounts of bombing missions with men screaming and dying and planes crashing.
Wildly original, brilliantly comic, brutally gruesome, it is a dazzling performance that will probably outrage nearly as many readers as it delights. But there can be no doubt that it is the strangest novel yet written about the United States Air Force in World War II. It is not even a good novel by conventional standards. Catch 22 Paperback 31 January 1985 by Joseph Heller (Author) 12,132 ratings Book 1 of 2: Catch-22 Series See all formats and editions Kindle 15.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook 0.00 Free with your Audible trial Hardcover 32.99 6 New from 32.99 Paperback 377.00 2 Used from 11.46 1 New from 377. “ Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, is not an entirely successful novel. A television adaptation, co-directed by and starring George Clooney, aired on Channel 4 in June 2019.Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. One of the great satirical novels in Western literature, Catch-22 is an absurdist condemnation of armed conflict and a rallying cry against the arbitrary authority of those in power. But with the warped logic of Catch-22 ringing in his head and a cast of eccentric, deluded and just plain crazy comrades snapping at his heels, he begins to wonder whether he is ever going to be allowed to go home again. Spinning giddily amidst a morass of specious rules and pointless regulations he attempts to maintain a tenuous grip on his sanity, whilst not losing his life on another fruitless mission. There was only one catch and that was Catch-22Ĭaptain John Yossarian, reluctant US army bombardier, is stuck on a Mediterranean island in the dog days of the Second World War. 'The greatest satirical work in the English language' - The Observer
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