Catch-22.

HELLER, Joseph.

Item Number: 1954

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961.

First edition of the author’s first book. Octavo, original blue cloth. Near fine in a bright near fine dust jacket. Signed by the author. Wildly original, brilliantly comic, brutally gruesome, it is a dazzling performance that will probably outrage nearly as many readers as it delights. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box.

"Catch-22, Joseph Heller's first and best-known novel, depicts a military world turned upside down. In Heller's World War II, a supplies manager has more power than a general, and anyone seeking a discharge on the grounds of insanity is declared sane enough to keep on fighting. When the novel appeared in 1961, World War II veterans ppreciated its satire of the military bureaucracy and chaos of war. By the mid-1960's, it had become a cult classic among counterculture activists for its biting indictments of war. Many consider the novel to be the definitive statement of the modern antiwar position. The phrase 'Catch-22', symbolizing the bsurdity of all institutional logic, has become a permanent part of our language." (NYPL Books of the Century 177)