The world novel series entitled Catch-22 is the work of Joseph Heller, a novelist and short story writer from the United States.
He is known as a satire writer in his novel. Here are Joseph Heller’s brief biography and stories about Catch-22 novels.
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The Author of Catch-22
Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 1, 1923, and died in East Hampton, New York, on December 12, 1999.
Heller was the son of poor Jewish parents, Lena and Isaac Donald Heller. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Isaac arrived in America in 1913.
Since childhood, Joseph Heller loved the world of writing; as a teenager, he once wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland and sent it to the New York Daily News, the story was rejected.
In 1942, at the age of 19, Josep Heller joined the US Army Air Corps. Work as a file employee.
Pls, Lets Jump Straight to Catch-22 Quotes!!!
Two years later he was sent to the Italian Front, where he flew as many as 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier.
After the war, Heller studied English at the University of Southern California and NYU on G.I. Bill. In 1949, he received an MA in English from Columbia University.
Then in 1961, his novel entitled Catch-22 was published.
The novel made Joseph Heller’s name famous in America and the world. He began writing the Catch-22, in 1953.
The novel is often said to be one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century.
What Is Catch 22 Talk About
Novel Catch-22 took place during World War II, from 1942 to 1944.
Following the life of Captain John Yossarian, a bombardier B-25 Air Force Soldier.
Most of the events in the book occurred when the Squadron 256 was based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy.
This novel presents Yossarian’s experience and other pilots in the camp who try to maintain their sanity when fulfilling their duties so that they can return home.
The early chapters insinuated the formation of military and politics, especially through the distortion of logic and reality.
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 novel has established itself as the best classic satire and antiwar novel.
Modern Library includes the novel in 7th place as one of the best works of 100 works of novels written in the 20th century.
Catch 22 Quotes
Catch 22 Important Quotes
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain, he fell madly in love with him.
Yossarian shouted back. “You’re right, you’re right, you’re right. The hot dog, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mom’s apple pie. That’s what everyone’s fighting for. But who’s fighting for the decent folk? Who’s fighting for more votes for the decent folk? There’s no patriotism, that’s what it is. And no matriotism, either.” . The warrant officer on Yossarian’s left was unimpressed. “Who gives a shit?” he asked tiredly, and turned over on his side to go to sleep.
He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.
A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you’re an old man.
Catch 22 Book Quotes
You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?
Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It’s a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop, or spic.
History did not demand Yossarian’s premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it.
That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance.
To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.
Catch 22 Movie Quotes
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.
The enemy,is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don’t you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.
There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater, more orderly job of it. They couldn’t dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners. They couldn’t keep death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady. People gave up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying that was so common outside the hospital.
And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways. There’s nothing mysterious about it, 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?
Best Quotes from Catch 22
Yossarian — the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist.
What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can’t all be worth dying for. And everything worth dying for, is certainly worth living for.
In a democracy, the government is the people. We’re people, aren’t we? So we might just as well keep the money and eliminate the middleman. Frankly, I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.
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.
The men were perfectly content to fly as many missions as we asked them as long as they thought they had no alternative. Now you’ve given them hope, and they’re unhappy. So the blame is all yours.
Significant Quotes form Catch 22
From now on I’m thinking only of me. I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?
Rome was destroyed. Greece was destroyed. Persia was destroyed. Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you think your country will last? Forever?
In order to be grounded, I’ve got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I’m not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.
The only friend I had was Snowden and I didn’t know him.
Catch 22 Trivia
The original title of the story, as published in New World Writing, was Catch-18. Acquiescing to his publisher’s qualms about confusion with the similarly themed novel Mila 18, Heller dragged his title through a sequence of changes
At first, it changed into Catch-11 (which was deemed too similar to the contemporary film Ocean’s 11).
Followed by Catch-17 (which posed the same problem with Billy Wilder’s war movie Stalag 17).
And then Catch-14 (which Heller’s publisher thought just didn’t sound funny enough).
Finally, the writer landed on Catch-22.