Catch – 22.

HELLER, Joseph.

Item Number: 21040

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961.

First edition of the author’s first book. Octavo, original blue cloth. Signed by Joseph Heller on the title page. Near fine in a bright near fine dust jacket with a few small closed tears. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. A superior example.

"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 appreciated 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 absurdity of all institutional logic, has become a permanent part of our language" (NYPL Books of the Century 177). Named by Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century.