Sick-sick-sick, or maybe just foul, this spends a few weeks with Jacob Horner from the time when he is picked up by a Negro headshrinker who diagnoses his trouble as immobility. After a few treatments, he recommends that Jake get moving as an English teacher and Jake applies at Wicomico State Teachers College where he becomes the household friend of the Morgans,- Joe, who stimulates him intellectually, his wife Rennie- an outdoor type-who eventually becomes involved with him indoors. Rennie finds herself pregnant, threatens suicide; both are lashed by remorse and self-contempt; and Joe, in his desperate attempt to find an abortionist, ends in a bargain with the Doctor and Rennie dies on the table.... The same road that has been travelled with Kerouac, and to an extent Herbert Gold, this is for those schooled in the waste matter of the body and the mind; for others, a real recoil.
Pub Date: July 17, 1958
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1958
IN THE NEWS
This ran in the S.E.P. and resulted in more demands for the story in book form than ever recorded. Well, here it is and it is a honey. Imagine ten people, not knowing each other, not knowing why they were invited on a certain island house-party, not knowing their hosts. Then imagine them dead, one by one, until none remained alive, nor any clue to the murderer. Grand suspense, a unique trick, expertly handled.
Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1939
ISBN: 0062073478
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dodd, Mead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1939
SEEN & HEARD
Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.
Catch-22 is an unusual, wildly inventive comic novel about World War II, and its publishers are planning considerable publicity for it.
Set on the tiny island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean Sea, the novel is devoted to a long series of impossible, illogical adventures engaged in by the members of the 256th bombing squadron, an unlikely combat group whose fanatical commander, Colonel Cathcart, keeps increasing the men's quota of missions until they reach the ridiculous figure of 80. The book's central character is Captain Yossarian, the squadron's lead bombardier, who is surrounded at all times by the ironic and incomprehensible and who directs all his energies towards evading his odd role in the war. His companions are an even more peculiar lot: Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who loved to win parades; Major Major Major, the victim of a life-long series of practical jokes, beginning with his name; the mess officer, Milo Minderbinder, who built a food syndicate into an international cartel; and Major de Coverley whose mission in life was to rent apartments for the officers and enlisted men during their rest leaves. Eventually, after Cathcart has exterminated nearly all of Yossarian's buddies through the suicidal missions, Yossarian decides to desert — and he succeeds.
Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1961
ISBN: 0684833395
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1961
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
APPRECIATIONS
SEEN & HEARD
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