Rating: 
Summary: The Ultimate Anti-War Novel
Review: I first read CATCH-22 when I was young--so long ago, I don't remember when but, probably, when I was in junior high school. It was so powerful that, at that moment, it frightened me.Re-reading the novel as an adult, I realize that author Joseph Heller was a bona fide genius. In hindsight, it is difficult to believe that CATCH-22 won none of the predictable prizes at the time of its original publication. The absurdity of war, and the struggle of the average soldier to survive his tour of duty, never has been more successfully communicated in literature than Heller did here. Forty years after its first publication, the expression "Catch-22" and the concept behind it have become accepted usages in everyday vocabulary, referring to the cycle of irrationality of problem defying the solution, solution causing the problem. The information on the Amazon website that author Heller lives in East Hampton, New York is out-of-date. Sadly, Heller died in East Hampton a few years ago; as a resident of the town myself, I am certain of this fact. Time has proven that CATCH-22 is classic literature.
Rating: 
Summary: A Hard to Read Classic
Review: Catch-22 tells the tortuous story of Yossarian, a WW2 bombardier, who starts to lose (or regain) his sanity after a member of his crew is killed during a bombing mission. As Yossarian loses more of his friends to enemy fire, bizarre accidents and strange twists of fate, the storyline becomes ever more convoluted and the characters ever more bizarre. At its heart, this book is about how soldiers handle war. How they justify their actions and how they live with the constant threat of death or injury. Heller illustrates the confusion and senselessness of war by using bizarre events and crooked logic. The book is filled with black humor and quickly moves from one outlandish event to the next. In my opinion, this book has two major weaknesses. The first, is one of the hallmarks of this book: Heller builds his sentences to suggest an idea, only to immediately contradict himself. I found this to be very amusing for the first 100 pages or so, but this style simply became tedious afterwards. The second problem is the book's non-chronological plot. Heller keeps skipping back and forth in time and this makes the book hard to read and the plot difficult to follow. I found the book's real strength to be in its amazing and phenomenally well developed characters. Yossarian, Doc. Daneeka, Orr, Major Major and many more, are all extraordinarily alive and yet fundamentally flawed. Did I enjoy this book? Yes. All in all, this is a book worth reading, but don't expect an easy read.
Rating:
Summary: Literary Genius
Review: I was assigned this book in high school and did not finish it with about 100 pages left. About 10 years later, I recently picked up the book again to finish a book I have been wanting to finish. I was not disappointed. Joseph Heller is a skilled story teller whose pen is well adept to writing satire. Many of the humorous points of this book I was not ready to appreciate as a high school senior. Years later, I found myself laughing out at many lines in this book. The book tells the story of Yossarian, a disgruntled World War II pilot. Yossarian wants nothing more than to go home from the war after his mission quota is satisfied. Unfortunately, his mission quota is raised each time he gets close to meeting it. Along the way, we meet a cast of unique characters. It makes me curious as to where Heller came up with the idea for all these characters. Lieutenant Scheisskopf and Major Major Major Major are two of my favorite characters in the book. Their stories in addition to the idiosyncrasies are wonderfully written. The book ends with Yossarian faced with a paradox of choices based on the development of the character. It is worth reading the book to find out the ending. This book is a literary classic. I hate to give too many points of the plot away in the review as I would hope the sharp turns in the plot can surpise other readers the way they surprised me. Truly, this is a great book for those with an eye for wit.
Rating: 
Summary: A literary whirlpool.............
