Catch-22

Catch-22 PDF Author: Laura M. Nicosia
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781642659979
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
"Catch-22 was published in 1961, becoming a number-one bestseller in England before American audiences identified with its anti-war sentiments, earning it classic status and prompting a film version in 1970. Heller's dark, satirical novel became so ubiquitous that it initiated the eponymous phrase regarding paradoxical situations. Catch-22 is appreciated for its black humor, extensive use of flashbacks, contorted chronology, countercultural sensibilities, and bizarre language structures. With current trends and political climate considered, this volume revisits this classic text for a contemporary audience." --

Catch-22

Catch-22 PDF Author: Laura M. Nicosia
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781642659979
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book

Book Description
"Catch-22 was published in 1961, becoming a number-one bestseller in England before American audiences identified with its anti-war sentiments, earning it classic status and prompting a film version in 1970. Heller's dark, satirical novel became so ubiquitous that it initiated the eponymous phrase regarding paradoxical situations. Catch-22 is appreciated for its black humor, extensive use of flashbacks, contorted chronology, countercultural sensibilities, and bizarre language structures. With current trends and political climate considered, this volume revisits this classic text for a contemporary audience." --

SOMETHING HAPPENED

SOMETHING HAPPENED PDF Author: Joseph Heller
Publisher: Dell
ISBN: 0307803619
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 622

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Book Description
Bob Slocum was living the American dream. He had a beautiful wife, three lovely children, a nice house...and all the mistresses he desired. He had it all -- all, that is, but happiness. Slocum was discontent. Inevitably, inexorably, his discontent deteriorated into desolation until...something happened. Something Happened is Joseph Heller's wonderfully inventive and controversial second novel satirizing business life and American culture. The story is told as if the reader was overhearing the patter of Bob Slocum's brain -- recording what is going on at the office, as well as his fantasies and memories that complete the story of his life. The result is a novel as original and memorable as his Catch-22.

Closing Time

Closing Time PDF Author: Joseph Heller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143912776X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
A darkly comic and ambitious sequel to the American classic Catch-22. In Closing Time, Joseph Heller returns to the characters of Catch-22, now coming to the end of their lives and the century, as is the entire generation that fought in World War II: Yossarian and Milo Minderbinder, the chaplain, and such newcomers as little Sammy Singer and giant Lew, all linked, in an uneasy peace and old age, fighting not the Germans this time, but The End. Closing Time deftly satirizes the realities and the myths of America in the half century since WWII: the absurdity of our politics, the decline of our society and our great cities, the greed and hypocrisy of our business and culture -- with the same ferocious humor as Catch-22. Closing Time is outrageously funny and totally serious, and as brilliant and successful as Catch-22 itself, a fun-house mirror that captures, at once grotesquely and accurately, the truth about ourselves.

The True Story of Catch-22

The True Story of Catch-22 PDF Author: Patricia Chapman Meder
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1612001157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
The real-life companion to the literary classic—written and illustrated by the daughter of the 340th Bomb Group’s commander, Catch-22’s Col. Cathcart. After the publication of his bestselling novel Catch-22, Joseph Heller usually chose to deny that any of his richly drawn characters were based on his actual war mates. However, to those who served with Heller in the 340th Bomb Group, the novel’s characters were indeed recognizable—the hard-drinking, vengeful, and disillusioned Chief White Halfoat; young, sliced-in-half Kid Sampson; shrieking, frenzied Hungry Joe; Col. Cathcart; Gen. Dreedle; Yossarian; and that capitalist supreme, Milo Minderbinder. In this book, written and colorfully illustrated by the daughter of the 340th Bomb Group’s commander, Col. Willis Chapman, we finally encounter the real men and combat missions on which the novel was based. While Heller’s fully developed characters stand solely, solidly, and uniquely on their own merits, The True Story of Catch-22 proves that any resemblance to persons living or dead is, in fact, actual. This three-part book blends fact, fancy, and history with full-blown original illustrations and rare, previously unpublished photos of these daring USAAF flyers and their Corsica-based B-25 Mitchell. Along with descriptions of the 340th’s real wartime experiences, the work includes twelve men of the Bomb Group relating richly told tales of their own. “In these pages it is a great pleasure to finally see the real story behind the fictionalized account, and to be even more impressed.” —Scott Carpenter, NASA astronaut “Heller’s satiric caricatures are here shown to have stemmed from patriotic, courageous, highly decorated airmen who daily performed heroic wartime feats against overwhelming obstacles.” —Library Journal

God Knows

God Knows PDF Author: Joseph Heller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684841258
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
As the Biblical David lies on his death-bed he looks back on his own, crowded life and tells all.

