Catch-22 is another book that falls squarely into the "classic for a reason" bucket. It's witty and clever and funny and depressing and crushing. And it is the grace with which it balances all these elements that makes the book stand out.
What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.
In a lot of ways Catch-22 is what would happen if Douglas Adams wrote a war novel. But alongside all the wit and banter, Heller also provides a heavy and provoking character arch for Yossarian, the main character of the novel. It's not a linear story and many parts of it are stated before they are told. The characters introduced are really given life, and it is the life that Heller gives them that makes the casualties of war so compelling.
Catch-22 is a different book by 150 pages in. And it is still another book at 300 pages, and another one at the end. An each story is like another layer being stripped away. Some characters come and go and come back again, but and it is the madness of their coming and going that we get to see through Yossarian's viewpoint.
The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
Catch-22 probably isn't for everyone, but it is one of the most unique books I have read. I'm late to the party on this one, after many people I know read it in high school. But among those classics that it seems like everyone has read, I think this is the most deserving of its place.