![]() ![]() He had never lost his Brooklyn accent: Martin Amis once remarked that this was the only major American writer who referred to his profession as “litta-ra-chewer”. He was a large, loud man, who loved food: “Hungry Joe”, the nickname given to a character in Catch-22, was Heller’s own army monicker. I interviewed the writer, who died in 1999, several times. ![]() Heller, however, grouched that most people still didn’t understand. ![]() It is likely to be familiar to those who watch the new six-part TV adaptation on Channel 4, even if they do not know the book. Even the assistant air attaché of the USA here in Helsinki could not explain exactly.” Within a couple of years – after Catch-22 had become a million-selling paperback in the US and UK, and done well in Finland and most other countries – nobody needed the phrase translated. W hen Joseph Heller, a 38-year-old New York advertising executive, published his first novel in 1961, an urgent query came in from the Finnish translator: “Would you please explain me one thing? What means catch-22? I didn’t find it in any vocabulary. ![]()
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