I just found this gorgeous description of Catch22! 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Catch-22Catch-22 is a 1961 novel by Joseph Heller about the madness of war. The phrase "catch-22" has come into common use to mean a cyclical conundrum, based on its meaning in the book as described below.
The novel follows a fictional World War II US Army Air Corps bombardier, Captain Yossarian, and a number of other American airmen during World War II, based on the island of Pianosa, south of Italy. (A magazine excerpt from the novel was originally published as "Catch-18," but Heller changed the title after another World War II novel, Leon Uris's Mila 18, was published.) Its pacing is frenetic, its tenor is intellectual, and its humor is largely absurdist -- but with grisly moments of realism interspersed. As the Czech writer Arnošt Lustig testifies in his latest book "13x18", Joseph Heller personally told him that he would never have written Catch 22 had he not first read The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek .
Within the book, catch-22 is a military rule, the circular logic of which most notably prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions:
+ One may only be excused from flying bombing missions on the grounds of insanity;
+ One must request to be excused;
+ One who requests to be excused is presumably in fear for his life. This is taken to be proof of his sanity, and he is therefore obliged to continue flying missions;
+ One who is truly insane presumably would not make the request. He therefore would continue flying missions, even though as an insane person he could be excused from them by asking.
Catch-22 is also invoked at other points in the novel to justify various other actions. At one point, victims of harrassment by military agents quote the agents as having explained one of Catch-22's most macabre and rococo provisions in this fashion: Catch-22 states that agents enforcing Catch-22 need not prove that Catch-22 actually contains whatever provision the accused violator is accused of violating. The military agent explains: "Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing".
Yossarian come to realize that Catch-22 doesn't even exist. Because the powers that be claim it does and because the world believes, the effects are all the same. The combination of brute force with specious legalistic justification is one of the books primary motifs. As in the above example, much of Heller's prose in Catch-22 is circular and repetitive, exemplifying in form the structure of catch-22.
The phrase has come to refer to similar no-win situations generally, as is noted below.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Catch-22Catch-22 is a 1961 novel by Joseph Heller about the madness of war. The phrase "catch-22" has come into common use to mean a cyclical conundrum, based on its meaning in the book as described below.
The novel follows a fictional World War II US Army Air Corps bombardier, Captain Yossarian, and a number of other American airmen during World War II, based on the island of Pianosa, south of Italy. (A magazine excerpt from the novel was originally published as "Catch-18," but Heller changed the title after another World War II novel, Leon Uris's Mila 18, was published.) Its pacing is frenetic, its tenor is intellectual, and its humor is largely absurdist -- but with grisly moments of realism interspersed. As the Czech writer Arnošt Lustig testifies in his latest book "13x18", Joseph Heller personally told him that he would never have written Catch 22 had he not first read The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek .
Within the book, catch-22 is a military rule, the circular logic of which most notably prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions:
+ One may only be excused from flying bombing missions on the grounds of insanity;
+ One must request to be excused;
+ One who requests to be excused is presumably in fear for his life. This is taken to be proof of his sanity, and he is therefore obliged to continue flying missions;
+ One who is truly insane presumably would not make the request. He therefore would continue flying missions, even though as an insane person he could be excused from them by asking.
Catch-22 is also invoked at other points in the novel to justify various other actions. At one point, victims of harrassment by military agents quote the agents as having explained one of Catch-22's most macabre and rococo provisions in this fashion: Catch-22 states that agents enforcing Catch-22 need not prove that Catch-22 actually contains whatever provision the accused violator is accused of violating. The military agent explains: "Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing".
Yossarian come to realize that Catch-22 doesn't even exist. Because the powers that be claim it does and because the world believes, the effects are all the same. The combination of brute force with specious legalistic justification is one of the books primary motifs. As in the above example, much of Heller's prose in Catch-22 is circular and repetitive, exemplifying in form the structure of catch-22.
The phrase has come to refer to similar no-win situations generally, as is noted below.
