Unglued from Time: Shahriar Mandanipour’s Moon Brow
An enjoyable and thought-provoking read, Moon Brow trades on its striking and unusual formal features to allude to the complexities and consequences of war.
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Posts Tagged: Catch-22
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #86: Max Allan Collins
In April, the Mystery Writers of America named Max Allan Collins a Grand Master, the organization’s peer-voted lifetime achievement award. Collins has had a prolific and often eclectic career. The Iowa Writers Workshop graduate has written more than one hundred books, has had a long career as a comics writer including, most famously, the Road to […]
...moreAmerican Lit’s Reclusive Editor
Without editor Robert Gottlieb, contemporary classics such as True Grit and Catch-22 might not exist in the forms we know them—but that doesn’t seem to move him. In a rare interview for the Guardian, Michelle Dean visited Gottlieb at his New York home to talk about his long list of achievements, which he demurely brushes […]
...moreStability in the Spinning Chaos
Why is Catch-22 so widely read? According to the Guardian’s Sam Jordison, Joseph Heller’s novel is powerful because its protagonist Yossarian is “an old-fashioned hero”: Readers immediately cared about Yossarian, and his survival. Yossarian is the point of connection and understanding; a strong central fulcrum around which the chaos of the novel spins. He’s also that universally appealing […]
...moreAn Enduring Paradox
Catch-22 turns 50 this year. NPR explores how and why the the novel’s central paradox still resonates with readers—particularly with “a new crop of young people distrustful of their elders. ” “Catch-22 is a concept everyone can understand. That’s why it so quickly became part of the language — a phrase to be called upon […]
...moreWhat’s the Catch?
Catch-22 turns 50 today. What better way to celebrate than perusing this article. It discusses why the novel has inspired such “divergent” reactions. In teasing out the reasons, the article takes us back into the intricacies of Heller’s work and argues that the principal flaw comes from a clash between the novel’s satirical intention and […]
...more“Famous for the Wrong Book”
Oftentimes an author’s most popular work is not actually his or her best, qualitatively speaking. What about those other under-the-radar books that don’t seem to get to get credit where credit’s due? Joseph Heller wrote other books beside Catch-22, right? Learn about the books that we should be familiar with, but aren’t.
...moreThe Blurb #14: The Land of Underwater Birds
What makes a good title? The Great Gatsby is one for the ages—but it wasn’t Fitzgerald’s idea. He wanted to call his novel Trimalchio in West Egg, which sounds like something Dr. Seuss dreamed up for The Playboy Channel.
...moreWar Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery
With echoes of 9/11, the protagonist of Jim Knipfel’s novel flees the ubiquitous surveillance of a not-so-futuristic government.
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