و باز هم یک ناامیدی مطلق برای من پس از خواندن یکی از معروفترین نوشته های قرن بیستم !
تبصره 22 داستان کسی ایست که در هواپیما مسئول تنظیم زاویه بمب و زمان انداختن آن است ، پس مسئولیت خیلی مهمی دارد . شخصیت اصلی داستان یوساریان هست که در ابتدا باید 25 ماموریت را پرواز کند تا بتواند به خانه برگردد ولی با عوض شدن فرمانده عملیات تعداد ماموریت های انجام شده مدام بالا و بالاتر می رود مابقی داستان به تلاش های یوساریان برای فرار کردن از جنگ و همین طور ضعیف شدن مداوم روحیه ارتش با مشاهده کشته شده شدن نیروهای آمریکایی می گذرد .
همین طور که دیدید داستان شباهت بسیاری با فیلم لیلی با من است دارد و من خودم لیلی با من است را ترجیح می دهم !
کتاب گیرایی چندانی ندارد و طنز تلخ نویسنده هم برای من جالب نبود . در ضمن سریالی به همین نام هم وجود داره با بازی جرج کلونی و سریال هم به اندازه کتاب نچسب و شعاریه

It was a better book before I read it. Before, it was infinitely absurd. After, it was only absolutely absurd. Obviously, infinite is greater than absolute. This book has been diminished by my reading it.

Popsugar Challenge 2020 - a book with twenty in the title

Three chapters in i knew I'd feel the same about this as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A male heavy cast dribbling absolute nonsense. The only females in this book were sex workers and they weren't even allowed their own dialogue. 

I was not invested in this at all, I couldn't care a less about any of the characters. There is no plot, the dialogue is beyond repetitive therefore in a parallel world where im not reading via kindle i am tossing a physical copy of this book over the balcony.

I really must learn to DNF.

Have your friend report you as crazy. Problem solved.

Catch-22 is known as an anti-war novel, but I didn't get that from it at all. It's more an anti-military novel and possibly just anti-organizations in general.

Yes, there's a fair bit of expostulation about war, but Heller really goes into detail about the ineffectiveness of the military itself. Commanders focusing on tight bomb patterns rather than the actual mission.

I think one of the main reasons I read this, besides the fact that everyone else has, was just to find out what Catch-22 meant in the context of this book. It turns out that it has just as many applications within the book as it is commonly used today.

One of the first instances is when Yossarian, one of the main characters of the book, decides he's done flying missions and wants to go home. One way to do so is to be declared insane. The problem is, you can't be declared insane unless you see someone about it...but if you see someone about it, you're obviously not insane because you're worried about your sanity...catch-22.

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

'That's some catch, that Catch-22,' he observed.
'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed."

It goes on to present other instances such as the general military sentiment that your commander is always right...unless they're not, then they're still right. Plenty of dialogue revolves around an officer speaking to a subordinate, the officer has his facts completely wrong, the subordinate tries to correct, and the officer then says, "You calling me a liar?" Of course, that would never happen, so...catch-22.

I think what makes this a classic is partly the writing itself. It's so circular, it often represents the idea it is presenting, catch-22. Not only is the dialogue repetitive all too often (way too often), the events seem to repeat themselves as well, going along with the idea that is catch-22, it's inherently circular, there's no way around it.

I have to say that this is more of a tiring novel than anything. I really enjoyed it from the very beginning, but it also begins to wear on you pretty fast. Each chapter deals with a new person, but almost always somehow connected to Yossarian. But as I complained about above, it's too repetitive for me and that was the beginning of a ruined joke for me. It's just not that funny after a while. This whole book could be so much better at just half the size.

Of course this is an anti-war novel even though I joked about it not being so (yes, that was supposed to be a joke) and that's the actual sad meaning behind Catch-22 comes in. Why is there war? Because of Catch-22. Why does Catch-22 give one the right to go to war? Because Catch-22 says so. If you can beat the other guy, then the law's on your side.

Good, even hilarious at times, but I just couldn't wait to be done.

