\'Catch-22\' author Joseph Heller dead at 76

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. — Joseph Heller, whose darkly comic World War II novel Catch-22 anticipated the surreal horror of Vietnam and added a popular expression to the American lexicon, has died at 76.Heller died Sunday night of a heart attack at his home on Long Island, his wife, Valerie, said Monday."Oh, God, how terrible," said author and friend Kurt Vonnegut, who last spoke to Heller a week ago. "This is a calamity for American letters."Heller wrote six books, but none of them resonated as widely or as powerfully as Catch-22, a pitch-black tale that read like a devious collaboration of Twain and Kafka. It was published in 1961.Catch-22, which Heller based on his experience as an Army Air Corps bombardier who flew 60 combat missions over Italy, is about trying to stay alive amid the insanity of war.The characters included the elusive Major Major, who permitted visitors to his office only when he wasn\'t there, and the enterprising Milo Minderbinder, inventor of the inedible chocolate-covered cotton.The book became a cult favorite before it was recognized as an American classic. It eventually sold more than 10 million copies in the United States alone, and its antigovernment, antimilitary sentiments struck a chord during the Vietnam era."When Catch-22 came out, people were saying, \'Well, World War II wasn\'t like this,"\' friend and fellow author E.L. Doctorow said Monday. "But when we got tangled up in Vietnam, it became a sort of text for the consciousness of that time. They say fiction can\'t change anything, but they can certainly organize a generation\'s consciousness."The novel\'s protagonist, Capt. John Yossarian, is a bombardier who tries to get himself declared crazy so he won\'t have to fly more missions. But he is foiled by regulations, which Doc Daneeka explains: "Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn\'t really crazy."The bind was called Catch-22.The phrase quickly entered the lexicon. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) defines Catch-22 as "a condition or consequence that precludes success, a dilemma where the victim cannot win.""Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy," Heller once said. "Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts — and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?"The novel was made into a movie starring Alan Arkin and directed by Mike Nichols in 1970; Heller himself did a stage adaptation in 1973 and also published a sequel, "Closing Time," in 1994.Heller was ranked among the great writers of the World War II generation, a group that included Vonnegut, James Jones, Irwin Shaw and Norman Mailer."He said to me one time that if it weren\'t for World War II he\'d be in the dry cleaning business," Vonnegut recalled.Mailer said in a statement Monday: "He was a wonderful writer. And there aren\'t many left."