Catch-22: ‘They’re All Trying to Kill Me’

If You Know You’re Crazy, You Must Be Sane. Reviewing Joseph Heller’s Classic Satire

What’s the best place to start a story? Joseph Heller decided to drop his Catch-22 readers roughly in the middle. The action transpires over the course of one year, 1944, as the Allies press into Europe toward the end of World War II.

Heller grounds most of his story on an American airbase on Pianosa, an island off the coast of Tuscany. And grounds is bo…