Reading 'Catch-22'

Reading 'Catch-22' PDF Author: Paul McDonald
Publisher: Humanities-Ebooks
ISBN: 1471621510
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
Comic novelist and critic, Paul McDonald, provides an accessible, revealing guide to Joseph Heller’s seminal anti-war novel, Catch-22. In order to help readers deepen their understanding of this perplexing comedy, McDonald succinctly contextualises it both in relation to the author’s life, and key developments in modern American literature. The book offers a thorough summary and analysis of the plot of Catch-22, addresses important characters such as Colonel Cathcart, Lieutenant Scheisskopf, Milo Minderbinder, Major Major, and Doc Daneeka, and explains the various ways in which Yossarian’s hilarious predicament has been interpreted. Among other things it considers Yossarian’s status as a mythic hero, an individualist hero, and a postmodern hero, assessing his relevance to contemporary America, and his re-emergence in the sequel to Catch-22, Closing Time, published in 1994. It also offers a descriptive bibliography of important secondary sources, and links to useful online texts.

Piece of Cake

Piece of Cake PDF Author: Derek Robinson
Publisher: MacLehose Press
ISBN: 1623653290
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
From the Phoney War of 1939 to the Battle of Britain in 1940, the pilots of Hornet Squadron learn their lessons the hard way. Hi-jinks are all very well on the ground, but once in a Hurricane's cockpit, the best killers keep their wits close. Newly promoted Commanding Officer Fanny Barton has a job on to whip the Hornets into shape before they face the Luftwaffe's seasoned pilots. And sometimes Fighter Command, with its obsolete tactics and stiff doctrines, is the real menace. As with all Robinson's novels, the raw dialogue, rich black humor and brilliantly rendered, adrenaline-packed dogfights bring the Battle of Britain, and the brave few who fought it, to life.

Yossarian Slept Here

Yossarian Slept Here PDF Author: Erica Heller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439197709
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
THROUGHOUT ERICA HELLER’S LIFE, when people learned that Joseph Heller was her father, they often remarked, “How terrific!” But was there a catch? Like his most famous work, her father was a study in contradictions: eccentric, brilliant, and voracious, but also mercurial, competitive, and stubborn, with a love of mischief that sometimes cut too close to the bone. Being raised by such a larger than- life personality could be claustrophobic, even at the sprawling Upper West Side apartments of the Apthorp, which the Hellers called home—in one way or another—for forty-five years. Yossarian Slept Here is Erica Heller’s wickedly funny but also poignant and incisive memoir about growing up in a family—her iconic father; her wry, beautiful mother, Shirley; her younger brother, Ted; her relentlessly inventive grandmother Dottie—that could be by turns caring, infuriating, and exasperating, though anything but dull. From the forbidden pleasures of ordering shrimp cocktail when it was beyond the family’s budget to spending a summer, as her father’s fame grew, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Erica details the Hellers’ charmed—and charmingly turbulent— trajectory. She offers a rare glimpse of meetings with the Gourmet Club, where her father would dine weekly with Mel Brooks, Zero Mostel, and Mario Puzo, among others (and from which all wives and children were strictly verboten). She introduces us to many extraordinary residents of the Apthorp, some famous—George Balanchine, Sidney Poitier, and Lena Horne, to name a few—and some not famous, but all quite memorable. Yet she also manages to limn the complex bonds of loyalty and guilt, hurt and healing, that define every family. Erica was among those present at her father’s bedside as he struggled to recover from Guillain-Barré syndrome and then cared for her mother when Shirley was diagnosed with terminal cancer after the thirty-eight-year marriage and intensely passionate partnership with Joe had ended. Witty and perceptive, and displaying the descriptive gifts of a born storyteller, this authentic and colorful portrait of life in the Heller household unfolds alongside the saga of the family’s moves into four distinctive apartments within the Apthorp, each representing a different phase of their lives together—and apart. It is a story about achieving a dream; about fame and its aftermath; about lasting love, squandered opportunities, and how to have the best meal in Chinatown.

How to Read and Why

How to Read and Why PDF Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684859076
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Bloom, the best-known literary critic of our time, shares his extensive knowledge of and profound joy in the works of a constellation of major writers, including Shakespeare, Cervantes, Austen, Dickinson, Melville, Wilde, and O'Connor in this eloquent invitation to readers to read and read well.

Catch As Catch Can

Catch As Catch Can PDF Author: Joseph Heller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1849836507
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 537

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Book Description
Not many writers introduce a phrase - let alone a whole idea - into the language. In CATCH-22, Joseph Heller invented a motif for the modern world. For that book alone he is one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. But where did the author who was able to create that novel come from? And what happened to those remarkable characters? CATCH AS CATCH CAN for the first time collects early works, previously unpublished stories and lost chapters of CATCH-22 to chart the development of a genius. It also explores the consequences in the later stories of the unforgettable Yossarian, and Heller's non-fiction pieces, in which the author reflects upon his childhood in Coney Island and the novel which shaped everything that was written after it.