- Person
- Joseph Heller
- Lived
- 1923–1999
- Field
- Novelist
- From
- American
The story
Joseph Heller was born in 1923 in Coney Island, Brooklyn, the son of poor Jewish immigrants from Russia. He flew 60 bombing missions in the Second World War, studied on the G.I. Bill and then worked in magazine advertising, writing fiction at home in his spare time. One morning in 1953 the opening lines of a novel came to him, and within a week he had drafted a first chapter. It appeared in 1955 in the journal New World Writing under the title 'Catch-18'. Simon & Schuster bought the book on the strength of a partial manuscript, and Heller delivered the finished novel after about eight years of work.
The novel follows Captain John Yossarian, an American bombardier stationed on the imaginary island of Pianosa off the Italian coast, who tries everything to avoid flying more missions. At the heart of the book is a rule called Catch-22. Anyone who is insane can be excused from flying, but he must ask to be excused, and asking shows a rational fear of danger, which proves he is sane. So he must keep flying. In its bleakest form the rule simply says that those in power may do anything that others cannot stop them from doing.
The number in the title was changed from 18 to 22 just before publication in 1961, to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's new novel Mila 18. Heller said that everyone in his book accuses everyone else of being crazy, and that the real question was what a sane person does in an insane society.
The title quickly took on a life of its own. Today 'catch-22' is a standard term in English and other languages for a dilemma with no easy way out, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that the phrase won a place in the English language. The BBC compared Heller's achievement to George Orwell's with 1984: both captured a key idea in a single title, and Catch-22 struck a chord with anyone who had felt helpless before a capricious bureaucracy.
More than sixty years later, people still reach for Heller's phrase whenever they meet a rule that blocks the very thing it seems to allow. A single comic idea gave ordinary speakers a way to name, and push back against, the traps that institutions can create.
Why it matters
Heller gave people everywhere a precise word for the traps that rigid institutions can create, helping them recognise and question absurd rules.
About Joseph Heller
Coney Island-born bombardier turned novelist whose Catch-22 skewered the absurdity of war and bureaucracy – and gave the English language a phrase for every no-win situation.
More about Joseph Heller
- Joseph Heller wrote about beating a paralysing illnessAfter Guillain-Barré syndrome left him paralysed in 1981, Joseph Heller recovered and co-wrote No Laughing Matter about the friends who helped him.
- Joseph Heller taught creative writing at Yale and CCNYAfter Catch-22, Joseph Heller taught creative writing at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, and later at the City College of New York.
- Joseph Heller wrote an anti-war play during VietnamJoseph Heller's play We Bombed in New Haven, written in 1967, carried an anti-war message to Yale and then to Broadway during the Vietnam War.
- Joseph Heller retold King David's life in 'God Knows'In God Knows (1984), Joseph Heller gave voice to the biblical King David, after first drawing on his Jewish roots in Good as Gold (1979).
Sources
- Joseph Heller Wikipedia
- Joseph Heller: Literary giant BBC News
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.