3 out of 5 Stars

"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."
"Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for."
"And everything worth dying for," answered the sacrilegious old man, "is certainly worth living for."

I think Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is a work of genius. It has imperfections. I don't care. But it's got a brutal message - one which I feel is Truth, despite the painful anatomy lesson used to teach it. It's not simply satirical and cynical, it's exposing the naked falsehoods of human civilization in a scream of agony.

This is a book about that moment in time when one discovers how awful the world really is. Fortunately, most of us who have experienced our own ripping away of existential slipcovers find ways - like watching cat videos - to find our way back to enjoying another sunrise again. Perhaps playful insanity IS the solution to humanity's, and cats', horror of facing the uncertainty of survival.

In Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' Heart of Darkness evil comes from our inborn duality. The character Kurtz, with nothing external within hundreds of miles to stop or control him - no societal peer pressures or advice, no religious strictures, no legal punishments, no one with his weapons or charisma - is tempted by having the powers of a mortal god into destroying the human flesh around him under the delusion he is bringing civilization to the wild chaos of the overwhelming jungle and its people. Kurtz believes Africa to be without righteous order or direction, resistant to rules, laws, progress and religion, a dark, unknown, unmapped region, mysterious and without the light of European wisdom and industry (which was the white European's idea of Africa and Europe at the time - not true then or now). However, as Kurtz resorts to increasingly strong measures to impose rule of law and control on the Eden he unknowingly was trying to tame, he accidentally lets loose the snake demon in his own heart. Too late, Kurtz discovers he has become a monster, and worse, without meaning or intent except that of the torturer. Or perhaps he discovers that the powers of a god are unbearable. In any case, in deciding to master the darkness in the jungle by releasing the darkness of corruption and evil he carried inside himself, he loses the boundary that defined him as a civilized man. Instead, he became one with the wild, evil jungle. Moral - don't give in to defeating the Evil outside by letting loose the Evil inside. Hang on to civilization with everything you've got. It's value is in holding back Evil.

Catch-22 turns all of that inside out -literally. Mankind begins in a state of innocence and meaning well. Man is living in an Eden of delusion and dreams. There is no snake. There is no seed of darkness or evil within or without, only individuality and sensuality. Our societies blind us to reality, while binding us to unreal perceptions of the mind. We motivate ourselves through ambition, philosophy, religion, the creation of enemies and purpose, while indulging the body in sensual delights, not noticing for awhile how temporary or ineffectual these are in moving forward (or if moving forward is real). However. perhaps through war, as set up in this novel, sometimes the fabric of purpose, meaning, and civilization which cover the body of human reality like clothes on our naked bodies can be accidentally removed and delusions exposed. (John Yossarian, the main character, stops wearing his uniform and begins reporting for duty naked for days after discovering the truth about being alive when skin is literally torn off the flesh of a man.) Rules become nonsensical. Religion is nonsensical. Philosophy is nonsensical. Good and evil is nonsense. In other words, civilization is nonsensical. Men have the uncanny ability to become the thing they declare they won't be, or allow to happen what they strive so mightily to stop. Pure sensuality is no place of permanence, only temporary and ephemeral sensation.. Civilization isn't guiding us, but making blind fools of us. In the end, nature will assert itself. Strip off the fabric of delusion, and there is no intelligence, soul or higher purpose. There is only blood, bone, liver, lungs, muscles, stomach and intestines.

But what are we if we strip off everything and see the truth, the meaninglessness and purposeless of breathing and dying? The book hints at escaping into a different paradigm, a dream of our own making instead of being misled by the tropes of our societies (Sweden is the Paradise in Catch-22). Pass out the parachutes.

