• Title: Catch-22
• Author: Joseph Heller
• Genre/Subject: American Literature
• Publisher: Kindle
• Publication Date: 1961
• Start date: 10/24/2021
• Finish date: 11/8/2021

Review:

An excellent, important novel that I did not enjoy one bit. I don’t think one is supposed to like it very much, like Ulysses or some really dark Dickens.

Like reading a 500 page prose version of Mad Magazine. Satire is nice in small pieces, cartoons in Mad, or an Onion article. But to have 500 pages of ridiculous characters and a very loosely connected narrative is too much.

You can’t identify or empathize with any of the characters, not even the protagonist.

The prose is tight and the grammar is immaculate, even in the parts where Heller satirizes grammar.

Well worth reading, but like a 10k run, you’re glad when it’s over.