You can't pretend Catch-22 was scribbled without any preparation. This is Joseph Heller's original outline, meticulously plotted over a period of many months on the floor of his living room.
It's incredible how awful some of this 20th century fiction is. It feels like something scribbled without any preparation or thought: Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, Catch-22, Basketball Diaries, On The Road.
I despised all this nonsense and resented being forced to read it.