In a Dark Time … The Eye Begins to See

I first encountered Catch-22 while on duty in Vietnam. A college friend “without-a-clue” (actually probably my best friend in life though I haven’t seen him for several years) sent it to me because he found it both enlightening and funny. Unfortunately, I found it neither. Caught in the middle of my own [...]

If you’re confused at the end of Chapter 5, don’t despair because there are so many loose ends in these chapters that no one could possibly understand them until later in the book. In fact, Heller seems to want readers to question “reality.” Unlike Yossarian, we aren’t living in the hospital; we’re part of the [...]

Sometimes I think Catch-22 is the intellectual’s equivalent of Married With Children because no one seems sacred to Heller. No one avoids the harsh exposure of his brillian wit, including the literary intellectuals who are most likely to love his work. It is, of course, the Clevinger’s of the world who are most likely [...]

In some ways Heller’s long digression on Major Major’s life seems to interrupt the development of the novel, but, in fact, it effectively shows that “Catch-22″ is not limited to military life. Although Major Major is certainly a co-conspirator in the Col. Cathcart’s scheme to keep his pilots flying missions at all cost, Major [...]