Catch-22 | 
 enlarge | Author: Joseph Heller
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  132 reviews
Sales Rank: 777
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5 x 1.4
ISBN: 0099477319
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780099477310
ASIN: 0099477319
Publication Date: October 6, 1994
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: slight crease on spine, good condition
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| Customer Reviews: Read 127 more reviews...
 Disappointing to put it mildly November 10, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I waited a long time to buy and read this book. For one reason or another it always slipped my mind when I was shopping for books. Then one day I remembered and wish I hadn't.
Maybe I read it in the wrong era. Is this sixties humour, American humour, or student humour or all three? I found nothing to laugh about at all. I found each page filled with nonsense. I really isn't my idea of humour.
It really has struck a chord with many people, as these reviews testify.
For anyone wishing to buy it, read several pages and see if it suits your taste. Don't make the mistake I did, and assume because it's a so called classic it will be good.
 Great Characters Living with Death October 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The amazing CATCH-22 essentially has three overlapping narratives. One shows senior officers who are comically unsympathetic to the interests of their men. Some of these, such as Colonel Cathcart and General Peckem, are careerists who make decisions according to self-interest (or stupidity and self-interest). Others are incompetents, such as Major Major Major Major and General Sheiskopff, whose authority far surpasses their ability. To me, the careerist officers, while satirical, seemed as real as any modern bungling boss, working smugly in the corner office.
Milo Minderbinder, a genius trader and capitalist, is the dominant character in the second narrative. Technically, Milo is the mess officer at Pianosa, where Yossarian is based. But he has parlayed this job into a food supply syndicate and has become a major commercial player throughout the entire war zone. Milo is a profiteer and entrepreneur whose greed distorts, and sometimes overshadows, the war.
With Milo, Heller shows a world of surrealistic capitalism that thrives as the men in the bombers die. But for me, Milo didn't add much. His adventures make twisted sense. Yet they hit only one note and don't really ripen into something more profound. Milo is the least successful part of this superior and complex book.
The third narrative in CATCH-22 shows the men who fly in the bombers. Here, Heller's work is outstanding. There are men who can't shake the presence of death (Yossarian, Dunbar, Hungry Joe, and Dobbs). There are true believers who accept the mission and its risks (Clevinger and Havermeyer). There is a rich kid (Nately), a reckless hotdog (McWatt), and a doomed alcoholic (Chief White Halfoat). And there are the horrible fatalities (Snowden and Kid Sampson), whose deaths are gruesome and arbitrary.
Heller's work with these characters is absolutely first-rate. While they have cartoonish aspects, each is distinct and each has a surprisingly moving story. Heller also writes about their combat missions with you-are-there intensity. Finally, he connects the reader emotionally to the plight of these characters, especially in the final 150 pages, when the power and poignance of his narratives merge and really hit home. Then, you feel the consequences when you learn that, say, Milo has substituted aspirin for morphine in McWatt's plane on the tragic and high-risk mission to Avignon. "There there," murmurs Yossarian. "There there."
CATCH-22 is a long book. There is repetitiveness in its humor. Its iteration of events is occasionally maddening. But keep at it! CATCH 22 deserves its must-read reputation (although seventh place on the ML Best Novels list seems a bit high). Regardless, this is a terrific novel.
I Love This Book October 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book has got me through some of my worst days and made the good ones even better. I don't think it's possible to put into words just how special this book is.
A century of absurdity October 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Joseph Heller's Catch 22 is in my list of the top five novels of the twentieth century, and, if forced to choose one to take to my desert island, this would be it. In 500 pages, Heller captures what it is to live in a society dominated by gigantic, irrational, and dehumanising bureaucracies such as the US Air Force during WWII. With good reason it has been critically acclaimed and a top-seller since being published in 1961. Heller's anti-hero, Yossarian, fights a continual losing battle to avoid flying combat missions. The only characters that prosper in Yossarian's world are the venal and the downright bad. He concludes that the only way to survive in such an insane world is to behave insanely himself.
Heller uses paradox and bleak humour to provoke readers into thinking about their own circumstances. The book contains many examples of absurdist humour. In his vision, contemporary society forces us to make bad choices and to thwart other people, simply by following the arbitrary rules laid down by whichever bureaucracy we serve. To be free, a rebel like Yossarian must use the most convoluted strategies, turning logic and common sense on their heads. He fights unreason with more of the same. In this way, he combats his true enemies: the US Air Force's various functionaries, not the Germans who shoot at his aircraft.
Catch 22 took Heller ten years to write and it is his masterwork, containing many subtle references to other great literary works. This may seem presumptuous for a first-time novelist - which Heller was when he wrote Catch 22 - but the quality of his prose and the powerful expression of universal twentieth century dilemmas make this a work that stands in the top rank of literary achievements.
the best book I've ever read September 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Catch 22 is the best book I've ever read. This may seem to be a trite statement but of all the brilliant books I've come across, this one always rises to the top. It's humour is clever, persistent and cruel in places but that's life and you have to look on the funny side. It's absurdity is something you can relate to and the characters are wonderfully 3D. It's not a war book, though this is all it's about, instead it's a book which gives you hope because the anti hero triumphs. I love the journey through the time slot where every chapter is seen through another character in the story's eyes. So even people you despise at least you understand and can put them in context. It's a book to unfrustrate you, make you laugh, understand yourself a bit better and take you through any time of your life. It's a book you can taste and smell too. I read it first about 35 years ago and it still has an absolutely magical quality about it. Heller put everything into this book, don't bother with any of his other stuff. This is pure genius.
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