8/30 Bulldog Book Club: Catch-22
August 24, 2007 – 11:45 AMThursday, August 30
12:30 p.m.
Main Library Student Lounge
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
“There was only one catch . . . and that was Catch-22,” Doc Daneeka informs Yossarian. As Yossarian, the lead bombardier of Joseph Heller’s phenomenal first novel, soon learns, this one catch is enough to keep him at war indefinitely. After pleading with Doc Daneeka that he is too crazy to fly any more missions, Yossarian is introduced to Catch-22, a rule which stipulates that anyone rational enough to want to be grounded could not possibly be insane and therefore must return to his perilous duties. The novel Catch-22 is built around the multifarious attempts of Captain John Yossarian to survive World War II, to escape the omnipresent logic of a regulation which somehow stays one step ahead of him.
At the time of its publication in 1961, Heller’s antiwar novel met with modest sales and lukewarm reviews. But by the middle of its first decade it became a favored text of the counterculture. Catch-22 “came when we still cherished nice notions about WW II,” Eliot Fremont-Smith recalled in the Village Voice. “Demolishing these, it released an irreverence that had, until then, dared not speak its name.” With more than ten million copies in print by the end of the twentieth century, Catch-22 became generally regarded as one of the most important novels of the postwar era. The title itself has become part of the language.” – description from Contemporary Authors.
Complete Bulldog Book Club schedule for Fall Semester 2007
All Bulldog Book Club programs are Blue Card events.
