Catch 22

CATCH-22 has its own extraordinary character - and its title has entered the dictionary. Moving between hilarity and horror, it is outrageously funny and strangely affecting, a microcosm of the twentieth-century world as it might look to someone dangerously sane. The story of a handful of the wildest flyboys of World War II, their tight little Mediterranean island, and their loose Italian women, CATCH-22 is a novel of war and peace, of beauty and the beast within all men. The Catch-22: soldiers who won't fly a plane into combat must be crazy, but if they ask not to fly on the grounds that they are crazy, they must be sane. Heller's novel celebrates the pluck of its protagonist, Yossarian, who refuses to comply with the war's insanity.
"Vulgarly, savagely, bitterly funny . . . . A dazzling performance." (The New York Times)

Joseph Heller's World War II satire, "Catch-22", poses the moral dilemma of how to remain sane in an insane world. When it was first published in 1961, the novel not only became a modern-day classic, but it also introduced the term 'catch-22' to everyday vernacular. This installment in the "Bloom's Guides" series offers a varied selection of critical essays, and an annotated bibliography that collectively provide an ideal critical companion for readers hoping to broaden their appreciation of Heller's modern masterpiece.