Happy birthday, Joseph Heller

“Joseph Heller said that once in a while he would find a sentence that contained a hundred more sentences. That happened to him when he started Catch-22, the moment he wrote the sentence about Yossarian falling in love with the chaplain. That sentence told him where the rest of the novel was going.” – Salman Rushdie

Author of my favorite book of all time Catch 22.

Heller wrote: “Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts, and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?”

From Catch-22:

There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and he would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to, but if he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.

The Catch-22, acknowledged right up front as an unspoken rule of the universe, is directly responsible for the black is white and white is black insanity of the book. (Here’s an explanation of the rules of Catch 22.) The book is so much fun to read, because literally: almost every sentence contradicts the one that came before it – BUT it does so in a way that SOUNDS LIKE it’s in agreement. Hard to describe, but so so funny when you get into the rhythm. Catch-22 rules the world.

Yossarian strode away, cursing Catch-22 vehemently even though he knew there was no such thing. Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon, or burn up.

Here’s some nice biographical information about Heller. Heller fans will know that the “catch-22” dilemma of the book was originally a “catch 18”. He completed the book, and sent it to his publishers as Catch-18. One problem though: Leon Uris had just scored a huge hit with his book Mila 18, and Heller’s publisher didn’t want there to be any confusion. So they made him change it. This goes so perfectly with the random no-cause-no-effect universe Heller describes in his book. He had created this “rule”, and it was called, “catch-18”. It’s the title of the damn book, so you know how Heller must have felt about it, the importance he gave it. He was BUMMED he was forced to change it, and to him it would always be “catch-18”. Of course. Yossarian is Yossarian. Captain Ahab is Captain Ahab. Jane Eyre is Jane Eyre. Heller never really reconciled himself to Catch-22 – which is so amusing – because look at what he wrought with his book. He created a phrase that now exists in our language. The concept of “catch-22” existed, but we didn’t have a name for it before Heller created it. “Catch 22” entered the language almost immediately. Extraordinary.

Catch 22 is my dad’s favorite book. Actually, it’s a favorite of most of the O’Malley men. I came to it late, despite the family pressure, and the constant exhortations: “YOU HAVEN’T READ CATCH-22?????????” I started to read it in August of 2001. I only remember this because I was reading it on the bus the morning of September 11. I couldn’t pick up Catch-22 again for months. I couldn’t deal with fiction, escape, pleasure, amusement for a long long time. Second of all, every time I looked at the book, I remembered the morning of September 11. When I finally picked it up again, I was amazed to read the paragraph where I had left off, when it became clear something was very very wrong. In retrospect, it seems the book was telling me what was coming. Here’s the essay I wrote about that morning, and about that paragraph from Catch-22.

As far as I am concerned, Joseph Heller is untouchable. There is no other book quite like it.

I’ll post some of my favorite snippets below.

Happy birthday, Mr. Heller, and thanks for the catch-22(18).

Bits and pieces from Catch 22 – watch for all the reversals and internal contradictions – They appear in pretty much every sentence:

“The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.”

And

“Yossarian was sorry to hear they had a mutual friend. It seemed there was a basis to their conversation after all.”

And

“I’m dead serious about those other wards,’ Yossarian continued grimly. ‘MPs won’t protect you, because they’re craziest of all. I’d go with you myself but I’m scared stiff. Insanity is contagious. Everybody is crazy but us. This is probably the only sane ward in the whole world, for that matter.

The chaplain rose quickly and edged away from Yossarian’s bed, and then nodded with a conciliating smile and promised to conduct himself with appropriate caution. ‘And now I must visit with Lieutenant Dunbar,” he said. Still he lingered, remorsefully. ‘How is Lieurtenant Dunbar?” he asked at last.

‘As good as they go,’ Yossarian assured him. ‘A true prince. One of the finest, least dedicated men in the whole world.”

And

But Yossarian couldn’t be happy, even though the Texan didn’t want him to be, because outside the hospital there was still nothing funny going on. The only thing going on was a war, and no one seemed to notice but Yossarian and Dunbar. And when Yossarian tried to remind people, they drew away from him and thought he was crazy. Even Clevinger, who should have known better but didn’t, had told him he was crazy the last time they had seen each other, which was just before Yossarian had fled into the hospital.

Clevinger had stared at him with apoplectic rage and indignation and, clawing the table with both hands, had shouted, “You’re crazy!”

“Clevinger, what do you want from people?” Dunbar had replied wearily above the noises of the officers’ club.

“I’m not joking,” Clevinger persisted.

“They’re trying to kill me,” Yossarian told him calmly.

“No one’s trying to kill you,” Clevinger cried.

“Then why are they shooting at me?” Yossarian asked.

“They’re shooting at everyone,” Clevinger answered. “They’re trying to kill everyone.”

“And what difference does that make?”

Clevinger was already on the way, half out of his chair with emotion, his eyes moist and his lips quivering and pale. As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.

