Other matters: militarism, red tape, bureaucracy, nationalism, patriotism, discipline, ambition, loyalty, medicine, psychiatry, money, big business, high finance, sex, religion, mankind and God.

Joseph Heller's key sentence is this: 'Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.' His story is a satirical denunciation of war and of mankind that glorifies war and wages war cruelly, stupidly, selfishly. One can relish his delirious dialogue and his ludicrous situations while recognizing that they reflect a basic range and disgust. And perhaps 'enjoy' is not quite the right word for anyone's reaction to Mr Heller's Its humor, I think, is essentially masculine. 'Catch-22' is a funny book-vulgarly, bitterly, savagely funny. Those who are interested may be reminded of the Voltaire who wrote 'Candide' and of the Kafka who wrote 'The Trial.' Heller's story rises above mere realism and soars into the stratosphere of satire, grotesque exaggeration,įantasy, farce and sheer lunacy. 'Catch-22' is realistic in its powerful accounts of bombing missions with men screaming and dying and planes crashing. That experience provided only the jumping-off place for this novel. In the Twelfth Air Force and was stationed on the Island of Corsica. From 1942 to 1945 he served as a combat bombardier Today he is a promotion man busily engaged in the circulation wars of women's magazines. Universities-New York, Columbia and Oxford-and a former teacher at Pennsylvania State College. Heller, who spent eight years writing 'Catch-22,' is a former student at three In any case, it is one of the most startling first novels of the year and it may make its author famous. Wildly original, brilliantly comic, brutally gruesome, it is a dazzling performance that will probably outrage But there can be no doubt that it is the strangest novel yet written about the United States Air Force in World War II. It is not even a good novel by conventional OctoBooks of The Times By ORVILLE PRESCOTTĪtch-22,' by Joseph Heller, is not an entirely successful novel.

Catch 22 by joseph heller