CATCH 22 ...

A man is trying desperately to be certified insane during World War II, so he can stop flying missions.
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Commander: its all part of the deal
Yossarian : u made a deal wid the Germans to bomb our own base ??

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
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.




Inside This Book (learn more)First Sentence:It was love at first sight. Read the first pageStatistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more) big fat mustache, bloated colonel, tighter bomb pattern, eggs for seven cents, intelligence tent, more combat missions, help the bombardier, sei pazzo, seventy missions, zinc pipe, railroad ditch, sixty missions, illegal tobacco, bomb line, forty missions, colored panties, group chaplain, flak suits, lead bombardier, medical tent, fifty missions, mess officer, combat status, covered cotton, more missionsCapitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more) Colonel Cathcart, Colonel Korn, Hungry Joe, Major Major, Doc Daneeka, General Dreedle, General Peckem, Captain Black, Chief White Halfoat, Nurse Duckett, Corporal Whitcomb, Washington Irving, Lieutenant Scheisskopf, Sergeant Towser, Nurse Cramer, Kid Sampson, Colonel Moodus, Major de Coverley, Colonel Cargill, Group Headquarters, Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters, Milo Minderbinder, Colonel Scheisskopf, The Saturday Evening Post, Sergeant Knight