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Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
CATCH-22 ON ITS 50TH ANNIVERSARY HELLER, JOSEPH. Catch-22. 8vo, original blue cloth, spine lettered in white, top edges stained orange; dust jacket, a few small soil marks at extreme lower edge of front panel, with original publisher's printed query card specifically for this title laid in. first edition in first state dust jacket having $5.95 on upper inside flap with Heller wearing a corduroy jacket rather than a leather jacket. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961
heller's first novel and greatest literary and commercial success. warmly inscribed by him in blue pen on front free endpaper to the gentleman whom Heller describes in another inscription as being "far and away" his favorite autograph collector. The inscription reads "To Frank Adamucci, Jr.,/ With sincere good/wishes again to/my favorite favorite./ Bless you for your loyalty and good/opinion of me./ Joseph Heller / 5 10 70/ N.Y.C." Few works of twentieth-century American fiction have had the immediate and enduring impact as Catch-22. Not without controversy, Heller's black-humored evisceration of the "Good War" cultural assumptions would become increasingly relevant in the years following its publication, especially in the wake of the escalating Vietnam War. A film version of the book was released in 1970. Directed by noted filmmaker Mike Nichols and scripted by Buck Henry (the two had worked together in the same capacities on another significant 60s cultural document - the 1967 film The Graduate), the movie also proved a success.
