Just One Catch

by Tracy Daugherty

  “People I know are already dying and others I’ve known are already dead,” Singer says. “We don’t look that beautiful now. We wear glasses and are growing hard of hearing, we sometimes talk too much, repeat ourselves, things grow on us, even the most minor bruises take longer to heal and leave telltale traces. And soon … there will be no more of us left.”

  This is the gruesome reality propping up the fiction. Yossarian flies through the world of Catch-22 free of gravity. He breathes anachronisms and absurdity. In Closing Time, he remains a fictional character inhabiting a comic-book planet (as opposed to Sammy Singer and Lew Rabinowitiz, who operate in a realistic milieu), but he is specifically identified with the World War II generation. At the end of the novel, he survives—indeed, he believes he is immortal, living happily ever after in good fictional style—but he has not escaped time’s depredations. In his previous incarnation, he has decided to live forever or die trying. Now, he says the best way to live is to prepare to die.

  The Yossarian chapters are packed with comic invention—mad sexual escapades; surreal worlds (Dante’s Inferno as Steeplechase, in tunnels beneath Port Authority); apocalyptic moments; satirical set pieces lampooning the jet set; literary, musical, and cultural allusions (Thomas Mann, Richard Wagner): Here is the novel as roller coaster. In these sections, readers encounter distorted images of themselves, just as the old Steeplechase offered visitors opportunities to laugh at their follies.

  But then, in the Singer-Rabinowitz chapters, Joe dropped the garish curtains, killed the blinking lights. He exposed the show’s cogs: old age, divorce, illness, death. By yo-yoing the reader from whimsy to severity, Joe hoped to achieve what critic Robert Polhemus called the height of comic art: to “combin[e] the intensity of the [humorous] moment—the mood of laughter and release—with the promise of some form of enduring life in which we have a part.”

  The fulcrum from fantasy to reality and back again was the moment Joe returned to in memory and writing all his life: the wounded gunner in the back of the plane over Avignon.

  In Catch-22, Snowden’s death turns comedy into tragedy. In Closing Time, it binds the literary (Yossarian) to the real (Singer). It demonstrates how events inform literary art. Man is matter, but the imagination soars above it. We inhabit two realms, body and mind, even if they are really only one. Sammy Singer is Yossarian—and Joey Heller, among many others. (Storytelling is a matter of organizing experience and fantasizing, indulging in a conscious extension of the imagination, Joe once said. A schizophrenic exercise, it is both denial and confession).

  At novel’s end, the world appears to be hurtling toward its doom. Nevertheless, with the insouciance of a hero in a fiction, Yossarian feels “stimulated … by … optimism.” He believes “that nothing harmful could happen to him, that nothing bad could happen to a just man. This was nonsense, he knew; but he also knew, in his gut, he’d be … safe.”

  On the other hand, Sammy Singer holds “no illusions.” His theater of operations is the real. Widowed, aging, he is last seen (fittingly enough) in an airplane, listening to “mournful … Jewish” music, reading the death-haunted stories of Thomas Mann. “Mostly of late in [art] he preferred the melancholy to the heroic,” the narrator says of this quiet, elderly man. There is only one place Sammy Singer can end up. It will not be an imaginary Sweden, and it will not be in Yossarian’s immortal embrace.

  * * *

  “IT’S MY MASTERPIECE,” Joe told Jerry McQueen, speaking of Closing Time. The reviewers did not agree, but Joe felt the novel would survive them. It would fly through the darkness long after the newspapers had wrapped old fish.

  For the first time in his career, he had created rounded characters, not just the comic figures that had been his signature. He had written movingly and honestly about women, marriage, fatherhood, and companionship. He had lovingly evoked Coney Island and the ethnic atmospheres of his childhood neighborhoods. The novel would not replace Catch-22 as his bestloved book, but it was, Joe believed, a better, richer book, and the finest one he was capable of writing.

