After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Heller spent the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, a messenger boy, and a filing clerk. He sent it to New York Daily News, which rejected it. Even as a child, he loved to write at the age of eleven, he wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland. Joseph Heller was the son of poor Jewish parents from Russia. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature. This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive and much more.
Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. But his real problem is not the enemy-it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service.
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. In recent years it has been named to “best novels” lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer. But I still regard it as one of the best novels I have ever read.Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest-and most celebrated-books of all time. So, whether or not we like it, those people may never experience the brilliance of Catch-22. (I adore historical fiction, and find story is sometimes a good way to chip through resistance to studying history). Maybe this book won't do that for them, if there have been no exceptions and they've tried a number of what are agreed upon by most, and by award-givers, as strong historical fiction work. Some people just straight-up hate historical fiction.
I haven't seen the ending yet." So many novels are like that: until you see how the writer is going to bring it all together and tie it up, it's hard to know whether it's good, or in some cases, HOW good it is. I live in a family of readers, and once in awhile one will pass by while I'm reading and inquire, "Any good?" and unless it is humor (straight-up, like Donald Westlake's Dortmunder series, or Janet Evanovich, or our own Jenny Lawson), I say, "I don't know. Ray, I agree, and I also agree with Glenn.
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