![]() Readers of his novel in the 1960s had a different sensibility, and one which was perfectly attuned to Heller's dead-pan ironies. He was among the first writers to sense the new zeitgeist of what became the Vietnam generation. ![]() The writer and playwright Nelson Algren praised it as "not merely the best American novel to come out of the second world war it is the best American novel that has come out of anywhere in years."Īfter serving in the USAAF during the second world war, Heller spent the next l6 years writing and rewriting a novel about it. Its outrage was directed at the bland evil of war, the US Army Air Force (USAAF), and the bureaucratic scheming of military nonentities. ![]() ![]() And what, as he once asked, "does a sane man do in an insane society?"Ĭatch-22 was an irreverent, savage and cruel satire. He smiled warmly on his dustjackets, as a very wealthy, very successful author should, but admitted that he was "preoccupied with death, disease and misfortune". Later, when his hair had grown whiter and much curlier, he wore it like a Jewish Afro, a great mane which haloed his face. ![]() In publicity photos he looked out warily at his readers. Catch-22's author was then a sulky, ill-tempered 37-year old advertising executive in New York, who had thick, short, curly hair, a strong chin and a fleshy nose. ![]()
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