“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which 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. Orr 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….
“Yossarian saw it clearly in all its spinning reasonableness. There was an elliptical precision about its perfect pairs of parts that was graceful and shocking, like good modern art,…”
—Joseph Heller, in Catch-22
I just finished Catch-22. My edition of the book includes an essay by Jonathan R. Eller called “The Story of Catch-22.” In it, I learned that Catch-22′s original title was Catch-18. But shortly before it was published, bestselling author Leon Uris published a novel called Mila 18. Heller and his agent Robert Gottlieb didn’t want people to think Catch-18 was somehow connected to Mila 18, so they decided to change the number in Heller’s title. They tried out 11 and 14, but they weren’t happy with either one.
“After a halfhearted attempt at accepting Catch-14, Gottlieb had a late-night flash of conviction,” writes Eller. He quotes Gottlieb: “22, it’s 22! And I remember calling up Joe and saying, ‘It’s funnier than 18!’ But of course the fact is that no number is funnier than any other number, it’s complete self-delusion. But once we were convinced it was funnier, then it became funny.”
So what is the funniest number? Read the full post at Roots of Unity and let me know what you think.
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