Joseph Heller - Catch-22 II

"it's almost half dialogue apart from tons of unnecessary descriptions and a smattering of fistfights and actual combat."


"This book is CrAzY! From the get-go, you'll be confused. Not because you can't read but because the book isn't in chronological order, which gives the impression that Joseph Heller was having a seizure while writing this book and the editors didn't catch it."


"First off, the writing here is garbage. Actually, it's every bit as bad as Twilight. The worst crime with the writing is that, like the aforementioned Twilight saga, Heller does more telling than showing. Yeah, the gun is across the room. you don't need to tell us that. How about 'Clevinger was surprised to discover the inexorable hatred of the Action board, which was the strangest of many things happening'. That is way better than, paraphrasing here, 'There were many strange things happening. The strangest of all was the inexorable hatred of the Action Board. Clevinger was surprised to discover it.' There are more examples of that throughout the book, and they are WAY longer than the one I provided. There are several run-on sentences and examples of bad grammar, which are annoying. And the dialogue is just 'shoot me in the head' awful.
...
The plot? Was there even any plot? I could hardly distinguish one. Just random events happening. Also, the book tries to make itself like a movie by jumping around from character to character when it comes to certain things, something I hate. The names are stupid too- Major Major Major Major? Colonel Korn? ... I felt like someone had spiked my coffee with LSD by the time I got to the end."


"what it portrays is totally disrespectable to the majority of military people who work hard and follow the rules."


"Since I didn't like this book it is guaranteed that they would not put my comment on the web site ... Unfortunately this was twenty bucks I won't get back. I would like to beg anyone planning to actually read this book to not, one of the most absurd things was attempted in this novel and it failed miserably: to look at the lighter side of war."


"The kind of humor employed was strange and I have never seen it before"


"There are many myths that persist in modern life. One myth is that war is 'meaningless', 'useless' or 'insane.' Another myth is that Catch-22 is a good book ... Many American wars were fought because people believed passionately in a noble cause and were willing to fight to defend that cause against those who would vanquish it."


"Yossarian is a bore. A hero in his own right for having flown so many dangerous missions, he runs away from heroism to become an epic-slacker and whiner."


"There is no central unifying theme"


"If a student wrote a paper/essay like this he/she would get batted across the head."


"I guess it IS number two because this novel (If you can even call it that) was S**T! I rename it, Catch Number 2"


"Catch-22 is rather about smoke and mirrors, a second-rate magician's parlor tricks. It is conceptually weakened by the over arcing, anti-finessed characters. Each goes about with a sledge hammer banging out Joesph Heller's ideology, an artificial artifice. It would never be published today by a known house and caught in his own 22, Heller would, need do and left to, the self-publishing ocean of unread authors."


"I personally feel if Joseph Heller wrote it later on in life he would have had more life experiences to draw upon and could have written a much better novel."


"Obviously, a lot people were smoking a lot of weed in the sixties to think this thing is worth reading."


"Anybody mind if I break up the love-fest for this piece of anti-establishment drivel? Get serious folks. The premise of this book is based on three assumptions, all incorrect, which are as follows: (1) the military is evil, (2) any person in the military is an idiot, and (3) any person who mocks the military is heroic.
Please. This type of thinking went out with flower power and tie-dyed t-shirts. Get with the times, people. Vietnam is over."

Joseph Heller - Catch-22

"My dad warned me that this book was lower on the evolution scale than a wet turd, but I thought I'd try it anyway. I hated this with every fibre in my body and with any luck the book will just crawl away and die."


"Characters come in and out. They all want to state there opinion. They are unlikable. They are stupid and you know what after 150 pages I can say WTF is the fuss all about? I am starting to think it's a pretentious thing. Advise; you want to be pretentious read Dostoevsky, it is difficult writing and long. It comes from history. But you know what the hell things are about, and you can follow where it is going. I could've not rated it. But I wanted to hurt him for buying the book and keeping it on the shelve for 6 years. I should have burned it for winter heat....only problem it rarely goes below 10 degrees centigrade around here in the middle of the harshest winter."


"If his title had been something slightly less appealing like 'Catch-33' or if the term 'Catch-22' was used but hidden in the text, rather than used as the title, no one would have ever heard of this book."


"The whole thrust of Heller's book seems to be that humans are totally horrible creatures and that one must do whatever is necessary to survive. Look out for number one. If he was alive today, even if in a wheelchair with an oxygen can, I'd go right up to him and beat the living snot out of him."


"to compare this book to the modern books of our time is like comparing black and white television to our high definition televisions lol.. thats what I think about this book! :D"


"The book was about a captain named Yossarian, who doesn't want to fly a plane. I kinda get why he wouldn't want to fly a plane"


"This is most probably the true origin of internet stupidity"


"unpatriotic"


"Read something else instead. And don't worry that you won't look cool to those intelligent, well-read friends of yours. They didn't like it either. They are just trying to look cool to everyone else."


"It seemed like one big exercise in sarcasm and opposite-ness. I had trouble following it. It also was lambasting the military/government."


"Heck, I even contemplated putting up a sign where the book is displayed in the bookstore, saying 'DON'T BUY THIS BOOK' were it not for my law-abiding morally-right sensitivities."


"Typical of modern 'literature' which tries to devalue life while promoting a 'nihilist' and 'left' slant ad nauseam."


"Joseph Heller tried way too hard to be clever, while at the same time being stridently anti-american and advocating the worst sort of selfish immorality."


"The whole Catch 22 thing in itself was very confusing."


"I had to stop reading this book because of the sex and nudity."