The Sixties Catalogue

31 J u l y 2 0 2 0 “That’s Some Catch, That Catch-22” 29. HELLER, Joseph. Catch-22. New York, 1961. Octavo, original blue cloth, dust jacket, custom clamshell box. $4000. Click for more info First edition, first printing, of this extraordinary first novel whose title has come to define an unwinnable situation—an “explosive, bitter, subversive, brilliant book” (New Republic). “When thenovel appeared in 1961,WorldWar II veterans appreciated its satire of the military bureaucracy and the chaos of war. By the mid-1960s, it had become a cult classic among counterculture activists for its biting indictment of war” (New York Public Library, Books of the Century, 117). Book fine; a bit of edge-wear to bright near-fine dust jacket. “Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.”