“Who’s they?” he wanted to know. “Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?”

“Every one of them,” Yossarian told him.

“Every one of whom?”

“Every one of whom do you think?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“Then how do you know they aren’t?”

“Because …” Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration.

Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn’t know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn’t funny at all. And if that wasn’t funny, there were lots of things that weren’t even funnier.

heh. heh.

General Peckem was a general with whom neatness definitely counted. He was a spry, suave and very precise general who knew the circumference of the equator and always wrote “enhanced” when he meant “increased.” He was a prick.

HAHAHAHA

Colonel Cargill thanked him crisply and glowed with self-satisfaction as he strode across the area. It made him proud to observe that twenty-nine months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude.

And:

Colonel Korn’s rule was a stroke of genius, Colonel Korn explained in his report to Colonel Cathcart. Under Colonel Korn’s rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did. Soon the only people attending were those who never asked questions, and the sessions were discontinued altogether, since Clevinger, the corporal and Colonel Korn agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.

The book moves so quickly – it never dwells on itself, which is part of its charm. But dammit, he makes his points. The paragraph above is indicative of that. Every other paragraph has some deep insight about insanity, incompetence, war, stupidity … but they flash by so fast you don’t feel bludgeoned. If you get it, you get it, if you don’t … too bad, we’re moving on!!

More:

Yossarian was willing to give Orr the benefit of the doubt because Orr was from the wilderness outside New York City and knew so much more about wildlife than Yossarian did, and because Orr, unlike Yossarian’s mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, in-law, teacher, spiritual leader, legislator, neighbor and newspaper, had never lied to him about anything crucial before.

The character descriptions are priceless.

Women killed Hungry Joe. His reponse to them as sexual beings was one of frenzied worship and idolatry. They were lovely, satisfying, maddening manifestations of the miraculous, instruments of pleasure too powerful to be measured, too keen to be endured, and too exquisite to be intended for exployment by base, unworthy man. He could interpret their naked presence in his hands only as a cosmic oversight destined to be rectified speedily, and he was driven always to make what carnal use of them he could in the fleeting moment or two he felt he had before Someone caught wise and whisked them away. He could never decide whether to furgle them or photograph them, for he had found it impossible to do both simultaneously. In face, he was finding it almost impossible to do either, so scrambled were his powers of performance by the compulsive need for haste that invariably possessed him. The pictures never came out, and Hungry Joe never got in.

That’s funnier and funnier every time I read it. Hungry Joe’s journey to catch a naked girl with his camera is one of the on-going sub-plots of the book. It’s absurd.

More:

Kraft was a skinny, harmless kid from Pennsylvania who wanted only to be liked, and was destined to be disappointed in even so humble and degrading an ambition.

Ouch!!!!

Here’s the part about Chief White Halfoat that really got to me. The whole book is just slapstick really. Ba-dum-ching jokes, one after the other, with sudden bursts of insight. Like I said, there is no other book like it. The humor is, in general, very juvenile and tricky – but dammit, it WORKS. Consider the following example:

Captain Flume lived in mortal fear of Chief White Halfoat. Captain Flume was obsessed with the idea that Chief White Halfoat would tiptoe up to his cot one night when he was sound asleep and slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume had obtained this idea from Chief White Halfoat himself, who did tiptoe up to his cot one night as he was dozing off, to hiss portentously that one night when he, Captain Flume, was sound asleep he, Chief White Halfoat, was going to slit his throat open for him from ear to ear.

I can’t explain why the above paragraph is so funny, it just is. And as a coda to this whole Captain Flume/Chief White Halfoat relationship, Heller ends this section with the following:

Captain Flume had entered his bed that night a buoyant extrovert and left it the next morning a brooding introvert, and Chief White Halfoat proudly regarded the new Captain Flume as his own creation.

More:

She bored Yossarian, but he was in love with her, too. She was a crazy mathematics major from the Wharton School of Business who could not count to twenty-eight each month without getting into trouble.

More:

Major Major’s father had a Calvinist’s faith in predestination and could perceive distinctly how everyone’s misfortunes but his own were expressions of God’s will.

More on poor Major Major Major Major:

He was polite to his elders, who disliked him. Whatever his elders told him to do, he did. They told him to look before he leaped, and he always looked before he leaped. They told him never to put off until the next day what he could do the day before, and he never did. He was told to honor his father and mother, and he honored his father and mother. He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He turned the other cheek on every occasion and always did unto others exactly as he would have had others do unto him. When he gave to charity, his left hand never knew what his right hand was doing. He never once took the name of the Lord his God in vain, committed adultery or coveted his neighbor’s ass. In fact, he loved his neighbor and never even bore false witness against him. Major Major’s elders disliked him because he was such a flagrant nonconformist.

I love the part about the Loyalty Oath mania that overtakes the small island.

