Catch 22 how many pages

Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Catch by Joseph Heller. Catch Catch 1 by Joseph Heller. Fifty years after its original publication, Catch remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest—and most celebrated—books of all time.

Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardie Fifty years after its original publication, Catch remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest—and most celebrated—books of all time. 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.

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. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature. Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. More Details Original Title. National Book Award Finalist for Fiction Other Editions Friend Reviews.

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Catch , please sign up. Is it any good? Bob G. Catch gets better as you move through it. The book can be viewed as a set of loosely-connected short stories with a large cast of characters. It ta …more Catch gets better as you move through it.

It takes time for the chapters to mesh. Heller will answer your questions at intervals along the way, too. After 50 pages, I was wondering if I might abandon it, but I chose to trust the opinions of older readers. After pages, I was starting to like it. After pages, I was sold, and I started thinking I might have to re-read the first pages after I finished the book. This is one of my favorites, and I'm glad I found the patience to give it the chance it deserves.

Arindam It's probably as mundane as being abducted by aliens in the middle of a long ride into area 51 and then returning home after a brief stint at cleaning …more It's probably as mundane as being abducted by aliens in the middle of a long ride into area 51 and then returning home after a brief stint at cleaning the spaceship but that was the sole reason you were abducted anyway.

I'll implore anyone who loves reading to give it a go if only for its quirky and dark satirical style. See all 36 questions about Catch…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3.

Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Catch Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions.

Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch and let out a respectful whistle. The East Coast publishing intelligentsia really embraced the book even though there were doubts if it would ever gain traction with the American public. It did. I understand the frustration that publishers feel with the American book buying public. They have all been scorched by a book they felt should have sold by the wheelbarrow only to have it crash and burn with the majority of the first printing sold off to a remainder company.

Sometimes a book needs a lightning strike in the form of Oprah or a school banning the book thank-you Strongsville, OH , but for Heller all he needed was the s. Fat novels glorifying the war, some extraordinarily good, were hitting bookstores at a fast clip from the late s on.

By the time Catch came out in the world had changed. A typical reaction was: WTF???? Some thought it was irreverent, but there were a growing group of people who thought it was among the best American novels they had ever read.

Both reactions helped juice the novel and sales began to climb. Joseph Heller in uniform. At the tender age of 19 in Joseph Heller joined the U. Army Air Corp. By he found himself on the Italian Front as a B Bombardier. He flew 60 missions most of which he categorized as milk runs; these were flight missions that encounter no or very little anti-aircraft artillery or enemy fighters.

Heller admits that his disillusionment with the war in Korea colored the novel. It gives me the shakes to think how different the novel would be if he had published the book in instead of Little did he know how prophetic his novel would be regarding the Vietnam War. Yossarian has reached the end of his rope. He has flown the required number of combat missions several times, but each time Colonel Cathcart keeps raising the number of missions required to go home.

As he becomes more and more insane sane he becomes more and more qualified to fly combat missions as far as the military is concerned. He comes up with various ailments to keep him in the hospital. He shows up to receive his war medal naked except for a pair of moccasins. He finally refuses to fly any more missions and begins parading around the camp walking backwards. This does start to foment rebellion among his fellow flyers and drives Colonel Cathcart to distraction.

The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them. He is a good looking kid and could have any woman he wanted, but he falls in love with an Italian prostitute who begrudgingly sleeps with him when he pays for sex with her, but would rather he just disappeared. And the Italian fighting man is probably second to all.

In a few years you will be gone, too, and we will still be here. Italian soldiers are not dying any more. But American and German soldiers are. I call that doing extremely well. A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Army Corps base. As he learns more and more about how goods are moved around the globe he begins a business of supply and demand war profiteering.

He becomes the ultimate capitalist with no allegiance to any country. He trades with the enemy and as part of contract negotiations he also warns the Germans once of an impending attack even to the point of guiding anti-artillery against American planes and in another case bombs his own base to fulfill another contract.

The absurdity of his position is that he is too important to the American high command to get in trouble for any of these acts of treason. He tries to explain one of his more successful schemes to Yossarian.