Kết thúc một tuần Tết tung tăng khắp Hà Nội thì tôi cũng đọc xong Bẫy 22. Đã đọc nguyên tác cách đây chục năm, lần đọc lại này qua bản tiếng Việt giúp tôi nhìn thấy một số điểm chưa nhìn thấy trong lần đọc trước. Tôi thấy trong Catch 22 có tinh thần của 1984 ở những trường đoạn châm biếm toàn trị trong chiến tranh, chẳng hạn đọan buộc tội cha tuyên uý, hay đoạn dọa đưa Yossarian ra toà án binh. Tôi thấy hình ảnh của Zorba tay chơi Hy Lạp ở lão già đối đáp với Nately, bài bác tinh thần dân tộc. Tôi thấy Kafka ở nhiều nơi. Trên hết, đây là cuốn tiểu thuyết cấu thành bằng phi lý, để nói lên bản chất phi lý của chiến tranh. Và nếu cần một thông điệp thì đây: Chiến tranh chỉ có lợi cho bọn con buôn.

خیلی طول دادم تا خوندمش. تبصرۀ بیست و دو ویژگی‌هایی داره که باعث می‌شه نتونی راحت و سریع بخونیش. هرچقدر هم کتاب توی صف مطالعه‌ت داشته باشی. یک ویژگیش روایت غیرخطی داستانه. نمی‌تونیم بگیم داستان نیست، چون شخصیت‌پردازی‌ کرده و ماجرا داره و از پس خرده‌روایت‌هاش برمی‌آد. اما یک داستان واحد نداره. چرا اگه از دید یوساریان ببینیمش داره، ولی این وسط کلی ماجرای دیگه هم اتفاق می‌افته که باعث می‌شه ما یوساریان رو شخصیت اصلی نبینیم. با یه داستان پست‌مدرن طرفیم که پیرنگ معمول رو شکسته.

ویژگی دوم فضای داستان و شخصیت‌هاست. شخصیت زیاد داره، جزییات زیاد داره، و فضاش جنگ جهانی دومه. نمی‌شه چنین داستانی رو سریع خوند. وگرنه جزییات و شخصیت‌ها و فضای داستان توی ذهنمون نمی‌مونه. از طرفی راستش برای من به‌قدری فضای جنگ جهانی دوم دور از ذهنه که نویسنده حق داشته این‌قدر سر فضاسازی به زحمت بیفته. اونم نه فضاسازی‌های عادی. با دیالوگ و شخصیت‌ها. با یه نویسندۀ واقعاً حرفه‌ای طرفیم، نه یکی که مستند بسازه.

توی ریویوها دیدم بچه‌ها اشاره کردن داستان از ریتم می‌افتاد و شخصیت‌ها و جزییات زیادش باعث می‌شد آدم سخت بخونه و خسته بشه. آره متأسفانه همین‌طور هست. ینی کسانی که موقع نوشته شدنش خونده‌ن، همۀ اینا رو با چشم جان خوندن. ولی برا ما که فضای ذهنیمون یه عالم دوره سخته. اما از طرفی ویژگی‌های ادبیش به‌قدری هست که خوندنش واجب بشه. جدا ازینکه جزو بهترین نمونه‌های ادبیات ضد جنگه. توی مقدمۀ کتاب هم اومده تبصرۀ بیست و دوی جوزف هلر توی درس ادبیات آمریکا یه اثر شاخصه و خوندنش برا دانشجوها اهمیت داره. بنابراین چیزی نیست که بشه ازش گذشت، اما بسیار هم مخاطب رو اذیت می‌کنه.

دو تا تیکه هم از ریویوها توی ریویوی خودم می‌آرم.

از "ورپریده":


بى توجه بودن به جان انسان ها، تبعيض هاى نژادى، ظلم و ستم، آرمان هاى پوچ و بيهوده، قربانى شدن انسان ها به خاطر مقاصد زياده خواهانه مسئولان بلندپايه، سرمايه دارى و ثروت اندوزى با سواستفاده از انسان ها، بى توجهى انسان ها به ظلم و يكديگر و ده ها مفهوم ديگه به خوبى و خيلى هوشمندانه و حرفه اى با طنز تلخى بيان شدن.
اين كتاب واقعاً شاهكار و فوق العاده ست. بايد چندين بار خوندن ش و هربار چيز تازه اى ازش يادگرفت. عميقاً و با حوصله و سر فرصت بخونيدش.


