Snapshot: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

There aren't many titles of novels that actually become "catch phrases" or popular idioms, but Joesph Heller's Catch-22 is one of them. Americans use the phrase Catch-22 to indicate a situation in which a desired outcome or solution is impossible to attain because of a set of inherently illogical rules or conditions. It is a no-win dilemma or paradox. Here's the most famous Catch-22:

You can't get a job without experience, but you can't get experience unless you have a job--it's Catch-22.

In the 1961 war novel, John Yossarian is a U.S. Army Air Forces bombardier, who wishes to be grounded from combat flight duty. To be grounded, he must be officially evaluated by the squadron's flight surgeon and then found "unfit to fly." Unfit would be any pilot who is actually willing to fly such dangerous missions: as one would have to be mad to want to take on such missions. But the "catch" is that to be declared unfit, he must first "ask for evaluation," which is considered a sufficient proof for being declared sane. These conditions make impossible being declared unfit. The "Catch-22" is that "anyone who wants to get out of combat duty, isn't really crazy." Hence, pilots who request a fitness evaluation are sane, and therefore must fly in combat. And at the same time, if an evaluation is not requested by the pilot, he will never receive one, i.e., he can never be found insane, meaning, he must also fly in combat. Catch-22, then, ensures that no pilot can ever be grounded for being insane - even if he were.

Here's the definitive review of Heller's Catch-22, written by Robert Brustein in 1961, in which he calls the novel a "superlative work of comedy" and "one of the most bitterly funny works in the language." Read on...