Catch-22 - Joseph Heller - 1961

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller - 1961

Introduction

Catch-22, published in 1961, is probably the best-known and most widely read novel of World War II. Its author, Joseph Heller, saw combat as an American bombardier in the last year of the war, but Catch-22 is unlike the more conventional novels of World War II that preceded it. It mixes scenes of outlandish, over-the-top satire with scenes that depict the mortal terror and horrific violence of combat. Reading Catch-22 can be both entertaining and disturbing, as the narrative veers from wild slapstick to sheer terror and back again in just a few paragraphs. It is a wild, surreal, hilarious, and often unsettling evocation of the absurdity and violence of war.

Catch-22 follows the experiences of Captain Yossarian, a bombardier in the Mediterranean theater of World War II in 1944, who flies missions from the island of Pianosa over targets in Italy and France. He is surrounded by a huge cast of colorful and often bizarre characters, who are intended to satirize not only military life but life in any large institution. They include Doc Daneeka, the base medical officer who is more concerned with his own problems than with those of his patients; Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, the mess officer who uses his connections to build a massive commercial empire that includes dealing with the enemy; Major Major Major, a painfully shy man who looks like the actor Henry Fonda and who immediately rises to the rank of major; and Nately, the heartbreakingly naive lieutenant in love with an Italian prostitute who barely notices that he exists.

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