....apart from of course it wasn't around. But that's a minor point I believe (c.f. the Midrash on Tractate Nobelim)
In English at school they always told you to describe things so you could imagine them. Build up the characters. Set the scene. Have long-winded, really annoying, irrelevant descriptions about stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Okay, so they didn't say the last one but that was the (esoteric) ikkar. That's why I never read much, the literature was too "good" (and by "good" read snotty, pretentious, A* at English). No, I always preferred a book to have a plot, at least of sorts. So that counts out Catch 22: I struggled on to page 150 and there was not a single thing that had happened. Honest! It's through action and dialogue that you really learn about character, not through telling me about character.
The Rabbis in the Talmud, on the other hand, well.... they weren't French existentialists or self-styled radical philosophers; let's put it that way. Not really an artistic bone in their body. They go for the main plot elements, and the main plot elements only. The extreme opposite of Catch 22, and perhaps too much the opposite.
The following story made me laugh. It follows from a discussion about how long men can be away from home (studying) and away from their wives without permission. The halacha according to mishna and Palestinian Talmud is 30 days without exception (and then should stay at least one, probably two months at home). The Babylonian Talmud, however, goes to great lengths, presumably to justify existing practice, and relies on a minority opinion of (guess who?) Rabbi Eliezer which allows them to go away for 'two or three' (Talmudic for 'a few'). However, it is still not 'correct behaviour' to ignore your wife (!) as the following story makes clear:
Rav Rehume would regularly visit his wife every year on the Eve of Yom Kippur. One day, his studies absorbed him. His wife was waiting, "Now he will come, Now he will come". He did not come. She became upset, and a tear fell from her eye. He was sitting on the roof. The roof collapsed under him, and he died
The main story arc:
SHE THOUGHT HE'D COME
HE DIDN'T COME
SHE WAS UPSET
HE DIED
Get it? GET IT? You ignore your wife, YOU DIE. She cries, YOU DIE. (If you are going to study on roof, and you haven't had a civil engineer in, YOU DIE.) GET IT?.
Now of course there is a bit of irony which ups the literature points a bit. Clearly he didn't study too far away as otherwise a day engrossed in study wouldn't have stopped him getting home. Even so, he missed his 'regular' yearly visit. YOU DIE
There is a bit of emotion. The heart rendering moment, a rabbinical extravagance, when 'a tear fell from her eye'; I was almost in tears. THE DESPERATION... and moving on...YOU DIE (probably helped the wife).
But all in all, it's to the point. Not going to win a Nobel Prize. Zero marks for subtlety. But it's too the point. And more happens here than in the whole of 'Ushpizin'. You can't say fairer than that
