By Fleet Lentz 

The Mercedes Enterprise 

Retro book 

I am a member of a men’s book group that meets once a month. For next year we decided to read old favorites that had an influence on our lives. 

My pick for next year starts with Catch 22 written by Joseph Heller. I read the book prior to Vietnam War and it stuck. I had no idea I would have a link to the book before I went. 

A man who had the call sign Yossarian lived next to my hooch. His actual last name was Yohannan and he went by Yossarian. I asked him one night about his call sign telling him I had read the book. Yes, he then told me that Joe Heller flew with his Dad in WW II and Heller was at their house many times as he was growing up, knew him well. A tenuous link but a link.The book title has become part of the American language: 

Meaning; an impossible no-win situation where you cannot escape a problem because the rules or conditions needed to fix it depend on the problem itself remaining unsolved. 

To wit:You need work experience but you need a job to get that work experience. My take is you cant’ do something until you have done it. I didn’t have a combat record until I flew in combat. 

I wonder but am too lazy to look up how many other book titles have become part of the American language, other than the Bible. Maybe I will get off my keister and do just that. 

Meantime, I will reread it so I can speak intelligently about Catch 22 when my time comes. And yes, I will include the link up with Yohannan in it. It has been more than fifty years since I first read it. I know one man who is going to reread Catcher in the Rye, which I also read, thanks to Randall Scott Downing, RIP, who urged me to read it …. Rye that is. 

Scott and Brian Schwarz were way ahead of me . Both were ardent readers and I read whatever they recommended. 

It will be interesting to see what has stuck with the members of the group. All are well read and come from all over this country and we are all about the same age. 

I will keep a list and write back to you, once we get that program underway. 

I got early dibs on mine because I knew it right off the top of my heads. I know few Marine aircrew that have not read Catch 22. I saw it play out umpteenth times in the Vietnam War, Laos, and Cambodia, 

I imagine someone will have chosen… I will swallow my tongue if someone picks Ann Of Green Gables or To Kill A Mockingbird or anything written by Joseph Campbell. 

All that said, I am looking forward to that meeting. 

If this bit causes any reader to think about important books in their lives, well, good. 

QLVB, eh? 

Lentz