Unit 1 Joseph Heller: Catch-22
Unit 2 Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five
Unit 3 Vladimir Nabokov: Pale Fire
Unit 4 John Barth: The Floating Opera
Unit 5 Philip Roth: American Pastoral
Unit 6 William Burroughs: Naked Lunch
Unit 7 John Hawkes: Second Skin
Unit 8 Edgar Lawrence Doctorow: Ragtime
Unit 9 Robert Coover: The Public Burning
Unit 10 Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49
Unit 11 William H. Gass: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
Unit 12 Maxine Hong Kingston: Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book
Answers to the Questions
內容試閱：
Introduction of Catch-22
Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel published in 1961. Although this novel has won no awards, it is still regarded as one of the most significant novels of the 20th century. Scholar and fellow World War Ⅱ veteran Hugh Nibley says it is the most accurate book he has ever read about the military. In many magazines, Catch-22 is ranked highly on the bestseller list. It has been adapted into films, plays and television series.
Writing Features
1 Black Humor
2 Satire
Plot of Catch-22
Catch-22 tells a story taking place in an Air Force Base of the US in wartime Italy, of which the protagonist is Yossarian, a soldier who rebels against the dangerous and bureaucratically structured war by trying to escape. His commander, Colonel Cathcart, is a man of no scruples. In
order to boost up his own prestige within the army, Cathcart keeps raising the number of missions that the men have to fly before they get to leave. Out of fear for flying and the increasing chances of meeting death, Yossarian visits Doctor Daneeka and pleads him to ground him on the basis of insanity. Daneeka, however, tells him that in accordance with army regulation Catch-22, insane men who ask to be grounded must prove their sanity because of their concern for personal safety.
In a word, whether you are insane or not, you have to fly. Moreover, Yossarian is confused at the behavior of those at the top of the military machine, the generals, colonels, and Milo’s enterprises.
The terrible death of his fellow pilot, Snowden, also becomes a heavy load on his mind. Then, his former tent-mate, Orr, gets mad, drifts ashore in Sweden and disappears mysteriously, which makes Yossarian feel further lost. It takes a long time for him to finally realize that Orr has been planning this escape all along. “Black humor” comes again when Yossarian decides to run away and join Orr in Sweden. At this moment, he finally finds that there is no such a thing as Catch-22, the absence of which does not matter any more at this time because the soldiers have already believed in it. In the end, Yossarian manages to escape the clutches of war and death.
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