Inspirational voice ... author Joseph Heller. Photo: Reuters


''IT WAS love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.''
It is with these famously innocent words that Joseph Heller sets in motion his brutal, chaotic, sprawling, disturbing, infuriating, searingly funny novel Catch-22, published 50 years ago next month.
Yossarian is a US Air Force bombardier during the Second World War (memorably described by one critic as ''yellow and proud of it - a two-fisted, hairy-chested coward''), who has ''decided to live forever or die in the attempt''.
So, just as any sane person would do to keep from being sent on more near-suicidal bombing runs, Yossarian pretends he is nuts.
But when he visits the unit's doctor to get himself excused on grounds of insanity, he runs up against the central dilemma of the book, a dilemma that has since passed into everyday language.
''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. Orr 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 and let out a respectful whistle.
'''That's some catch, that Catch-22,' he observed.
'''It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed.''