[b]Joseph Heller
Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.[/b]
Let’s figure out why.
It made him proud that 29 months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude.
The miracle though is that it didn’t make it worse.
After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. “They asked for volunteers. It’s very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I’ll write you the instant I get back.” And he had not written anyone since.
The guy was a fucking genius. You know, in a Catch-22 world.
Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.
And it didn’t help that he was a Kid.
Colonel Cargill was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. 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. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and open every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
You might call him an all American hero. Loosely.
He found Luciana sitting alone at a table in the Allied officers’ night club, where the drunken Anzac major who had brought her there had been stupid enough to desert her for the ribald company of some singing comrades at the bar.
All right, I’ll dance with you, she said, before Yossarian could even speak. But I won’t let you sleep with me.
Who asked you? Yossarian asked her.
You don’t want to sleep with me? she exclaimed with surprise.
I don’t want to dance with you.
Based on a true story perhaps.