Overview

"""Catch-22"" is like no other novel. It is one of the funniest books ever written, a keystone work in American literature, and even added a new term to the dictionary. At the heart of ""Catch-22"" resides the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero endlessly inventive in his schemes to save his skin from the horrible chances of war. His efforts are perfectly understandable because as he furiously scrambles, thousands of people he hasn't even met are trying to kill him. His problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions that he is committed to flying, he is trapped by the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, the hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule from which the book takes its title: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes the necessary formal request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. ""Catch-22"" is a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to some one dangerously sane -- a masterpiece of our time."

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Chicago Sun-Times An apocalyptic masterpiece. Robert Brustein The New Republic One of the most bitterly funny works in the language...explosive, bitter, subversive, brilliant. John W. Aldridge The New York Times Book Review A monumental artifact of contemporary American literature, almost as assured of longevity as the statues on Easter Island...Catch-22 is a novel that reminds us once again of all that we have taken for granted in our world and should not, the madness we try not to bother and notice, the deceptions and falsehoods we lack the will to try to distinguish from truth. Robert Brustein The New Republic One of the most bitterly funny works in the language...explosive, bitter, subversive, brilliant. Chicago Sun-Times An apocalyptic masterpiece. John W. Aldridge The New York Times Book Review A monumental artifact of contemporary American literature, almost as assured of longevity as the statues on Easter Island...Catch-22 is a novel that reminds us once again of all that we have taken for granted in our world and should not, the madness we try not to bother and notice, the deceptions and falsehoods we lack the will to try to distinguish from truth.

John W. Aldridge The New York Times Book Review A monumental artifact of contemporary American literature, almost as assured of longevity as the statues on Easter Island...Catch-22 is a novel that reminds us once again of all that we have taken for granted in our world and should not, the madness we try not to bother and notice, the deceptions and falsehoods we lack the will to try to distinguish from truth.

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