و از سهیل:

در نهايت بايد دو ايراد از كتاب بگيرم. مسئله ى اول اينه كه پيرنگ و پرداخت شخصيت ها در حدى نيست كه مخاطب رو ٥٠٠ صفحه همراهى كنه و بعضى جاها از ريتم ميفته. بعضى جاها انگار هلر فقط خواسته داستان رو كش بده، بعضى شخصيت ها اضافى بودن و بعضى اتفاقات جذابيت زيادى براى من نداشتن


به‌خصوص که واقعاً بعضی اتفاقات برا من هم جذابیت نداشتن. اینقدر که فکر می‌کردم شاید نمی‌فهمم چی شده. یه جاهایی هم نمی‌فهمیدم ها. فضای جنگ خیلی فضای غریبیه. تلاش نویسنده تا همین جا هم ستودنی بوده.

Video review

Even more absurd than its countless catches is how such a crazy novel - straight-up silly at times - can be this moving. If you can stomach its ryhthm long enough to start caring about the characters, you are in for a reading experience of incomparable impact. Yossarian lives!

I’m not sure if it’s a talent or an affliction, but I’ve been blessed or cursed with a penchant for taking someone else’s creative work and extrapolating it to skewed extremes. That explains my yet-to-be-published collection of fan fiction, unauthorized sequels, and twists in perspective. I first discovered this talent/affliction as a boy when I imagined a fourth little pig who leveraged himself to the hilt, built a luxury skyscraper, and, with YUGE block letters at its base, labelled it Pig Tower. The Big Bad Wolf, as a professional courtesy (and quite possibly with the promise of kickbacks), agreed to a huff and puff waiver.

As a teen I wrote a follow-up to Kurt Vonnegut’s classic that I called Slaughterhouse-Six. It was set in a mirror image world where war was devastating the planet Tralfamadore. Fortunately, the protagonist, Libby Mirglip, survived the bombs and lived a varied if not full life after the conflict. She was aided by alien visitors from planet Earth who showed her, through their own less enlightened example, what not to do.

I’d prefer not to go into the details of one my more recent works, Fifty-two Shades of Grey. If it’s ever published, it’ll be under an assumed name, or maybe names – I’m toying with the idea of S. and M. John. BTW, I saw that some other joker stole my basic idea and technically beat me to the preferred number fifty-one.

This brings us to my latest, Catch-23. Since I’ve already done an absurdist post-war account of tragedy/comedy with Slaughterhouse-Six, I wanted to steer clear of such a heavy/humorous theme this time. Instead, Catch-23 is the story of a local seafood restaurant on 23 S. Washington St. in Naperton, Illinois. They became famous for their Shrimp Yossarian. Then a new executive chef upped the number of times customers would fly through the doors by offering Skate Wing Schnitzel a la Scheisskopf, Major Major Mahi Mahi, and Stuffed Oysters Orr-style. Naperton’s whore gave the story some much needed spice. (As with any fan fiction, references will only be appreciated by those who know the original.)

Oh, and hey, there is a catch here. Against your better judgment, you continued reading each ridiculous example in this exercise of “one more." Making it this far means you’ve read “one more” paragraph all the way to the end. The catch is that you must be crazy enough to perceive this as a payoff.

The following is an example of how many conversations in this book took place.

Jen: I didn't like this book.
Nigel: Why didn't you like the book?
Jen: I did like the book.
Nigel: You just said you didn't like the book.
Jen: No I didn't.
Nigel: You're lying.
Jen: I don't believe in lying.
Nigel: So you never lie?
Jen: Oh yes, I lie all the time.
Nigel: You just said you don't believe in it.
Jen: I don't believe in it, Jen said as she ate a chocolate covered cotton ball.
Nigel: Well I liked the book.
Jen: Fabulous! I liked it too!
Nigel: What did you like about it?
Jen: Oh, I hated it.

