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Joseph Heller: Author of Catch 22 01/05/1923-12/12/1999 New York, USA
Heller flew 60 combat missions as a bombardier with the U.S. Air Force in Europe between May and October
1944,
M.A. at Columbia University in 1949 and studied at the University of Oxford (1949–50) as a Fulbright scholar
Taught English at Pennsylvania State University (1950–52)
Worked as an advertising copywriter for the magazines Time (1952–56) and Look( 1956–58) and as
promotion manager for McCall’s (1958–61)
Writing Catch-22 in his spare time while working
Book released to mixed reviews,
Catch-22 developed a cult following with its dark surrealism.
The “catch” in Catch-22 involves a mysterious Air Force regulation that asserts that a man is considered
insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions but, if he makes the necessary formal
request to be relieved of such missions, the very act of making the request proves that he is sane and
therefore ineligible to be relieved.
The term catch-22 thereafter entered the English language as a reference to a proviso that trips one up no
matter which way one turns.
Catch-22” was soon adopted by college students who recognized a kindred spirit in Yossarian, the
bombardier who rebels against a materialistic bureaucracy hellbent on killing him. “Better Yossarian than
Rotarian” became a popular slogan, all the more so with the timely (for the novel’s sake) military escalation in
Vietnam, which became the “real” subject of “Catch-22” and partly accounts for its sales of more than 10
million copies to date. It’s hard to argue with that kind of importance.
Vanity Fair- Similarities between Yossarian and Heller
Joseph Heller crawled into the transparent womb at the front of the B-25. It was August 15, 1944. He was
about to fly his second mission of the day. That morning, he and the rest of his crew had been ordered to
attack enemy gun positions at Pointe des Issambres, near St. Tropez, in France, but heavy cloud formations
had prevented them from dropping their bombs. According to military reports, flak cover at the target was
“heavy, intense and accurate.” Just one week earlier, over Avignon, on the morning of August 8, Heller had
witnessed flak bursts cripple a bomber. “I was in the leading flight,” he recalled, “and when I looked back to
see how the others were doing, I saw one plane pulling up above and away from the others, a wing on fire
beneath a tremendous, soaring plume of orange flame. I saw a parachute billow open, then another, then one
more before the plane began spiraling downward, and that was all.” Two men died.
Now, on this follow-up mission a week later, the goal was to destroy the Avignon railroad bridges on the
Rhône River. As he had done 36 times before, he slid down the narrow tunnel beneath the cockpit to the
bomber’s Plexiglas nose cone. The tunnel was too small for a man wearing bulky equipment; he was forced to
park his parachute in the navigator’s area behind him. Up front, in the glass bowl—the crew called it “the hot
house”—he always felt vulnerable and exposed. He found his chair. He put on his intercom headset so he
could talk to comrades he could no longer see in other parts of the plane. The wheels left the ground. Now he
was alone, in a blur of blue.
As his squadron began its approach to the Rhône, German anti-aircraft guns let loose and flak filled the air.
Hurtling through space, the man in the glass cone watched the shining metal of a damaged bomber fall. A
minute later, he was steering his plane. His pilot and the co-pilot had taken their hands off the flight controls. It
was time for him to drop his bombs, and so, to ensure a steady approach to the target, he commanded the
plane’s movements using the automatic bombsight, steering left, steering right. For about 60 seconds, no
evasive action would be possible, just a sure zeroing in.
Almost. Almost. There. He squeezed the toggle switch that released the bombs. Immediately, his pilot,
Lieutenant John B. Rome, banked up, away from the target. Rome, about 20, was one of the youngest pilots
in the squadron, with little combat experience. The co-pilot, fearing this green kid was about to stall the
engines, seized the controls, and the plane went into a sudden steep dive, back to an altitude where it could
be holed by curtains of flak. In the nose cone, Heller slammed into the ceiling of his compartment. His headset
cord pulled loose from its jack and began whipping about his head. He heard nothing. He couldn’t move.
Just as quickly as it had begun its descent, the plane shot upward, away from the flak, one moment yo-yoing
into the next. Now Heller was pinned to the floor, looking for a handhold, anything to grasp. The silence was
horrifying. Was he the only crewman left alive? He noticed the cord to his headset lying free near his chair. He
plugged himself back in and a roar of voices pierced his ears. “The bombardier doesn’t answer,” he heard
someone shout. “Help him, help the bombardier.” “I’m the bombardier,” he said, “and I’m all right.” But the very
act of asserting what should have been obvious made him wonder if it was true.
Bibliography
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2011/08/heller-201108
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/books/review/the-enigma-of-joseph-heller.html
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Heller
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