You lose two cents an egg. And everybody has a share. Is that right? Hungry Joe keeps meeting the flight standards time and time again only to have his paperwork take too long to process before the flight standards have been raised again. He packs and then he unpacks. He is a fat, pervert who convinces women to take their clothes off to be photographed by telling them that he works for Life Magazine and will put them on the cover. Unfortunately the photographs never turn out.

Ironically he did work as a photographer for Life Magazine before the war. Women do play a role in this book mostly as objects of lust. Heller has these wonderful, creative descriptions of them. She was a real find. She paid for her own drinks, and she had an automobile, an apartment and a salmon-colored cameo ring that drove Hungry Joe clean out of his senses with its exquisitely carved figures of a naked boy and girl on a rock.

He drank her in insatiably from head to painted toenail. He never wanted to lose her. You will probably need to google the next one. Joseph Heller looking handsome and ugly. This book is hilarious, I laughed out loud at several points. His behavior becomes more and more erratic. The absurd traps him time and time again. There are a whole host of reasons why everyone should read this novel. It impacted our culture, added words to our language, and gave voice to a generation of people dissatisfied with the war aims of this country.

View all comments. I have attempted to read this book on two separate occasions and I couldn't get beyond pages either time. I do believe that this has more to do with me than the book and I plan on making a third attempt at some point in the future. Currently it sits on my bookshelf and sometimes when I have a few too many beers we have a talk.

Me: Hi. Catch Oh, hi. Me: How are you feeling? Catch I've been better. Me: Don't be upset. It's not you. It's me.

Catch I know that. Me: My friends tell me I'm I have attempted to read this book on two separate occasions and I couldn't get beyond pages either time.

Me: My friends tell me I'm an idiot for ending our relationship. Catch I agree. Me: I'm sure the reason I don't laugh or enjoy myself when I'm with you has more to do with my own flaws than with yours. Catch Of course. I'm flawless.

Me: I don't know if I would go that far. Catch Well, you've already admitted that it's your fault so I don't know if you're the best person to be judging whether or not I'm flawed. Me: Hey, now! I didn't laugh once when I was with you.

Catch I've been forced to sit on this bookshelf for years while you plop in front of the TV to laugh at Will Ferrell movies.

I'll give you Anchorman but Step Brothers? Don't talk to me about what is or isn't funny. Me: The sleepwalking scene in that movie is pure genius! Catch I rest my case. Me: Ok, ok. You're right. I promise you that one day I'll be mature and enlightened enough to appreciate you and when that day comes, you and I will have some fun together. Catch I won't hold my breath. Sep 11, Lori rated it did not like it Shelves: books-i-just-couldnt-finish , lost-lit.

I suffered through about 60 pages, and finally put it down. I very rarely ever leave a book unfinished. The author narrates and introduces us to Yossarian, who does not want to fly in the war. I get that. I get the whole catch 22 scenerio You have to be insane to fly the plane. If you can get a dr to say you are insane, you wont have to fly. But in order to tell a dr that you are insane, this actually means you are sane.

So you must continue to fly Wh I suffered through about 60 pages, and finally put it down. What I couldnt get past was the author's constant bouts of Attention Deficet Disorder He went off on tangents, introducing a new character seemingly every paragraph, and seemed to lose his train of thought only to regain it 2 pages later.

I couldnt take all the jumping around, and was completely lost the whole time Am I the only one on this planet who is asking myself what heck everyone was smoking when they read this book and actually enjoyed it?

Aug 29, Stephen rated it it was amazing Shelves: easton-press , , audiobook , all-time-favorites , 6-star-books , classics-americas , world-war-the-sequel , literature , love-those-words , humor-and-satire. A shiny new batch of awesome for my " all time favorite " shelf. What a sublime, literary feast. To prepare: 1. Start with a surrealistic, Kafkaesque worldview basted in chaos; 2.