I think Heller was showing how war is chaotic by not writing in a chronological order. You really have no idea in what order events are taking place. I think he was showing how war is ridiculous by writing conversations like the one above. I'm not sure if any of his goals were to annoy the living hell out of his readers, but he annoyed me. 460 pages of absurdness is too much for me. Most of the characters were very one-dimensional. I could only distinguish between people by their names. Most of the good guys all had the same personalities and the bad guys all had the same personalities except one character ate peanut brittle and another put crab apples in his cheeks. Other than that - same personalities. Maybe his goal was only to distinguish between the good, everyday guys and the evil, power-hungry men in charge. If so, he succeeded. I just wasn't thrilled after page 150 or so. There is some funny stuff in there. The chocolate-covered cotton balls will crack me up for life. There's some really sad stuff too. It's weird because every time someone died, I cared, even though I knew nothing about them, except what they ate or who their favorite whore was. I'm not sure how Heller pulled that off. Anyway, I would recommend it. It's just that the ridiculousness of it gets to the point where it's just, well, ridiculous, and beyond my personal tolerance level. I still appreciated it though.

This book was utterly misrepresented to me before I read it. For some reason I'd always thought it had been published the same year as Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and was considered as representing the other fork of post World War II American literature apart from Pynchon's--this the conventional, plot-driven one catering to stupid people. Some professor or some didact must have told me that, enrroenously as it turns out, once. Catch 22 predates the Pynchon masterpeice by 15 years, and is in style an apt precursor. Its subject is war and its hilarity. In this it shares much with Pynchon as well as Vonnegut. Since James Heller is not as obviously over-bursting with brilliance and random facts about particle physics as Pynchon, nor is he as willing to pander to mainstream tastes (I think) as Vonnegut, Catch 22 is a tought read at the begiining. There is a lot of irony and detachment, but with not as much ease as Vonnegut and with less of the awe inspired by Pynchon. IN fact, I almost gave up, and had started this book (450 pages) several times before and actually had given up. The real story of Catch 22 doesn't start coming together well past page 200, but when it does, it really does. There is a brilliant portrait of an entrepreneurial mess chef who is the representation of evil, evil being capitalism and the lack of loyalty to any moral cause. He creates a vast international smuggling network whose intricacies are at once ridicuously amusing and yet, it seems, accurately and minutely portrayed--it's as if Heller were a partcile physicist translating science for us when he lays out how that "syndicate" works. Most importantly, the book affected me because of what it had to say about war, and then how it was able to communicate that through the heartbreaking travails of one officer--Yossarian--who is willing to act out human desires in the face of a dominant culture turned insanse and subhuman, caricatured. His wartime airforce base is a perfect illustration of RD Laing's common-sense supposition, developed not long after the period of this novel, that insanity is a sane response to an insane world. Catch 22 is clever and tight and thematic--"Catch 22" refers to how things that seem irrational can be made to seem rational through tautology. This is a cleverly embroidered theme throught the entire novel. But in the end these are not what make the book great. It's the emotion at the heart of the book, Yossarian's desire to live and be fleshly human, and his unwillingness to retreat into the bastions of irony and obtuseness so attractive to eberyone around him. This is what makes Catch 22 heartbreaking and poignant, tear0jerkin even.

I’ve stopped reading this for the second time in quick succession. I really love the idea of Catch 22 – that is, that there are things in life where, for example, to show you are crazy you need to say you are crazy, but saying you are crazy proves you can’t be. And while these paradoxes are interesting and sometimes even amusing – I found this book anything but. I found that the humour was far too laboured and far too ‘over-the-top’ to be really all that funny. The repetitions in the book started to drive me nuts too. Not just the obvious repetitions of things to identify characters – although these made the characters seem to be more caricatures and highly irritating ones, at that – but also the idea that this was a working through of every example of a Catch 22 situation that the writer could think up also started to annoy me. I know it was meant as parody, but …

I think part of the problem may be that I think the humour has not aged well. I have had a very similar experience with a book I loved when I first read it a hundred years ago – Milligan’s Puckoon– but when I started reading it again recently I had to stop half way through as I barely getting a smile out of it. This has worried me greatly as I was thinking of going back and reading his Adolf Hitler My Part in his Downfall – but might just rely on my pleasant memories of that book.

I had really hoped to enjoy this, and perhaps I would have if I had read it in the 70s when I first planned to – but unfortunately this one didn’t work for me nearly as well as I had hoped. Now, I just found it far too heavy-handed