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Amazon.com Review
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 0
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Amazon.com Review
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.
"Heller initially wanted Catch-18 as the novel's title because the number means "alive" in Gematria, the traditional Jewish system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase. But before the book was published, Heller's agent, Candida Donadio, requested that he change it to avoid confusion with the Leon Uris novel Mila 18. Catch-17 was also rejected because it was considered too similar to Billy Wilder's film Stalag 17.
Heller then suggested Catch-11 (the double number symbolizing deja-vu"
"The very definition of "subversive"; Heller sets his sights (and astonishing wit) on the horrors of war, and makes the funniest damn thing ever. Rather than a plot, "Cath-22" is comprised of series of episodes set in nonlinear order, and every one of those episodes is wonderful. I've never laughed harder than I have the alfalfa farmer who made his living not growing alfalfa. When it wants to be, though, it can show the tragedy of war (and of humanity as a whole, for that matter) in a very poigna"
m08221196 added this to a list 5 months, 1 week ago
"“What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.” "
"Chris Hansen, It might be a little ironic that Hansen, now associated with catching child molesters, would choose a book with catch in the title, but this famous read has little to do with the subject, focusing instead on the horrors of war."
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he did"
"I feel that this book just about exactly captures how I feel about my term of service in the United States Marine Corps, the sheer absurdity of it all. So I guess I feel a bit of a personal connection to this book."
"The logic here is simple: any book which has the influence to have coined terminology commonly used in our society for decades on end should be perused based solely on principle. Nothing is worse than a man being caught using language of which he is unfamiliar with its proper meaning or origin. Also, it is a great book."
Xanadon't added this to a list 2 years, 8 months ago
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