Catch-22 [antikvár]

Preface to CATCH-22 In 1961, The New York Times was a newspaper with eight columns. And on November 11 of that year, one day after the official publication date of Catch-22, the page with the book review carried an unusual advertisement that ran from top to bottom and was five columns wide. To the eye the effect was stupendous. The book review that day, of a work by somebody else, was squeezed aside to the fold of the page, as were the crossword puzzle and all else. The ad had this caption : WHAT'S THE CATCH? And displayed at the top in silhouette was the comic cartoon of a uniformed figure in flight, glancing off to the side at some unspecified danger with an expression of panic. It was an announcement ad for Catch-22. Interwoven with the text were mentions of praise from twenty-one individuals and groups of some public standing, most connected to literature and the publishing world, who had received the novel before publication and had already reviewed it or commented about it favourably. Within days after publication, there was a review in The Nation by Nelson Algren (a client of my own literary agent, who had urged him to read it), who wrote of Catch-22 that it 'was the best novel to come out of anywhere in years'. And there was a review by Studs Terkel in a Chicago daily newspaper that recommended it about as highly. So much attention to the work at publication was in large part the result of the industrious zeal and appreciation of my literary agent, Candida Donadio, and my editor, Robert Gottlieb, and I embrace the opportunity afforded now to dedicate this new edition to both of them, as colleagues and allies with talents that were of immeasurable value. The work was not reviewed in the Times on publication. However, it was reviewed in the Herald Tribune by Maurice Dolbier, and Mr. Dolbier said of it: 'A wild, moving, shocking, hilarious, raging, exhilarating, giant roller-coaster of a book'. That the reviewer for the Herald Tribune came to review at all this war novel by someone unknown was almost entirely the