THE WAR FOR CATCH-22: Tracy Daugherty's
chronicles the writing and publishing of Joseph Heller's tragicomic 1961 novel, and "recalls the tortured eight-year genesis of Catch-22 and its ultimate triumph."
From draft to draft, most of the major changes were structural. Heller shuffled chapters, finding more effective ways to introduce the large cast of characters. “I’m a chronic fiddler,” he would observe. Left on his own, he’d “never finish anything at all.” He said, “I don’t understand the process of imagination—though I know that I am very much at its mercy. I feel that … ideas are floating around in the air and they pick me to settle upon I don’t produce them at will.”
Catch-22 … specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. [A bombardier] was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. [A bombardier] would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22.
Very much worth a read (I imagine more so if you're a fan of the novel).
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