Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)

Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)
by Joseph Heller

Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)
List Price: $27.00
Our Price: $16.09
You Save: $10.91 (40%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $12.19 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Joseph Heller
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 1999-10-05
ISBN: 0684865130
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Book Reviews of Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)

Book Review: Fantastic, Humorous and Everlasting
Summary: 5 Stars

"Catch-22" remains one of my favorite novels of all time. Its cleverness, wit and insight never cease to amaze me. Having read Heller's novel countless times, I can honestly say that I find something new and surprising about it each time I pick it up. With that being said, I did notice some objection to it both from fellow reviewers and friends to whom I have suggested it. My only theory behind the stark contrast between people who love the book and people who do not understand it is that the rhythm of Heller's writing takes a little while to seep in. Behind the joke is a level of seriousness and behind the seriousness is another layer of satire. It is this layer that is often hard to access, but once one does the entire novel plays out as a macabre caricature of life. I can only suggest that the reader plod along for a long as possible, put it down for a while, pick it up again from the beginning but always keep going. The truth of "Catch-22" is worth discovering.

Summary of Catch-22: A Novel (Simon & Schuster Classics)

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.


Catch-22 is one of this century's greatest works of American literature. First published m 1961, Joseph Heller's profound and compelling novel has appeared on nearly every list of must read fiction. It is a classic in every sense of the word.

Catch-22 took the war novel genre to a new level, shocking us with its clever and disturbing style. Set in a World War II American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of John Yossarian, who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. Yossarian is also trying to decode the meaning of Catch-22, a mysterious regulation that proves that insane people are really the sanest, while the supposedly sensible people are the true madmen. And this novel is full of madmen -- Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men must fly m order to finish their tour; Milo Minderbinder, a dedicated entrepreneur who bombs his own airfield when the Germans offer him an extra 6 percent; Major Major Major, whose tragedy in life is that he resembles Henry Fonda; and Major -- de Coverley, whose face is so forbidding no one has dared ask his name.

No novel before or since has matched Catch-22's intensity and brilliance in depicting the brutal insanity of war. Heller satirizes military bureaucracy with bitter, stinging humor, all the while telling the darkly comic story of Yossarian, a bombardier who refuses to die.

Nearly forty years later, Yossarian lives.

United States Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Great Novels and Study Questions @ NovelStudyQs.com
A Farewell to Arms - Scribner School Edition ImageA Farewell to Arms - Scribner School Edition
by Ernest Hemingway
Charles Scribner's Sons; Published: 1969; Hardcover; Book
Don Quixote (Penguin Classics) ImageDon Quixote (Penguin Classics)
by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-02-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.06
Price in other shops: $12.00
Naked Lunch: The Restored Text ImageNaked Lunch: The Restored Text
by William S. Burroughs
Grove Press; Published: 2004-01-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.91
Price in other shops: $14.00
Ubik ImageUbik
by Philip K. Dick
Voyager; Published: 1998-04-30; Paperback; Book
Waiting for the Barbarians (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) ImageWaiting for the Barbarians (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
by J. M. Coetzee
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1999-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops: $15.00
Slaughterhouse-Five ImageSlaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut
Dial Press Trade Paperback; Published: 1999-01-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.54
Price in other shops: $14.00
Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began (Maus) ImageMaus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began (Maus)
by Art Spiegelman
Pantheon; Published: 1992-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops: $14.95
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History ImageMaus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History
by Art Spiegelman
Pantheon; Published: 1986-08-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.94
Price in other shops: $14.95
The Ginger Man ImageThe Ginger Man
by J. P. Donleavy
Grove Press; Published: 2001-05-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.23
Price in other shops: $13.00
The Killer Inside Me ImageThe Killer Inside Me
by Jim Thompson
Vintage; Published: 1991-03-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.01
Price in other shops: $12.95
Similar Books and other products
Breakfast of Champions ImageBreakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut
Dial Press Trade Paperback; Published: 1999-05-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops: $14.00
Animal Farm (Signet Classics) ImageAnimal Farm (Signet Classics)
by George Orwell
Signet Classics; Published: 1996-04-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.48
Price in other shops: $9.99
Brave New World (P.S.) ImageBrave New World (P.S.)
by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2006-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.64
Price in other shops: $13.95
Cat's Cradle ImageCat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut
Dell Publishing; Published: 1998-09-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.89
Price in other shops: $14.00
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ImageOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey
Signet; Published: 1963-02-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.65
Price in other shops: $9.99
Fahrenheit 451 ImageFahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
Del Rey; Published: 1987-08-12; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.79
Price in other shops: $6.99
1984 (Signet Classics) Image1984 (Signet Classics)
by George Orwell
New American Library; Published: 1961-01-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.65
Price in other shops: $9.99
The Catcher in the Rye ImageThe Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
Back Bay Books; Published: 2001-01-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.88
Price in other shops: $13.99
A Clockwork Orange (Norton Paperback Fiction) ImageA Clockwork Orange (Norton Paperback Fiction)
by Anthony Burgess
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 1986-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.63
Price in other shops: $13.95
Slaughterhouse-Five ImageSlaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut
Dial Press Trade Paperback; Published: 1999-01-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.54
Price in other shops: $14.00
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories