Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller

Heller's brilliant anti-War farce (set on a small Italian island during WW2) came out right on the cusp of pop-culture - drawing heavily on the vaudeville and burlesque traditions (the first excerpt below could be an Abbott and Costello routine), but also looking forward to the pitch-black, transgressive humour of Monty Python and How I Won the War. It's sharp, highly readable and wonderfully funny ; and his follow-up, the 1975 Something Happened, is also pretty dazzling.

(pp. 85-91)

Actually, no one but Lieutenant Scheisskopf really gave a damn about the parades, least of all the bloated colonel with the big fat mustache, who was chairman of the Action Board and began bellowing at Clevinger the moment Clevinger stepped gingerly into the room to plead innocent to the charges Lieutenant Scheisskopf had lodged against him. The colonel beat his fist down upon the table and hurt his hand and became so further enraged with Clevinger that he beat his fist down upon the table even harder and hurt his hand some more. Lieutenant Scheisskopf glared at Clevinger with tight lips, mortified by the poor impression Clevinger was making.

"In sixty days you'll be fighting Billy Petrolle," the colonel with the big fat mustache roared. "And you think it's a big fat joke."

"I don't think it's a joke, sir," Clevinger replied.

"Don't interrupt."

"Yes, sir."

"And say 'sir' when you do," ordered Major Metcalf.

"Yes, sir."

"Weren't you just ordered not to interrupt?" Major Metcalf inquired coldly.

"But I didn't interrupt, sir," Clevinger protested.

"No. And you didn't say 'sir', either. Add that to the charges against him," Major Metcalf directed the corporal who could take shorthand. "Failure to say 'sir' to superior officers when not interrupting them."

"Metcalf," said the colonel, "you're a goddam fool. Do you know that?"

Major Metcalf swallowed with difficulty. "Yes, sir."

"Then keep your goddam mouth shut. You don't make sense."

There were three members of the Action Board, the bloated colonel with the big fat mustache, Lieutenant Scheisskopf and Major Metcalf, who was trying to develop a steely gaze. As a member of the Action Board, Lieutenant Scheisskopf was one of the judges who would weigh the merits of the case against Clevinger as presented by the prosecutor. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was also the prosecutor. Clevinger had an officer defending him. The officer defending him was Lieutenant Scheisskopf.

It was all very confusing to Clevinger, who began vibrating in terror as the colonel surged to his feet like a gigantic belch and threatened to rip his stinking, cowardly body apart limb from limb. One day he had stumbled while marching to class ; the next day he was formally charged with "breaking ranks while in formation, felonious assault, indiscriminate behavior, mopery, high treason, provoking, being a smart guy, listening to classical music and so on." In short, they threw the book at him, and there he was, standing in dread before the bloated colonel, who roared once more that in sixty days he would be fighting Billy Petrolle and demanded to know how the hell he would like being washed out and shipped to the Solomon Islands to bury bodies. Clevinger replied with courtesy that he would not like it ; he was a dope who would rather be a corpse than bury one. The colonel sat down and settled back, calm and cagey suddenly, and ingratiatingly polite.

"What did you mean," he inquired slowly, "when you said we couldn't punish you?"

"When, sir?"

"I'm asking the questions. You're answering them."

"Yes, sir. I - "

"Did you think we brought you here to ask questions and for me to answer them?"

"No, sir. I - "

"What did we bring you here for?"

"To answer questions."

"You're goddam right," roared the colonel. "Now suppose you start answering some before I break your goddam head. Just what the hell did you mean, you bastard, when you said we couldn't punish you?"

"I don't think I ever made that statement, sir."

"Will you speak up, please? I couldn't hear you."

"Yes, sir. I - "

"Will you speak up, please? He couldn't hear you."

"Yes, sir. I - "

"Metcalf."

"Sir?"

"Didn't I tell you to keep your stupid mouth shut?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then keep your stupid mouth shut when I tell you to keep your stupid mouth shut. Do you understand? Will you speak up, please? I couldn't hear you."

"Yes, sir. I - "

"Metcalf, is that your foot I'm stepping on?"

"No, sir. It must be Lieutenant Scheisskopf's foot."

"It isn't my foot," said Lieutenant Scheisskopf.

"Then maybe it is my foot after all," said Major Metcalf.

"Move it."

"Yes, sir. You'll have to move your foot first, colonel. It's on top of mine."

"Are you telling me to move my foot?"

"No, sir. Oh, no, sir."

"Then move your foot and keep your stupid mouth shut. Will you speak up, please? I still couldn't hear you."

"Yes, sir. I said that I didn't say that you couldn't punish me."

"Just what the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm answering your question, sir."

"What question?"

" ' Just what the hell did you mean, you bastard, when you said we couldn't punish you?' " said the corporal who could take shorthand, reading from his steno pad.

"All right," said the colonel. "Just what the hell did you mean?"

"I didn't say you couldn't punish me, sir."

"When?" asked the colonel.

"When what, sir?"

"Now you're asking me questions again."

"I'm sorry, sir. I'm afraid I don't understand your question."

"When didn't you say we couldn't punish you? Don't you understand my question?"

"No, sir. I don't understand."

"You've just told us that. Now suppose you answer my question."

"But how can I answer it?"

"That's another question you're asking me."

"I'm sorry, sir. But I don't know how to answer it. I never said you couldn't punish me."

"Now you're telling us when you did say it. I'm asking you to tell us when you didn't say it."

Clevinger took a deep breath. "I always didn't say you couldn't punish me, sir."

"That's much better, Mr. Clevinger, even though it is a barefaced lie. Last night in the latrine. Didn't you whisper that we couldn't punish you to that other dirty son of a bitch we don't like? What's his name?"

"Yossarian, sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf said.

"Yes, Yossarian. That's right. Yossarian. Yossarian? Is that his name? Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian?"

Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his finger tips. "It's Yossarian's name, sir," he explained.

"Yes, I suppose it is. Didn't you whisper to Yossarian that we couldn't punish you?"

"Oh, no, sir. I whispered to him that you couldn't find me guilty - "

"I may be stupid," interrupted the colonel, "but the distinction escapes me. I guess I am pretty stupid, because the distinction escapes me."

"W - "

"You're a windy son of a bitch, aren't you? Nobody asked you for clarification and you're giving me clarification. I was making a statement, not asking for clarification. You are a windy son of a bitch, aren't you?"

"No, sir."

"No, sir? Are you calling me a goddam liar?"

"Oh, no, sir."

"Then you're a windy son of a bitch, aren't you?"

"No, sir."

"Are you trying to pick a fight with me?"

"No, sir."

"Are you a windy son of a bitch?"

"No, sir."

"Goddammit, you are trying to pick a fight with me. For two stinking cents I'd jump over this big fat table and rip your stinking, cowardly body apart limb from limb."

"Do it! Do it!" cried Major Metcalf.

"Metcalf, you stinking son of a bitch. Didn't I tell you to keep your stinking, cowardly, stupid mouth shut?"

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

"Then suppose you do it."

"I was only trying to learn, sir. The only way a person can learn is by trying."

"Who says so?"

"Everybody says so, sir. Even Lieutenant Scheisskopf says so."

"Do you say so?"

"Yes, sir," said Lieutenant Scheisskopf. "But everybody says so."

"Well, Metcalf, suppose you try keeping that stupid mouth of yours shut, and maybe that's the way you'll learn how. Now, where were we? Read me back the last line."

" 'Read me back the last line,' " read back the corporal who could take shorthand.

"Not my last line, stupid!" the colonel shouted. "Somebody else's."

" 'Read me back the last line,' " read back the corporal.

"That's my last line again!" shrieked the colonel, turning purple with anger.

"Oh, no, sir," corrected the corporal. "That's my last line. I read it to you just a moment ago. Don't you remember, sir? It was only a moment ago."

"Oh, my God! Read me back his last line, stupid. Say, what the hell's your name anyway?"

"Popinjay, sir."

"Well, you're next, Popinjay. As soon as his trial ends, your trial begins. Get it?"

"Yes, sir. What will I be charged with?"

"What the hell difference does that make? Did you hear what he asked me? You're going to learn, Popinjay - the minute we finish with Clevinger you're going to learn. Cadet Clevinger, what did - You are Cadet Clevinger, aren't you, and not Popinjay?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. What did - "

"I'm Popinjay, sir."

"Popinjay, is your father a millionaire, or a member of the Senate?"

"No, sir."

"Then you're up shit creek, Popinjay, without a paddle. He's not a general or a high-ranking member of the Administration, is he?"

"No, sir."

"That's good. What does your father do?"

"He's dead, sir."

"That's very good. You really are up the creek, Popinjay. Is Popinjay really your name? Just what the hell kind of a name is Popinjay, anyway? I don't like it."

"It's Popinjay's name, sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf explained.

"Well, I don't like it, Popinjay, and I just can't wait to rip your stinking, cowardly body apart limb from limb. Cadet Clevinger, will you please repeat what the hell it was you did or didn't whisper to Yossarian late last night in the latrine?"

"Yes, sir. I said that you couldn't find me guilty - "

"We'll take it from there. Precisely what did you mean, Cadet Clevinger, when you said we couldn't find you guilty?"

"I didn't say you couldn't find me guilty, sir."

"When?"

"When what, sir?"

"Goddammit, are you going to start pumping me again?"

"No, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

"Then answer the question. When didn't you say we couldn't find you guilty?"

"Late last night in the latrine, sir."

"Is that the only time you didn't say it?"

"No, sir. I always didn't say you couldn't find me guilty, sir. What I did say to Yossarian was - "

"Nobody asked you what you did say to Yossarian. We asked you what you didn't say to him. We're not at all interested in what you did say to Yossarian. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then we'll go on. What did you say to Yossarian?"

"I said to him, sir, that you couldn't find me guilty of the offense with which I am charged and still be faithful to the cause of ..."

"Of what? You're mumbling."

"Stop mumbling."

"Yes, sir."

"And mumble 'sir' when you do."

"Metcalf, you bastard!"

"Yes, sir," mumbled Clevinger. "Of justice, sir. That you couldn't find - "

"Justice?" The colonel was astounded. "What is justice?"

"Justice, sir - "

"That's not what justice is," the colonel jeered, and began pounding the table again with his big fat hand. "That's what Karl Marx is. I'll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting. That's what justice is when we've all got to be tough enough and rough enough to fight Billy Petrolle. From the hip. Get it?"

"No, sir."

"Don't sir me!"

"Yes, sir."

"And say 'sir' when you don't," ordered Major Metcalf.

(pp. 312-316)

Nurse Sue Ann Duckett was a tall, spare, mature, straight-backed woman with a prominent, well-rounded ass, small breasts and angular ascetic New England features that came equally close to being very lovely and very plain. Her skin was white and pink, her eyes small, her nose and chin slender and sharp. She was able, prompt, strict and intelligent. She welcomed responsibility and kept her head in every crisis. She was adult and self-reliant, and there was nothing she needed from anyone. Yossarian took pity and decided to help her.

Next morning while she was standing bent over smoothing the sheets at the foot of his bed, he slipped his hand stealthily into the narrow space between her knees and, all at once, brought it up swiftly under her dress as far as it would go. Nurse Duckett shrieked and jumped into the air a mile, but it wasn't high enough, and she squirmed and vaulted and seesawed back and forth on her divine fulcrum for almost a full fifteen seconds before she wiggled free finally and retreated frantically nto the aisle with an ashen, trembling face. She backed away too far, and Dunbar, who had watched from the beginning, sprang forward on his bed without warning and flung both arms around her bosom from behind. Nurse Duckett let out another scream and twisted away, fleeing far enough from Dunbar for Yossarian to lunge forward and grab her by the snatch again. Nurse Duckett bounced out across the aisle once more like a ping-pong ball with legs. Dunbar was waiting vigilantly, ready to pounce. She remembered him just in time and leaped aside. Dunbar missed completely and sailed by her over the bed to the floor, landing on his skull with a soggy, crunching thud that knocked him cold.

He woke up on the floor with a bleeding nose and exactly the same distressful head symptoms he had been feigning all along. The ward was in a chaotic uproar. Nurse Duckett was in tears, and Yossarian was consoling her apologetically as he sat beside her on the edge of a bed. The commanding colonel was wroth and shouting at Yossarian that he would not permit his patients to take indecent liberties with his nurses.

"What do you want from him?" Dunbar asked plaintively from the floor, wincing at the vibrating pains in his temples that his voice set up. "He didn't do anything."

"I'm talking about you!" the thin, dignified colonel bellowed as loudly as he could. "You're going to be punished for what you did."

"What do you want from him?" Yossarian called out. "All he did was fall on his head."

"And I'm talking about you too!" the colonel declared, whirling to rage at Yossarian. "You're going to be good and sorry you grabbed Nurse Duckett by the bosom."

"I didn't grab Nurse Duckett by the bosom," said Yossarian.

"I grabbed her by the bosom," said Dunbar.

"Are you both crazy?" the doctor cried shrilly, backing away in paling confusion.

"Yes, he really is crazy, Doc," Dunbar assured him. "Every night he dreams he's holding a live fish in his hands."

The doctor stopped in his tracks with a look of elegant amazement and distaste, and the ward grew still. "He does what?" he demanded.

"He dreams he's holding a live fish in his hand."

"What kind of fish?" the doctor inquired sternly of Yossarian.

"I don't know," Yossarian answered. "I can't tell one kind of fish from another."

"In which hand do you hold them?"

"It varies," answered Yossarian.

"It varies with the fish," Dunbar added helpfully.

The colonel turned and stared down at Dunbar suspiciously with a narrow squint. "Yes? And how come you seem to know so much about it?"

"I'm in the dream," Dunbar answered without cracking a smile.

The colonel's face flushed with embarrassment. He glared at them both with cold, unforgiving resentment. "Get up off the floor and into your bed," he directed Dunbar through thin lips. "And I don't want to hear another word about this dream from either one of you. I've got a man on my staff to listen to disgusting bilge like this."

"Just why do you think," carefully inquired Major Sanderson, the soft and thickset smiling staff psychiatrist to whom the colonel had ordered Yossarian sent, "that Colonel Ferredge finds your dream disgusting?"

Yossarian replied respectfully. "I suppose it's either some quality in the dream or some quality in Colonel Ferredge."

"That's very well put," applauded Major Sanderson, who wore squeaking GI shoes and had charcoal-black hair that stood up almost straight. "For some reason," he confided, "Colonel Ferredge has always reminded me of a sea gull. He doesn't put much faith in psychiatry, you know."

"You don't like sea gulls, do you?" inquired Yossarian.

"No, not very much," admitted Major Sanderson with a sharp, nervous laugh and pulled at his pendulous second chin lovingly as though it were a long goatee. "I think your dream is charming, and I hope it recurs frequently so that we can continue discussing it. Would you like a cigarette?" He smiled when Yossarian declined. "Just why do you think," he asked knowingly, "that you have such a strong aversion to accepting a cigarette from me?"

"I put one out a second ago. It's still smoldering in your ash tray."

Major Sanderson chuckled. "That's a very ingenious explanation. But I suppose we'll soon discover the true reason." He tied a sloppy double bow in his opened shoelace and then transferred a lined yellow pad from his desk to his lap. "This fish you dream about. Let's talk about that. It's always the same fish, isn't it?"

"I don't know," Yossarian replied. "I have trouble recognizing fish."

"What does the fish remind you of?"

"Other fish."

"And what do other fish remind you of?"

"Other fish."

Major Sanderson sat back disappointedly. "Do you like fish?"

"Not especially."

"Just why do you think you have such a morbid aversion to fish?" asked Major Sanderson triumphantly.

"They're too bland," Yossarian answered. "And too bony."

Major Sanderson nodded understandingly, with a smile that was agreeable and insincere. "That's a very interesting explanation. But we'll soon discover the true reason, I suppose. Do you like this particular fish? The one you're holding in your hand?"

"I have no feelings about it either way."

"Do you dislike the fish? Do you have any hostile or aggressive emotions toward it?"

"No, not at all. In fact, I rather like the fish."

"Then you do like the fish."

"Oh, no. I have no feelings toward it either way."

"But you just said you liked it. And now you say you have no feelings toward it either way. I've just caught you in a contradiction. Don't you see?"

"Yes, sir. I suppose you have caught me in a contradiction."

Major Sanderson proudly lettered "Contradiction" on his pad with his thick black pencil. "Just why do you think," he resumed when he had finished, looking up, "that you made those two statements expressing contradictory emotional responses to the fish?"

"I suppose I have an ambivalent attitude toward it."

Major Sanderson sprang up with joy when he heard the words "ambivalent attitude". "You do understand!" he exclaimed, wringing his hands together ecstatically. "Oh, you can't imagine how lonely it's been for me, talking day after day to patients who haven't the slightest knowledge of psychiatry, trying to cure people who have no real interest in me or my work! It's given me such a terrible feeling of inadequacy." A shadow of anxiety crossed his face. "I can't seem to shake it."

"Really?" asked Yossarian, wondering what else to say. "Why do you blame yourself for gaps in the education of others?"

"It's silly, I know," Major Sanderson replied uneasily with a giddy, involuntary laugh. "But I've always depended very heavily on the good opinion of others. I reached puberty a bit later than all the other boys my age, you see, and it's given me sort of - well, all sorts of problems. I just know I'm going to enjoy discussing them with you. I'm so eager to begin that I'm almost reluctant to digress now to your problem, but I'm afraid I must. Colonel Ferredge would be cross if he knew we were spending all our time on me. I'd like to show you some ink blots now to find out what certain shapes and colors remind you of."

"You can save yourself the trouble, Doctor. Everything reminds me of sex."

"Does it?" cried Major Sanderson with delight, as though unable to believe his ears. "Now we're really getting somewhere! Do you ever have any good sex dreams?"

"My fish dream is a sex dream."

"No, I mean real sex dreams - the kind where you grab some naked bitch by the neck and pinch her and punch her in the face until she's all bloody and then throw yourself down to ravish her and burst into tears because you love her and hate her so much you don't know what else to do. That's the kind of sex dreams I like to talk about. Don't you ever have sex dreams like that?"

Yossarian reflected a moment with a wise look. "That's a fish dream," he decided.