  The reviews’ bitterness was offset by personal responses he received from readers and people he had known. One day, he got a phone call from Meredith Berkman, niece of Lou the junkman. Lou had died in 1981. Joe based the character Lew Rabinowoitz on him. Meredith wanted to meet and talk about her uncle. Saturday afternoon at the Plaza? Fine, Joe said.

  “[I had heard that Heller] … had the reputation of being a gruff, arrogant man with little patience [for others],” Berkman said, “but he [was] warm and open throughout our conversation.”

  Her eyes welled up. Joe clasped her hands across the table. “Don’t start to cry,” he said nervously. She told him her family loved the Coney Island sections of Closing Time. Joe professed his affection for her uncle. The only reason he hadn’t gone to Lou’s funeral was because “I don’t like rituals,” he said. He cautioned her not to mix fiction with facts. “This is not your [family’s] life [in the novel]. I think you may or may not be projecting onto me a love or a nostalgia … that’s much more romantic than it actually was,” he said. He pulled a Stim-U-Dent from the pocket of his tweed jacket. “I must tell you something else. Even when I’m writing about subjects that are real and intimate, I don’t feel that intimacy while I’m writing it. I doubt I’m different from other authors. When an author’s in an emotional state, he can’t write. There’s something cool and calculating and objective about the act of writing fiction.” They ordered coffee. “For me, most of the act of writing now consists of two emotions,” Joe said. “One is strength. The other is apprehension, the stress of … deciding what to do and doing it. [I feel] almost triumphant relief when it’s done.”

  Berkman thanked him for his honesty—and for stimulating the first frank talk her family had ever had about sex. When her sister was reading the novel, she said, she came across a reference to “Coney Island whitefish.” Their father, Charlie, had to explain they were condoms.

  Who knew what services novels could perform?

  * * *

  JOE SAT IN HIS STUDY, staring at a framed invitation to a 1987 luncheon in honor of his marriage to Valerie, hosted by Craig Claiborne. He stared at his smiling face on magazine covers (Esquire, Connoisseur), framed and hanging on the wall. He stared at the spines of his books and the titles in multiple translations. Unsuccessfully, he tried to ignore the latest reviews.

  In the October 10, 1994, issue of The New Yorker, Christopher Buckley, critic, novelist, and magazine editor (Forbes FYI), wrote a perceptive, if mixed, review of Closing Time. “How would you like to be a seventy-one-year-old certified American literary heavyweight, only to have your latest work [victimized by] the piling on that has been under way for over a month [by reviewers who seem] … annoyed with [Heller] for messing with characters they’ve come to regard over the years as their own[?]” Buckely wrote. “What praise there was for ‘Closing Time’—from Robert Gottlieb, the editor of ‘Catch-22’—was rather faint. So, Joe—glad you wrote ‘The Sequel to ‘Catch-22’?’ To such inquiries, Heller has patiently replied that birds gotta sing, girls gotta dance, and writers gotta write.”

  Buckley ended his review by saying, “There’s much in ‘Closing Time’ that can’t have come easily. As the critics sharpen their knives … it seems we can afford to celebrate ‘Catch-22s’ thirty-third anniversary by welcoming Yossarian, Sammy, Milo, Lew, Wintergreen, and Chaplain Tappman, even as we take leave of them, and give credit to their creator, who has given us such consequential imperfections, and has dared not to leave well enough alone.”

  Joe sent Buckley a note: “I think you know me, and my novel, better than I do myself, and I was touched in more ways than you might expect by the time I came to your concluding paragraph. Valerie, my wife, was also moved nearly to tears of gratitude. Thank you from both of us.”

  So began a series of letters, faxes, and notes, and perhaps the warmest friendship of Joe’s final years. Almost immediately, Buckley tried to talk Joe into wr
iting articles for Forbes FYI. “A magazine editor is a hunter/gatherer, and when a lion appears on the savannah, one gives chase,” he said.