All the enlisted men and officers on combat duty had to sign a loyalty oath to get their map cases from the intelligence tent, a second loyalty oath to receive their flak suits and parachutes from the parachute tent, a third loyalty oath for Lieutenant Balkington, the motor vehicle officer, to be allowed to ride from the squadron to the airfield in one of the trucks. Every time they turned around there was another loyalty oath to be signed. They signed a loyalty oath to get their pay from the finance officer, to obtain their PX supplies, to have their hair cut by the Italian barbers. To Captain Black every officer who supported his Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a competitor, and he planned and plotted twenty-four hours a day to keep one step ahead. He would stand second to none in his devotion to country. When other officers had followed his urging and introduced loyalty oaths of their own, he went them one better by making every son of a bitch who came to his intelligence tent sign two loyalty oaths, then three, then four; then he introduced the pledge of allegiance, and after that “The Star Spangled Banner,” one chorus, two choruses, three choruses, four choruses… To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, [Captain Black] replied that people who were loyal would not mind signing all the loyalty oaths they had to. To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to. And to anyone who questioned the morality, he replied that “The Star Spangled Banner” was the greatest piece of music ever composed. The more loyalty oaths a person signed, the more loyal he was; to Captain Black it was as simple as that..

Men were tied up all over the squadron signing, pledging and singing, and the missions took hours longer to get under way. Effective emergency action became impossible.

The loyalty oath insanity gets every crazier. I love the image in the following paragraph. It makes me laugh out loud.

Milo carefully said nothing when Major —–de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table. Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was signing “The Star Spangled Banner” in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there.

hahahaha

I’ll finish with the section on why Yossarian continuously checks himself into the hospital. It’s another example of how Heller mounts the humor, ups the ante … each sentence building on the last one, the whole thing getting funnier and funnier, even if it’s juvenile and ridiculous. I read this, and it seemed to go on FOREVER, especially once you get the joke. But Heller keeps going, where other authors would leave off. Heller’s sense of the absurd, his ear for repetition … is impeccable. I love it. And mixed in with the vaudeville-type humor is the horror of war, the undeniable horror of watching your buddies get blown to pieces. It’s genius. It’s magic. I still have no idea how Joseph Heller pulls this off without ever preaching to us. Ever.

Being in the hospital was better than being over Bologna or flying over Avignon with Huple and Dobbs at the controls and Snowden dying in the back.

There were usually not nearly as many sick people inside the hospital as Yossarian saw outside the hospital, and there were generally fewer people inside the hospital who were seriously sick. There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater, more orderly job of it. They couldn’t dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners. They couldn’t keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady. People gave up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying that was so common outside the hospital. They did not blow up in mid-air like Kraft or the dead man in Yossarian’s tent, or freeze to death in the blazing summertime the way Snowden had frozen to death after spilling his secret to Yossarian in the back of the plane.

“I’m cold,” Snowden had whimpered. “I’m cold.”

“There, there,” Yossarian had tried to comfort him. “There, there.”

They didn’t take it on the lam weirdly inside a cloud the way Clevinger had done. They didn’t explode into blood and clotted matter. They didn’t drown or get struck by lightning, mangled by machinery or crushed in landslides. They didn’t get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children or die summarily by some other act of God. Nobody choked to death. People bled to death like gentlemen in an operating room or expired without comment in an oxygen tent. There was none of that tricky now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t business so much in vogue outside the hospital, none of that now-I-am-and-now-I-ain’t. There were no famines or floods. Children didn’t suffocate in cradles or iceboxes or fall under trucks. No one was beaten to death. People didn’t stick their heads into ovens with the gas on, jump in front of subway trains or come plummeting like dead weights out of hotel windows with a whoosh!, accelerating at the rate of sixteen feet per second to land with a hideous plop! on the sidewalk and die disgustingly there in public like an alpaca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream, pink toes awry.

All things considered, Yossarian often preferred the hospital, even though it had its faults…

Yossarian had so many ailments to be afraid of that he was sometimes tempted to turn himself into the hospital for good and spend the rest of his life stretched out there inside an oxygen tent with a battery of specialists and nurses seated at one side of his bed twenty-four hours a day waiting for something to go wrong and at least one surgeon with a knife poised at the other, ready to jump forward and begin cutting away the moment it became necessary. Aneurisms, for insantce; how else could they ever defend him in time against an aneurism of the aorta? Yossarian felt much safer inside the hospital than outside the hospital, even though he loathed the surgeon and his knife as much as he had ever loathed anyone. He could start screaming inside a hospital and people would at least come running to try to help; outside the hospital they would throw him in prison if he ever started screaming about all the things he felt everyone ought to start screaming about, or they would put him in the hospital..

Catastrophes were lurking everywhere, too numerous to count. When he contemplated the many diseases and potential accidents threatening him, he was positively astounded that he had managed to survive in good health for as long as he had. It was miraculous. Each day he faced was another dangerous mission against mortality. And he had been surviving them for twenty-eight years.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.

Damn straight!