Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
463 pages (trade paperback)
Genre: Fiction/Literary/Historical
Um, WTF?
This was funny--not as funny as Pratchett, not even close, but still good for a few chortles. Still, I didn't get it. I kept waiting for the book to have a point, until I reached the last page and still didn't get it. I thought it was funny, even laugh-out-loud funny at times; but not hilarious or even uniformly entertaining. A novel can't sustain itself on humor alone, and the only other impetus driving me to turn the pages was an objective curiosity in what-happens-next. Now that I know what happens next, and am not impressed, I've lost all impetus. The ending left me confused and dissatisfied.
That said, for experimental fiction Catch-22 is immensely approachable. And several of my friends adore this book. The plot: Yossarian, a bombadier in presumably alter-world WWII, has lost his nerve. And he's even flown the required 45 missions--if he were in any other squadron but Colonel Cathcart's, he would have long been safely home. (SPOILER) So, after 450+ pages of random (often funny, but still bizarrely random) storyline, Yossarian decides to follow his good buddy Orr to Sweden. --That, seriously, is the entire plot of the novel. The events in between are largely irrelevant and never stuck in my mind, save for the unimportant details like Milo's complicated egg-market scheme in Malta (which I still don't quite understand).
And that's all I got, folks. Maybe you'll make more sense out of the catch.
by Joseph Heller
463 pages (trade paperback)
Genre: Fiction/Literary/Historical
Um, WTF?
This was funny--not as funny as Pratchett, not even close, but still good for a few chortles. Still, I didn't get it. I kept waiting for the book to have a point, until I reached the last page and still didn't get it. I thought it was funny, even laugh-out-loud funny at times; but not hilarious or even uniformly entertaining. A novel can't sustain itself on humor alone, and the only other impetus driving me to turn the pages was an objective curiosity in what-happens-next. Now that I know what happens next, and am not impressed, I've lost all impetus. The ending left me confused and dissatisfied.
That said, for experimental fiction Catch-22 is immensely approachable. And several of my friends adore this book. The plot: Yossarian, a bombadier in presumably alter-world WWII, has lost his nerve. And he's even flown the required 45 missions--if he were in any other squadron but Colonel Cathcart's, he would have long been safely home. (SPOILER) So, after 450+ pages of random (often funny, but still bizarrely random) storyline, Yossarian decides to follow his good buddy Orr to Sweden. --That, seriously, is the entire plot of the novel. The events in between are largely irrelevant and never stuck in my mind, save for the unimportant details like Milo's complicated egg-market scheme in Malta (which I still don't quite understand).
And that's all I got, folks. Maybe you'll make more sense out of the catch.