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Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (MCI) (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

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Three new additions to Harold Bloom's 'Modern Critical Interpretations' ($36.95 each) series will reach high school into college levels, compiling critical articles from a variety of sources and offering the in-depth analysis students will need to assist on detailed reports of an author's single work. Joseph Heller's Catch 22 (0-7910-5927-8) provides articles which examine how the sane can survive under insane wartime circumstances; Elie Wiesel's Night (5924-3) gathers critical writings on his story of life in a Nazi concentration camp, and the focus on Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings (5665-1) considers the contents and impact of the three-volume epic fantasy. All include essays by notable critics who offer different interpretations and focus perfect for classroom discussion or essay pursuit.

I read Catch-22 in my first semester of college in '91. What inspired me was a "Life in Hell" cartoon by Matt Groening about the stages of growing up. There's one frame captioned, "realizing that everything you've ever believed is a lie," which shows the wide-eyed Bongo reading Catch-22. My english teacher had also listed it as one of the books we should read sometime in our lives. It put into words a lot of disillusionment that I felt, and also I laughed really hard.