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explodinghead 's review for:
Catch-22
by Joseph Heller
If you haven't read CATCH-22, don't think of it as a classic. Think of it as a comedy.
This book took me far longer than it should have to read. It's touted around as a classic, and a story about war, so I was expecting something dreary and traumatic. If I would have known how funny this CATCH-22 was, I would have picked it up sooner! There were plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, and stylistically, there are a lot of comparisons to be made with Kurt Vonnegut. The novel is funny until it is suddenly not, in the last 8 chapters or so.
My problem with the book -- and maybe it's by design -- is that the first 3/4's are so damn goofy that it is hard to take any of it seriously. Characters have outlandish, cartoon names, and they say outlandish, cartoon things. And some of them bite the dust in ways that suggests a punchline. For those reasons, it was hard to be invested in much of anything for the first 75% of the book. When the tone shifts, I found myself much more interested and invested in the lives of the book's inhabitants.
This book took me far longer than it should have to read. It's touted around as a classic, and a story about war, so I was expecting something dreary and traumatic. If I would have known how funny this CATCH-22 was, I would have picked it up sooner! There were plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, and stylistically, there are a lot of comparisons to be made with Kurt Vonnegut. The novel is funny until it is suddenly not, in the last 8 chapters or so.
My problem with the book -- and maybe it's by design -- is that the first 3/4's are so damn goofy that it is hard to take any of it seriously. Characters have outlandish, cartoon names, and they say outlandish, cartoon things. And some of them bite the dust in ways that suggests a punchline. For those reasons, it was hard to be invested in much of anything for the first 75% of the book. When the tone shifts, I found myself much more interested and invested in the lives of the book's inhabitants.