Summary
Joseph Heller's funny, tragic satirical anti-war novel was published in 1961 and sold millions. For many it epitomised the growing anti-establishment mood of the 1960s. Heller had served in a bomber squadron during World War Two. Though his experiences provide the setting for the book, its target was actually the America of the 1950s. Using interviews with the author from the BBC archive, Alex Last tells the story behind Catch-22.
(Photo: A first edition of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, published by Simon and Schuster. Credit: Abe Books)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:29.6 | Birth in Ice Valley is returning. |
| 0:33.2 | We've been trying to find answers to an unsolved mystery. |
| 0:36.3 | And now we're back with an update on the case. |
| 0:39.2 | We'll be here to tell you more about it at the end of this podcast. |
| 0:42.8 | Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service |
| 0:51.0 | with me Alex Last and in today's episode we go back to |
| 0:55.1 | 1961 and the publication of the satirical anti-war novel Catch-22 by the American author Joseph Heller, which became a cult classic, sold millions and even created |
| 1:06.3 | a new term for the English language. |
| 1:08.5 | We're in the catch-22 here, we can't win. |
| 1:14.0 | It's a catch-22 in that political game. |
| 1:16.0 | As far as we can see, there's a catch-22 situation. |
| 1:19.0 | It's a catch-22. |
| 1:20.0 | And they're in a catch-22 situation. |
| 1:22.0 | Calsoom's going to be in a catch-22. |
... |
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