Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. About the Author:īook Description Condition: new. It's an utterly serious and sad, but damn funny book. As long as there's a military, that engine of lethal authority, Catch-22 will shine as a handbook for smart-alecky pacifists. Mirabile dictu, the book holds up post-Reagan, post-Gulf War. "The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." "I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy." "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead." "And which do you think is more important?" Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive." Again and again, Heller's characters demonstrate that what is commonly held to be good, is bad what is sensible, is nonsense. But 40 years on, the novel's undiminished strength is its looking-glass logic. As a result, it's impossible not to consider Catch-22 to be something of a period piece. 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. 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.
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