Knead in a plot reminiscent of Pynchon , taking particular care that the bizarre, placidly disjointed surface fully camouflages the A shiny new batch of awesome for my " all time favorite " shelf. Knead in a plot reminiscent of Pynchon , taking particular care that the bizarre, placidly disjointed surface fully camouflages the powerfully nuanced, and deceptively focused central message; 3. Marinate the whole thing in a dark, hilarious satire that would have made Vonnegut beam like a proud papa.

Bake at , season with zesty prose , and serve. This novel was so much more than I was expecting. Rather, Heller's insight is geared to showing us the illogic of war, the out-of-control nihilism, and the chaotic, existential absurdity of it.

It's brilliant. The novel follows the exploits of the fictional th fighter squadron, stationed on the fictional island of Pianosa, during the height of WWII. With a large cast of characters and a non-chronological narrative that switches viewpoints constantly, Heller creates a delicious cauldron of madness and bureaucratic ineptitude that is just heaven to follow. Despite his often less than moral shenanigans, Yossarian acts as the conscience of the story and helps to keep the rampant lunacy and chaos in context.

His is the voice of indignity and righteous anger against the war and the cold, faceless bureaucracy that perpetrates it. Even against the God that allows it such horrors to exist in the first place. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation?

What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain? Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers. The writing is brilliant, the characters are unique, engaging and memorable, and the story will scar you with wonder and awe. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning.

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody. And a personal favorite all leading up to the very last line : The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice.

Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character. Finally, I wanted to share one last piece of awesome with you. The following is the contents of the letter sent by the base commander to the wife of one of the main characters. Dear Mrs. And Mrs. View all 73 comments.

Jun 06, Jennifer rated it liked it. The following is an example of how many conversations in this book took place. Jen: I didn't like this book.

Nigel: Why didn't you like the book? Jen: I did like the book. Nigel: You just said you didn't like the book. Jen: No I didn't. Nigel: You're lying. Jen: I don't believe in lying. Nigel: So you never lie? Jen: Oh yes, I lie all the time. Nigel: You just said you don't believe in it. Jen: I don't believe in it, Jen said as she ate a chocolate covered cotton ball.

Nigel: Well I liked the book. Jen: Fabu The following is an example of how many conversations in this book took place. Jen: Fabulous!

I liked it too! Nigel: What did you like about it? Jen: Oh, I hated it. I think Heller was showing how war is chaotic by not writing in a chronological order. You really have no idea in what order events are taking place. The novel's title refers to a plot device that is repeatedly invoked in the story. Catch starts as a set of paradoxical requirements whereby airmen mentally unfit to fly did not have to, but could not actually be excused. By the end of the novel, the phrase is invoked as the explanation for many unreasonable restrictions.

Upon publication, the book was not a best seller in the United States. It was merely a cult favorite until the publication of the paperback edition in , which set record sales — most likely benefitting from a national debate about the pointlessness of the Vietnam War. Yossarian takes the whole war personally: unswayed by national ideals or abstract principles, Yossarian is furious that his life is in constant danger through no fault of his own.

He has a strong desire to live and is determined to be immortal or die trying. As a result, he spends a great deal of his time in the hospital, faking various illnesses in order to avoid the war. As the novel progresses through its loosely connected series of recurring stories and anecdotes, Yossarian is continually troubled by his memory of Snowden, a soldier who died in his arms on a mission when Yossarian lost all desire to participate in the war.

Yossarian is placed in ridiculous, absurd, desperate, and tragic circumstances—he sees friends die and disappear, his squadron get bombed by its own mess officer, and colonels and generals volunteer their men for the most perilous battle in order to enhance their own reputations. Catch is a law defined in various ways throughout the novel. First, Yossarian discovers that it is possible to be discharged from military service because of insanity.

Always looking for a way out, Yossarian claims that he is insane, only to find out that by claiming that he is insane he has proved that he is obviously sane—since any sane person would claim that he or she is insane in order to avoid flying bombing missions. Elsewhere, Catch is defined as a law that is illegal to read. Ironically, the place where it is written that it is illegal is in Catch itself. In short, then, Catch is any paradoxical, circular reasoning that catches its victim in its illogic and serves those who have made the law.