Product Description

Catch-22 is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary.

At the heart of Catch-22 resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't even met are trying to kill him. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes its title: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

Catch-22 is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to some one dangerously sane -- a masterpiece of our time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #424 in Books
• Published on: 1996-09-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Amazon.com
There was a time when reading Joseph Heller's classic satire on the murderous insanity of war was nothing less than a rite of passage. Echoes of Yossarian, the wise-ass bombardier who was too smart to die but not smart enough to find a way out of his predicament, could be heard throughout the counterculture. As a result, it's impossible not to consider Catch-22 to be something of a period piece. But 40 years on, the novel's undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic. Again and again, Heller's characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad; what is sensible, is nonsense.

Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."
Mirabile dictu, the book holds up post-Reagan, post-Gulf War. It's a good thing, too. As long as there's a military, that engine of lethal authority, Catch-22 will shine as a handbook for smart-alecky pacifists. It's an utterly serious and sad, but damn funny book.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. It would be difficult to imagine richer material for an audiobook reader, comedically speaking, than Joseph Heller's classic novel of wartime madness. Sanders is the lucky actor chosen to read Heller's masterpiece, and he does well by it, proceeding gamely through the novel's staggering array of comic set pieces and deliriously woozy dialogue. Heller's humor is straight-faced, requiring little more than a steady, sure voice, and Sanders offers just that. Line by line, joke by joke, Sanders reels through the marvelous phantasmagoria of Heller's World War II, tongue planted firmly in cheek. Caedmon's impressive package includes a 1970s-era recording of Heller reading selections from his book. Heller is a delightful contrast to Sanders, his slight lisp accentuating a marvelous Brooklyn accent. Heller reads as if with cigar perched on his lip and turns his novel into an extended borscht belt comic's riff.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal
Two modern giants (LJ 2/15/70 and LJ 11/1/61, respectively) join Knopf's venerable "Everyman's Library." If you've been searching for quality hardcovers of these two eternally popular titles, look no further.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

I had to read it so I could know not to read it.
Why is this a so-called "classic"? Got me. I have no idea. Another reviewer said that you could skip chapters and not miss anything. I agree. I first attempted this novel a few years ago. I quit in less than 50 pages, so bored was I. I picked it up again recently, and I'm now less than 50 pages from finishing. What an unfulfilling reading experience this is. There is no central unifying theme or plot - other than that war is hell and the military rarely makes sense. But we knew that, right? As for the whole catch-22 business, sure, that is amusing the first twenty times, but it gets old quickly. This story could have been told in 50 pages and even that would have been too much.

Why then, if it is so bad, am I about to finish it? You know how it is. You start reading, and you become determined to complete it, just to say you did. There is no enjoyment in it though. I am looking forward to getting done so that I can read something else. My advice? Don't read this novel. Read the ingredients on food packages in your cupboard instead. You'll have more fun.

Precursor of MASH and more
This is the original (at least in terms of modern relevance) satire of modern warfare and decision making. However, it achieves a level of humour very rarely achieved elsewhere. It is a very personal book, and some of the personal touch, sidesplitting jokes, and very dark serious undercurrent make this resonate more with me than some of the other great "political / moral" satires - Animal Farm and 1984 after all can leave you feeling somewhat cold.

Great great book
This book is so good, my weak attempt at a review is not going to do it justice. But I'll try.

I knew before I was half-way through that this is going to be a favorite and I plan to re-read it immediately. The writing is so fresh, the character studies so sharp, and the satire so relevant in today's increasingly bureaucratic (corporate) society, no wonder it was so hard for me to find a used copy. It's definitely a book I plan to hold onto and enjoy re-reading every year.

Anyone who's ever worked for a big corporation (like myself) can identify with Heller's hilarious and angry take on bureaucracy. Gen. Peckem's quote reads like a line from Dilbert or Office Space:

"Just pass the work I assign you along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility. Somewhere down near the lowest level of this coordinated organization I run are people who do get the work done when it reaches them, and everything manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my part."

It's sad how true that is in real life.

But this book is not all satire. It has a big heart. I often found myself laughing and crying at the same time. I can tell Heller cares deeply for his characters, even when he makes high comedy out of their sad fates (such as what happens to poor Doc Daneeka). He's brutally honest about the horrors of war, and laces them with enough humanity to really break your heart. It all makes the climatic "miracle" that much more satisfying. It's a satire that ends with a message of hope. And I like that.

Many people call this book ant-war, but I don't think it is. It really comes down to the last conversation btw. Yossarian and Danby. The ideals of war can be good - who can argue against rescuing Western Europe from Nazi domination. But it's the method of war - and all the evils that go with it - that makes no sense. Are these evils worth the ideals? It's a catch-22. And it's a dilemma that applies to life in general, not just to war.