Joseph Heller and Catch-22

Q. 'It's a Catch-22 situation', is a term we hear trotted out all the time. What's the dictionary definition

A. According to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary it is 'a condition or consequence that precludes success; a dilemma where the victim cannot win'.

�

Q. And Joseph Heller invented the term

A. He did, in his 1961 novel of the same name.

�

Q. What is Catch-22 all about

A. Its basically a protest novel underscored with dark humour. It satirises the horrors of war and the power of modern society - especially bureaucratic institutions - to destroy the human spirit.

�

Q. So how does Catch-22 work in the book

A. In a nutshell: you're crazy to fight and get killed, but if you want to get out of the army you're obviously not crazy so you have to stay in. The hero - a World War II bombardier named Yossarian, an American of Assyrian extraction - was heroic enough to be cowardly and cowardly enough to want out.

�

Q. How was the book received at the time

A. 'Wildly original, brilliantly comic, brutally gruesome, it is a dazzling performance that will probably outrage nearly as many readers as it delights' sums up the tone of many of the reviews. It caught the changing mood of the time, and became something of a bible in the anti-war, anti-establishment movements of the 1960s.

�

Q. And the 1970 film

A. Starring Alan Arkin as Yossarian and featuring some pretty big names, such as Orson Welles, Bob Newhart, Art Garfunkel (yes, the maths professor), John Voight and Martin Sheen - though the latter two were yet to make their big breaks - it was not quite the success of the original novel. Perceived as overlong and lacking the lightness of touch of Heller's book, it still had some fine moments. It also probably suffered adversely from coming out in the same year as that other great anti-war satire, the hugely successful M*A*S*H*.

�

Q. And a little bit about Heller himself

A. He was born in Brooklyn in 1923 and grew up on Coney Island. He began his writing career with short stories but won immediate acclaim with Catch-22, his first novel.

�

The book was inspired by Heller's experiences in World War II, when he flew 60 combat missions as a bombardier with the US Air Force in Europe. In the 1950s he worked as an English lecturer, an advertising copywriter and as promotion manager, meanwhile writing Catch-22 in his spare time.

In the early 1980s, Heller developed the deadly nerve disease, Guillain-Barr� Syndrome. With his friend Speed Vogal, he interpreted this experience and his recovery in the collaborative work No Laughing Matter (1986).

�

Q. Guillain-Barr� Syndrome

A. An auto-immune attack on the motor nerves, which leads to progressive weakness and reflex loss.

�

Q. Is the rest of his output in a similar vein to Catch-22

A. Yes. His works are characterised by a satirical sense of the absurd, speaking out against the military-industrial complex and those organised institutions which seem to manipulate people's lives.

�

Q. And they are

A. Among his other books are Something Happened (1974), an unrelievedly pessimistic novel, Good as Gold (1979), a satire on political life in Washington, DC, God Knows (1984), a wry monologue in the voice of the biblical King David, Poetics (1987) and Picture This (1988), which juxtaposes great figures from Western culture, such as Plato and Rembrandt, with 20th-century America to exploit the recurrent clashes between genius and power.

�

Closing Time (1994), brings his work full circle by reuniting the wartime heroes of Catch-22 - Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder and the others - in New York fifty years later. It received wide critical acclaim, and, according to one reviewer, it showed 'a national treasure at work'. His posthumously-published novella Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (2000) provided critics with further opportunity for appreciative retrospective comment.

�

He died 1999 of a heart attack.

�

For more on Arts & Literature click here

�

By Simon Smith