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50 free Joseph Heller trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Joseph Heller flew 60 missions as a B-25 bombardier, came home feeling like a hero, and then spent eight years turning the experience into the most famous anti-war satire in English. Catch-22 sold only 30,000 hardbacks in its first American year, topped the British charts within a week, and eventually put a phrase into the dictionary. Everything he wrote afterwards lived in its shadow. These 50 questions cover the whole career. The Coney Island childhood and the blacksmith's apprenticeship, the Fulbright year at Oxford, the advertising job beside Mary Higgins Clark, the morning in 1953 when the first line arrived, the magazine that printed Catch-18, the Leon Uris novel that forced the title change and the editor who picked 22. Then Something Happened and Bob Slocum, the Vietnam-era play We Bombed in New Haven, God Knows narrated by King David, Picture This and its Rembrandt, Closing Time and the ageing Yossarian, the Guillain-Barré diagnosis and No Laughing Matter, and the posthumous Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Joseph Heller's best-known work, published in 1961, is which novel?
Catch-22
It was his debut, and its title became a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice.
Q 02In which Brooklyn neighbourhood was Heller born in 1923?
Coney Island
His 1998 memoir is titled Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here.
Q 03How many combat missions did Heller fly as a B-25 bombardier in World War II?
60
He later insisted most were milk runs, though people thought his service remarkable.
Q 04Heller joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942 at what age?
19
He had spent the year after high school as a blacksmith's apprentice, messenger boy and filing clerk.
Q 05From which university did Heller receive his M.A. in English in 1949?
Columbia
He had graduated from NYU on the G.I. Bill a year earlier after starting at the University of Southern California.
Q 06Heller spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at which university?
Oxford
He was at St Catherine's Society and returned there as a visiting Fellow in 1991.
Q 07Which future crime novelist worked alongside Heller at a small advertising agency?
Mary Higgins Clark
He wrote at home after hours; his first published story ran in The Atlantic in 1948.
Q 08Which magazine first published Heller, running one of his short stories in 1948?
The Atlantic
The story nearly won the magazine's 'Atlantic First' award.
Q 09In what year did Heller begin writing Catch-22?
1953
The opening lines came to him one morning; he wrote the first chapter within a week and then planned for a year.
Q 10Under what title was the novel's opening chapter published in 1955?
Catch-18
It appeared in Issue 7 of New World Writing; 11, 14 and 17 were all considered and rejected later.
Q 11The title was changed from Catch-18 to avoid confusion with which Leon Uris novel?
Mila 18
Catch-11 then fell to Ocean's Eleven and Catch-17 to Stalag 17; the publisher thought 14 was not funny.
Q 12Which Simon & Schuster editor has been credited with coming up with the number 22?
Robert Gottlieb
He championed the book in-house and later confirmed the claim in the documentary Turn Every Page.
Q 13Who was Heller's literary agent, who sent Catch-22 to publishers when it was a third done?
Candida Donadio
Heller said he would not have finished it if nobody had been interested; Simon & Schuster paid $750 up front.
Q 21Which Catch-22 character runs the profiteering syndicate M&M Enterprises?
Milo Minderbinder
His maxim echoes the GM president's 1953 line that what is good for General Motors is good for the country.
Q 22At the end of Catch-22, Orr is revealed to have rowed to which neutral country?
Sweden
Yossarian pledges to follow him, which gives the dark final section its upbeat close.
Q 23Snowden's death is finally revealed in full in which numbered chapter?
41
The turret gunner's death haunts Yossarian in flashbacks throughout the book and the film.
Q 14How much did Simon & Schuster pay Heller up front for Catch-22?
US$750
A matching sum was promised on delivery, which he missed by four or five years.
Q 15Roughly how many hardback copies did Catch-22 sell in the US in its first year?
30,000
In Britain it was number one within a week; the 1962 paperback later sold 10 million copies in the US.
Q 16What rank and role does Catch-22's protagonist John Yossarian hold?
Captain and bombardier
He retreats to hospital with a liver condition that is almost jaundice to avoid flying.
Q 17Catch-22's squadron is based on which Mediterranean island?
Pianosa
The fictional 256th Squadron sits west of the Italian mainland; Heller's real unit flew from Corsica.
Q 18Heller took the name Yossarian from a wartime friend with what surname?
Yohannan
Francis Yohannan made the military his career and refused to discuss whether he was the real Yossarian.
Q 19Yossarian's background was changed from Jewish to what heritage before publication?
Assyrian
Closing Time later reveals this as a joke and makes him Armenian.
Q 20Which character introduces the term 'Catch-22' in the novel?
Doc Daneeka
The army surgeon explains that asking to be grounded as insane proves you are sane.
Q 24Heller said Catch-22 had been influenced by Céline, Nabokov and which English novelist?
Evelyn Waugh
He also said the book's anti-government feeling came from the Korean War and McCarthyism, not World War II.
Q 25Where did the Modern Library's review panel rank Catch-22 among 20th-century novels?
7th
The public poll put it 12th, and the BBC's Big Read ranked it 11th among Britain's best-loved books.
Q 26Which TV host printed 'YOSSARIAN LIVES' stickers and hid them around the NBC building?
John Chancellor
He handed them to Heller over drinks after a 1962 Today show appearance.
Q 27Which studio bought the film rights to Catch-22 in 1962 for $100,000?
Columbia Pictures
Heller grew dissatisfied and the rights were sold on to Filmways in 1967, which had already hired Mike Nichols.
Q 28Who directed the 1970 film of Catch-22?
Mike Nichols
Buck Henry wrote the screenplay and also appears in the cast.
Q 29Who played Yossarian in the 1970 film?
Alan Arkin
Voight played Milo, Garfunkel played Nately and Orson Welles played General Dreedle.
Q 30The 1970 film was shot at an airfield built near which Mexican town?
Guaymas
The site on the Gulf of California could only be reached by boat until a five-mile highway was built; it is now the local airport.