Editing Catch-22 (section)

== Title ==

The title refers to a fictional bureaucratic stipulation that embodies illogical and immoral reasoning. The idea being that if one pleads insanity to stop flying missions with a high mortality rate, one is in fact sane; however, one must be insane to keep flying those exact missions.<ref name=":0" /> The opening chapter of the novel was first published, in 1955, by ''[[New World Writing]]'' as ''Catch-18'', but Heller's agent, Candida Donadio, asked him to change the title, to avert its confusion with [[Leon Uris]]'s recently published ''[[Mila 18]]''.<ref name=":1" /> A reference was made to this nomenclatural history in the 2023 [[Netflix]] show ''[[Beef (TV series)|Beef]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |last=MacArthur |first=Greg |date=2023-04-11 |title=What Danny & Amy's Tattoos Mean In Beef |url=https://screenrant.com/danny-amy-tattoo-beef-meaning/ |access-date=2023-04-20 |website=ScreenRant |language=en}}</ref>{{Relevance inline|date=May 2023}} The implications in Judaism of the number [[18 (number)|18]] – which refers to ''[[Chai (symbol)|chai]]'', meaning "alive", in [[Gematria]] – were relevant to Heller's somewhat greater emphasis on Jewish themes in early drafts of his novel.<ref name="title">N James. "The Early Composition History of Catch-22". In ''Biographies of Books: The Compositional Histories of Notable American Writings'', J Barbour, T Quirk (edi.) pp. 262–290. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, '''1996'''.</ref> Heller's daughter Erica wrote that the Simon & Schuster editor, Robert Gottlieb, was the person who came up with the number 22, and Gottlieb himself stated that he did in the documentary ''[[Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb]].''<ref>{{Cite web |last=Heller |first=Erica |date=2011-08-04 |title=Catch-18 |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/08/04/catch-18/ |access-date=2023-03-12 |website=The Paris Review |language=en}}</ref>

Parallels among a number of character exchanges in the novel suggested the doubled-one title of ''Catch-11'', but the 1960 release of ''[[Ocean's Eleven (1960 film)|Ocean's Eleven]]'' eliminated that.<ref name=":1" /> ''Catch-17'' was rejected so as not to be confused with the World War II film ''[[Stalag 17]]'', as was ''Catch-14'', apparently because the publisher did not believe that 14 was a "funny number". Eventually, the title came to be ''Catch-22'', which, like 11, has a duplicated digit, with the 2 also referring to a number of ''[[déjà vu]]''-like events common in the novel.<ref name="title" />