Review: Catch-22 is a roiling, boiling, oscillating set of absurdities flung at the reader at breakneck pace. The fictional Italian island of Pianoso serves as the backdrop for Joseph's Heller's satirical skewering of WWII and the American military. The storytelling is nearly manic as a cast of surreal characters strive to survive their military obligations amidst chaotic plots and implausible scenarios. Somewhat problematically, Catch-22 has been hailed for decades as among the ultimate in anti-war novels. It is beyond question anti-war, but it is also beyond question a work relying so completely on the absurd as to launch it well beyond satire into whimsy. One might think such pacifist acclaim might cling to something more sturdy. Nevertheless, Catch-22 does have it's heartbreaking moments of war-is-hell horror. I'm not giving anything away by noting that the final description of Snowden's death is emotionally disturbing. These instances, however, are rare. I enjoyed Catch-22 and consumed it quickly. One cannot read this book without developing a fondness for it's protagonist, Captain Yossarian, and a host of other characters far too eccentric to dislike. In the end, Catch-22 is a worthy reading experience, but I will forever wonder how such a fanciful tale can claim to seriously challenge the notion of national defense, an applied foreign policy, and the U.S. military's role within it.
Rating: 
Summary: This book sucks
Review: Catch-22 was a terrible book. It was the worst thing I have ever been forced to read. It should not be taught in schools due to it's terrible language and the way women are depicted in this book. The humor in the book is just retarded and although some parts are kinda funny, you want to kill yourself reading the book before you get to them. I hate this book.
Rating:
Summary: A good read that will make you scratch your head at times...
Review: Catch-22 can be a frustrating novel. I HATE the first 50-100 pages. The names of characters come flying out of nowhere. The circular and contradictory style of writing just annoys me. The nonlinear style annoys me. I stuck with it, and before you know it, it all comes together. That is the key. If you stick with it and not try to understand every single detail, or read every dialogue like you are some deep, intospective English teacher, it can be a lot of fun. Understand some parts are supposed to be confusing, and it is normal to feel lost. One chapter describes the roundabout way Milo Minderbinder makes a profit. It is supposed to sound absurd to you. Heller is sarcastically demonstrating the reality of war profiteering. Milo can make you furious, but what really made me furious was how he made no one else around him furious! Overall this was just a fun book, that appeals to the average person looking for a good read, and the serious reader looking for enlightenment. That is the genius of it. For a couple of days while reading the book I was talking like the characters, and I drove people around me crazy. I do not recommend doing this, especially if you are married. Just have fun with it!
Rating:
Summary: War is Hell
Review: This book is difficult to review because it swings between funny anecdotes and horrific descriptions of war. There is also much extraneous material to slog through which makes it a long read. The tone is reminiscent of the television series M*A*S*H, or since Catch-22 came first, maybe it is the other way around. In any case it is an interesting book but a classic it is not. Stick with Tolstoy, Hemingway or Fitzgerald.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest (and Funniest) Novel Ever Written!
Review: Listen: John Yossarian has come unstuck in time. During the waning days of WWII, on the Italian island of Pianosa, Yossarian is the lead bombadier for the Fighting 256th Squadron ("That's 2 to the fighting 8th power," he tells the squadron's chaplain.) Basically, the story progress as follows: Yossarian goes bonkers, ducks into the hospital with a phony fever, gets chased out by a patriotic Texan, runs back in when a friend dies, gets chased back out by a rambunctious nurse, gets sent back in when he gets hit by shrapnel, gets chased out by an insane psychiatrist, gets readmitted when he's stabbed by an Italian prostitute, and hightails it himself when he learns that he's about to be court martialed. The fact that the book is told entirely out of chronological order seems to confound most people. Yossarian spends most of the book in and out of the hospital, and in any given chapter, he might be in the hospital 10 times in 10 different flashbacks with no indication of where he is in time. There are flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks. Characters die and are resurrected 5 chapters later, and often the same events are repeated multiple times from multiple perspectives, often hundreds of pages apart. "Catch-22" is not an easy read, but for those intimidated by some of the other reviews, just try to enjoy the book's anarchic humor in the moment without trying to figure out where you are in time and space. And should you read it again (and like many other reviewers, I've read this dozens of times) the intricate tapestry that Joseph Heller has stitched together across hundreds of pages slowly starts to reveal itself. Jokes told on page 10 are suddenly explained on page 300. And weirdly enough, on a second read, you start to realize that jokes told on page 300 were actually explained on page 10. Nuances, characters, and plot threads that you may have missed the first time become evident with each additional read. Don't give up on this book. I first read it when I was 14 and I didn't understand a word I had read by the time I was finished. But I had laughed the whole way through, and that was enough to get me to pick it up again. And again. And again and again.
