Catch-22 at the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival

'It's a novel about rejecting bullsh*t'

At a straight talking and lively event at the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, Sarah Churchwell, Andy McNab and Mohammed Hanif chatted about fifty years of Catch-22.
 
Hanif explained how he discovered the book in the Pakistan Air Force library; there was a plane on the cover so he picked it up. It was the third book he ever read (can you imagine that? I'm sure my third book was something like The Famous Five) and he said, 'I thought it was non-fiction. We used it as a manual. The other cadets and I would tear out chapters and read and reread them because it was so like our lives. We didn’t have parachutes in the planes we were training in and the Pakistan Air Force instruction manual explained what to do when a plane failed: first, you were meant to put the plane into a ten degree nose dive. Then you should open the window. Then it directed you to walk onto the wing and jump’. You can see why Catch-22 felt very true to life.
 
McNab also talked about Catch-22 situations he'd experienced during his time in the military. 'We were building a sangar and needed higher elevation so we wanted to use a ladder. But Health and Safety rules wouldn't let us. We had to get a Health and Safety officer out to approve the use of a ladder!' Getting shot at was acceptable, but it seems a broken arm was beyond the pale.
 
What shone through at this brilliant event was that reading Catch-22 was a rite of passage. Both the panel and the audience distinctly remembered their first experience of the book. Like Catcher in the Rye, many of us read it in adolescence and Churchwell nailed down its appeal at that age - ‘It’s a novel about rejecting bullsh*t.'
 
I remember being knocked sideways by Heller’s novel at university. The roiling, energetic voice and manic humour was unlike anything else I'd read. My roommate and I would read out lines to each other like we had done with Tarantino films. It's been a riot revisiting the book to compile the anniversary edition. It contains a previously unpublished letter from Steinbeck to Heller, photos from Heller's archive, reviews from the time as well as pieces by the likes of Anthony Burgess and Christopher Hitchens.
 
And because it is a special birthday we've got copies of the anniversary hardback to give away to the first five people who answer this question correctly:
 
The phrase Catch-22 has made it into the dictionary but Heller's masterpiece began life with another title. What was it?
a) Catch me if you can
b) Catch-18
c) Catch!

Email vintagebooks@randomhouse.co.uk with the subject line CATCH and your postal address to be in with a chance of winning. All entrants will receive the monthly Vintage Books newsletter after their entry - to opt out please put NO NEWSLETTER in your email. Competition closes 21st October 2011 - the 5 winners will be notified by email.
 
Laura Hassan, Vintage Classics Editorial Director