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Summary: Crazy Yossarian...
Review: Heller classic is very well written, it contains wittiness, funny situations, and other life threating ones. Written at the time of world war two and lived in Europe.The book is not always easy to follow, since it jumps from one thing to another, but that what makes it even better, and more interesting to continue reading. Yossarian, the main character is just something else. He tries in everyway to get out of the war, he spends a lot of time in the hospital pretending to be ill, he even pretends to be the son of another family who has been greatly injuired in the war... A classic to be read...
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Summary: Good Stuff
Review: Everyone must read this book. I had to buy a new copy because mine got all ratty from carrying it around and yelling phrases at people in the mall
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Summary: clever book
Review: the writing in this book is very well done. it is very funny and i can see the influnce that it has had on comdey from monty python to the simpsons. still for some reason i had troubles finnishing it. i think it was the story that failed to capture my imagination. the author dives into the insanities of mans dual nature with a clever use of the english language manipulating the mind through masterful sentences. very well done.
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Summary: required reading!
Review: This is a very thought provoking novel. Also recommend--In-Law Drama.
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Summary: One of the 100 best American novels
Review: We read "Catch-22" in our "alternative" high school back in the 60's. It was just as the Viet Nam War was rising to its shocking crest, people were rioting in the streets, the young were questioning everything and rebelling, the draft was taking older brothers and friends, and it was a very crazy time. We asked the teacher who selected the novel and who had served in World War II "Is this an accurate representation of the madness of war?" He replied that, in his experience, it was. After recently re-reading Heller's novel, I realized that this book wasn't, as we had studied it, just about the madness of war. Sure, that was foremost on our minds at the time the book was published. But Heller really caught the moral dilemma of an individual caught up in the mob hysteria of war, where the rules of civilization and laws are temporarily and deliberately suspended by the authorities. The key paragraph, for me, is: "Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all." In other words, Man is no more than meat and bone EXCEPT for a brief period when he is alive...and if he does something to preserve his soul. This is deep and perceptive. At the end of "Catch-22", Yossarian is faced with a tempting choice. He has, however, learned something from the horrors and insanity. His decision takes into account not only his personal safety, but goes beyond to the greater good. He has risen. For that reason, "Catch-22" is more than just an amusing novel, a bestseller and the novel that gave birth to M*A*SH*. Yossarian's moral dilemma is one each of us must ponder, whenever we choose to go to war. I think this is one of the best 100 American novels.
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Summary: In life, there is no plot
Review: Many people complain that this book has no plot, at least not in any intelligible order, except that Yossarian wishes to keep from being killed at any moment by anyone and anything around him. He's neurotic, and at the same time the saniest one living, because he'd rather die than be killed. This book is absurd, I think, not for reasons of humor, but because of the subject matter it portrays. In fact, it may be more reasonable to show war as absurd than to show war as rational. I found this to be one of the most endearingly fiendish books I've ever read, and more life-like than I originally viewed it as. It is not about a plot, for life has no central plan (but rather a disorganized bunch of disparate events), but about the characters and people that fill it. This book is about the idiosyncracy, absurdity, contradiction, and illogic of personalities, or lack thereof. In this paradoxical way, Catch-22 seems to me to be bizarrely one of the more honest depictions of life as we know it.
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Summary: A great modern novel
Review: Although it lacks the credibility of Faulkner and Hemingway's works, Catch 22 is one of the better modern novels. It is extremely ironic and funny, and stands out as both a piece of social commentary and art. Books like this are great for people who like to read, because they easier to read than some more serious literature, but are thought provoking and artistic. I read this at the beach a couple years ago in a few days, and annoyed everyone by giggling all day.
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Summary: a method to the madness
Review: With the advent of Joseph Heller's first published manuscript to the nation's bookstore shelves in 1961, critical reviews were far from rave. Indeed, at first glance there seemes to be little reason why it should have been a success. The plot, what little there is, orbits freely of its own accord, and the chronology is so fragmented that it takes a ridiculous effort to piece snippets of time and space together. But it is the total absurdity and odd seriousness of Heller's bitter black humor that gave paranoid characters like Yoassarian and Major Major a cult following of average civilians and servicemen, if not the educated bigwigs.
To these perfunctory--and perhaps more cultured--readers, Catch-22 reads like one off-color joke after another. Logical fallacies abound. Why the pilot Orr puts crabapples in his cheeks, the reader will never know...except that they are better than horse-chestnuts. Why? Non sequitor. Milo buys eggs for seven cents on Malta and sells them to the mess hall...and still manages to make a profit using nothing but circular logic. It is this type of bizarre humor that propels the entire book. Heller's over-the-top slapstick and conflicting logic will seem like a literary papercut to some readers. Yawns, or even grimaces, may eventually paralyze most (normal) readers' hysterics about halfway through the mission to Bologna, but the pages keep turning.
There is a method to the rampant madness. Beneath its warped surface, Catch-22 addresses the depressing, scary, so-serious-its-sick subject of total war. Heller reaches a point where he is no longer funny because everything he writes suddenly springs true. For average non-entities like me, it rings a little too authentic.
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Summary: Don't read this book unless you already have
Review: The only people who can really appreciate this book are ones who have already read it. So if you haven't read it, don't. But if you have, well then why bother?
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Summary: A Book About Everyman
Review: At first I thought this book ridiculous. No one is as whacked as these characters. Then I started to recognize my own flaws. I saw that the ridiculous characters have the same flaws we all have, only exaggerated in the book. The Chief believes he will die of pneumonia so he does not bother to wear a coat. Of course he gets sick and dies of pneumonia. How many times have we lost before we started because we thought we could never win? We defeat ourselves as the Chief did. I saw myself in other characters too. Heller shows us our own tragic flaws through a cast of ridiculous, but quite realistic characters. Everyone should read this book. It is funny, sad, ridiculous and brilliant.
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