Catch-22

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

‘Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?’

His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily.

He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning.

‘How can he see he’s got flies in his eyes if he’s got flies in his eyes?’

What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend was not? What could you say to him?

Yossarian had done his best to warn him the night before. ‘You haven’t got a chance, kid,’ he told him glumly. ‘They hate Jews.’ ‘But I’m not Jewish,’ answered Clevinger. ‘It will make no difference,’ Yossarian promised, and Yossarian was right. ‘They’re after everybody.’

22 love most is precisely what, from the Flaubertian

He had opposed his daughter’s marriage to Colonel Moodus because he disliked attending weddings.