Knowra Joseph Heller Joseph Heller Joseph Heller (1923–1999) was an American novelist and short-story writer best known for Catch-22, a satirical novel about wartime bureaucracy and absurdity.
Catch-22 : Joseph Heller’s 1961 satirical novel follows U.S. Army Air Forces bombardier Yossarian during World War II. This novel made Heller famous and gave its title to a widely used expression for a self-defeating dilemma.
Something Happened : Joseph Heller’s 1974 novel portrays the anxieties and self-deceptions of a middle-aged corporate executive. Heller turned from wartime farce to the pressures of business and domestic life.
World War II in literature : Fiction and other writing that represent the Second World War and its effects. Catch-22 became a major comic challenge to heroic accounts of wartime service.
Kurt Vonnegut : An American novelist whose work combines science fiction, black humor, and criticism of war and modern society. Vonnegut offers a distinct comic and speculative approach to the absurdities Heller also satirized.
Absurdism : A philosophical and artistic outlook concerned with the conflict between human efforts to find meaning and an indifferent world. Catch-22 makes absurdity a lived condition produced by military rules and danger.
World War II : A global war fought from 1939 to 1945 between the Axis powers and the Allies. Heller served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during the war, which shaped his fiction.
Good as Gold : Joseph Heller’s 1979 satirical novel follows a Jewish American academic drawn into Washington politics. It applies Heller’s institutional satire to political ambition and identity.
Mike Nichols : A German-born American film and theater director, actor, and comedian. Nichols directed the 1970 film adaptation of Catch-22.
Norman Mailer : An American novelist, journalist, and essayist whose writing often examines power, violence, and American identity. Mailer’s more documentary and psychologically ambitious war writing contrasts with Heller’s farce.
Satire : A mode of expression that uses humor, irony, or exaggeration to expose and criticize faults. Heller’s comic exaggeration exposes failures of military and civilian institutions.
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