Rating:
Summary: Catch 22
Review: I cannot think why it has taken me nearly forty years to read Heller's masterpiece. It lived up to all I had ever heard. The hero (?) Yossarian is desperate to get away from the insanity of war. The Catch is that he cannot convince the authorities of his madness because anyone wanting to get away from the war must be sane. This is the thread, which runs through the book. In the process we meet a host of bizarre, comic and tragic characters. There is the brilliant Major Major Major who will only allow men to come in and see him when he is out. In fact the higher they go the madder they get - Cargill, Cathcart, Dreedle and the wonderful Scheisskopf whose dream is to put his men in a parade. But for me the genius of the book is in the creation of Milo Minderbinder who manages to turn the war into an unrivalled business opportunity. Throughout the book there is the haunting spectre of Snowden - what really happened to him. I cannot imagine that there is a more entertaining, more gripping and more powerful account of the insanity of war. Nobody should go through life without reading this.
Rating: 
Summary: Dissapointingly boring...
Review: Judging from most of the reviews here I'm obviously going against the flow, which is bizzare since one of the reasons i decided to read Heller's book was exactly the fact that most reviewers are raving about it. Oh well, there's a lesson to be learned here somewhere. "Catch 22" is considered a classic but in my mind "classics" are books of the caliber of "1984" or "Brave New World" or "The Stand", books that hold up in time and deliver their message in a way that isnt anachronistic. "Catch 22" does not belong in such an "elite" category.
It's supposedly "hilarious" but that's a very emphatic statement to make about humour and, hmm, i hardly laughed with it. Sure, humour is (as are many concepts) just a matter of perspective but from my angle of the world this was hardly enough to make you grin. Another paradox is that many readers claim you "have to be well read" to like this or (even stranger) you "have to read this if you want to be well read".
This is absolutely untrue. What is actually true is that the more you've read the less the chances become you'll be thrilled by "Catch 22" and if you are not "well read" (which is hard to define anyway) "Catch 22" wont add too much to your thinking arsenal except in my opinion the obvious.
So what is the obvious here? Heller goes into an overlengthy diatribe to deliver an antiwar message decorated with philosophy bits and some provocative thoughts. While he tries to bring forth the insanity of war he does so by using incredibly underdeveloped characters, a totally ineffective plot (if one can call this a plot) and humour that tries to be subtle sarcasm but fails completely as:
-if it's subtle i`t's so subtle it's almost invisible, and
- if it's sarcasm it's so harmless that it causes little concern to its targets. I wont go into the story or the characters as many other reviewers have covered that in 1000s of reviews here. What i will add is this: "Catch 22" is painfully boring to read, it becomes almost a task as you go through the first 50-100 pages and you find the same concepts over and over repeated and what is supposed to be a "storyline" thinnning continuously until it almost dissapears. If all "classics" were like this my take is that literature could easily become mental torture. What i find even sadder is that Heller fails while actually delivering an important message. This only drives home the fact that you might have the right thoughts but this doesnt mean you can express them in a literary way. Heller would be probably better off had he written a straight philosophical book which would have been way more in his element. As it is he takes a shot at literature and doesnt miss as he hits the target head on and the victim expires.
All a matter of perspective as i said, but i would advise you to take a good look at both the negative and the positive reviews about "Catch 22" before you decide whether to read it or not. You'll be surprised how completely contradicting they are. Hilarious and boring dont exactly go together. If, however, you do go on and read it dont be surprised if you find that you're forcing yourself through it.
| 
