The first and only time I had lunch with Joseph Heller was last year. It was the early days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which he was enjoying tremendously.
"I love it," he said, smiling broadly. "The fact that it's so ridiculous is what makes it so exquisitely entertaining to me."
Heller was a connoisseur of the absurd. Lewinsky's attorney had complained that his client's life was ruined, that nobody would ever again want to date her or hire her.
"I wanted to call and say, `I'll date you! I'll hire you!'," he cackled uproariously. Then he went back to his crab cakes. The man loved to eat.
Catch-22, which chronicles the combat experiences of a second World War US Air Force bombardier named Yossarian, is a strange, convoluted, grim, hilarious novel which suggests that the whole world is insane.
It has sold well over 10 million copies and sells briskly wherever people feel tormented by crazed bosses and mindless bureaucracies, that is, just about everywhere.
The term entered common language and earned a place in Webster's dictionary: "a paradox in a law, regulation or practice that makes one a victim of its provisions no matter what one does."
Life had a way of turning Heller's most outrageous satire into banal realities. In Good As Gold, he invented a president who spent his first year in office writing a book about his first year in office.
In Catch-22, Milo Minderbinder contracts with his enemies to bomb his own squadron. Critics considered this ridiculous until Oliver North sold missiles to the same Iranian government that supported the bombing of a US Marines barracks in Lebanon.
Joe Heller is dead, but Catch22 will live for ever. He would have preferred the opposite, but what can you do? Death is the ultimate Catch-22.