I have to tell you about Captain John Yossarian. Actually this is about the author of Catch 22, Joseph Heller, who created a character in that book to whom I related, perhaps more than any other real or fictitious personality.
And what was Catch-22, exactly? Well, inexactly it was a mythical service regulation that Yossarian found… and hated. “ If one is crazy, one does not have to fly missions; and one must be crazy to fly.”
Many of us grew up with a “catch” of our own… that of “You need experience to get the job, but you can’t get experience unless you get the job.”
Joseph Heller
“It was Heller’s debut novel. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. Often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century,”
I read it in 1962, as a senior in high school, and fell in love with it. It was as if Yossarian were reading my mind sometimes. I probably read it 3 times within the next two years. And I know why… it quieted my fears of having “a strange brain” by convincing me that other people, specifically Yossarian, also thought similar things, felt in similar ways.
Now if he’s a young, painfully naive, impressionable boy, finally finding a solid source of logic and understanding outside himself that somehow validated his perceived quirkiness, then by god he had at least a flag pole to run his somewhat weird flag up!
I tell you that to help explain my imaginary hero, Yossarian, who he was and why. He had enlisted in what was the Army Air Corps, which, in 1947 finally became the Air Force. So he had personal courage, enough to enlist, enough to become a captain and fly dangerous, sometimes deadly missions in Italy.
John Yossarian, The movie version
Yossarian was, well, Yossarian. He knew who he was and he knew what he was doing. He also knew he was surrounded by, and under the command of, military idiots. He was, however, not beyond questioning what he was doing, nor why he was doing it, and he had no reservations about sharing those thoughts and feelings.
For example, he was an anti-hero who spent most of the book trying to get sent home from the military. He was unwilling to engage with the military’s social and political environment… so much so that there seemed to be nothing, outrageous or otherwise, that he wouldn’t attempt. For there was nothing the Army Air Corps could do to him that was even remotely worse than flying more dangerous missions, and watching more of his crewmen and friends die.
My favorite saying of his – “I’m going to live forever or die in the attempt!”
And there were others – “The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”
* “Insanity is contagious.”
* “Be glad you’re even alive.” “Be furious you’re going to die.”
* “When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.”
Now those quotes might not seem like much, especially when taken out of context. But they rang my bell… loudly and hard. And just for the sake of context, let me explain one of my favorite moments of his a bit further.
You see, he “knew” he was going to die in that war, and naturally he didn’t want to. So he began devising plans to first, get grounded, and second, to get sent home. A fairly human response to an inhuman war, I thought. He went into the hospital, complaining of abdominal pain, but when that didn’t work, he went to something he figured the doctors wouldn’t be able to figure out, an ailment that wouldn’t allow him to fly.
“I see everything twice!” He exclaimed.
Well, it took them awhile to diagnose and dissect this new problem. But as they slowly figured out that Yossarian was, well, Yossarian, they threatened him with something I can’t remember, perhaps more flights over Germany. Whatever, having been threatened, Yossarian claimed, “I see everything once!” I loved that guy.
Joseph HellerOkay. That was Yossarian. From Wikipedia – Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. He died of a heart attack at his home in East Hampton, on Long Island, in December 1999, shortly after the completion of his final novel, Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. On hearing of Heller’s death, his friend Kurt Vonnegut said, “Oh, God, how terrible. This is a calamity for American literature.”
Along with Catch-22, Heller wrote No Laughing Matter, Catch As Catch Can, Portrait Of An Artist As An Old Man, Picture This, God Knows, Something Happened, Good As Gold. He was nominated in 1972 for the Nobel Prize in Literature
My favorite story about Heller. It’s fairly famous, by the way.
Based on this anecdote, Kurt Vonnegut wrote this obituary/poem for The New Yorker in May of 2005 .
True Story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
Now dead,
And I were at a party given by a billionaire
On Shelter Island
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
To know that our host only yesterday
May have made more money
Than your novel ‘Catch-22’
Has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough”
Kurt Vonnegut
I still love Yossararian, that wonderfully human figment of Joe Heller’s fertile imagination. I still feel as Yossarian did, and see, as Yossarian saw, much of the evil, self-serving destructive powers of man. He knew who and what we were, individually and collectively, and so, now, do I. Though I see everything only once, occasionally that is once too many.
Unlike my imaginary hero, however, I have been grounded and am safe at home, far away from any war and its hell that so many have endured. And so I thank Yossarian and Joseph Heller for inspiring me, enlightening me. and showing me the path from there to here.
Steve Hulse