  “Christopher: Have you taken leave of your senses?” Joe wrote on December 1, 1994. “I can’t write good prose—that’s why I do novels that don’t really require much. If I could, I would have found happiness forty years ago writing anonymous columns for [The New Yorker’s] ‘The Talk of the Town.” ”

  Joe traveled to promote Closing Time, giving interviews on radio and television, readings at universities (“I think I will have a [good] audience at Yale, and a … respectable one, for I am, as we tend to forget, a senior citizen.… [A]n advantage I tend to bring with me is that I myself am usually at least half drunk before I step out to face an audience,” he wrote Buckley). The younger man nudged him, again, for a magazine piece.

  “I hate writing, as you know,” Joe told him. “[A]nd I have felt for a long time now that it is never a good idea for a novelist to get on friendly terms with a book reviewer.” But he was warming to the idea of a satire, or perhaps an article on his love of food. First, he had to swing through Western Europe for a series of press junkets.

  Finally, in mid-December 1994, Joe, Valerie, and Buckley enjoyed a brief meeting in an Italian restaurant in the city. “I knew [Joe] was a gourmand. My bait: risotto with white truffles,” Buckley said. Shortly afterward, Joe wrote him to say, “[Okay,] let’s go ahead [with an article]. I will have some fun and you will too, and if the check comes and clears, I might make most of an alimony payment.… Valerie love[s] the idea … and why shouldn’t she, since she does not have to do the work.”

  Buckley suggested he do a humorous piece on famous meals in history—the first seder in the Garden of Eden, the role of indigestion in Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.

  He hoped Joe would travel to Washington, D.C., to meet the Forbes staff. Joe said it was “too far” to go, “too many” people would expect him to talk to them, and he was feeling too “fragile and faint-hearted” to step back out in public right then.

  * * *

  ON A CHILLY MID-DECEMBER morning, when locals expected only deer to appear on the runways at the East Hampton airport (as opposed to summertime, when the private jets of the rich and famous swarmed the skies), a low roar cut through rising strings of mist. Bernie Comfort, a former World War II fighter pilot, out for an early walk, paused at the edge of a runway, pulled his leather jacket tight around his chest, and stared in wonder at a bulky olive-colored object. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered. Soon, a small crowd gathered at the airfield.

  A bomber had landed on Long Island.

  The onlookers watched a film crew set up equipment and lights. The star of the show, Joseph Heller, in a bright red blazer, his shocking white hair lifting erratically in the breeze, strolled up to the B-25. “Oh boy, oh boy,” he said. “I haven’t stood next to one of these since 1945.” He touched the fuselage. “I had forgotten how small it was. I’ve ridden in stretch limousines bigger than this.” He stepped beneath the Plexiglas nose cone. “I always wondered why they couldn’t have made an escape hatch up here,” he said softly. “We flew across the ocean on [a plane like this]. First Brazil, then to Ascension Island, then eight hours to Africa.”

  This particular plane, one of thirty B-25s still in existence, had flown to East Hampton from the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania, at a cost of $2,500. It had been featured in the movie of Catch-22. Now it provided dramatic backdrop for an interview with Joe. The Discovery television channel was filming a series called Great Books. The show’s producers, including Walter Cronkite, had asked the Center for the Book, at the Library of Congress, to select the finest books ever written. These included volumes by Plato, Machiavelli, Freud, Twain, Hawthorne, Melville … and Joe Heller. He was the only living author in the group. In addition to the television program, a celebratory festival was planned for autumn 1996 at the Library of Congress. “I will be reading from my book, Plato will be reading from his, Melville will be reading from Moby Dick,” Joe said.

  While Bernie Comfort and others looked on from beyond the runway, cameramen centered Joe beneath the bombardier’s perch. The film crew had to work quickly, as museum officials wanted the plane back in Pennsylvania before nightfall. The B-25 had no heater and would be too cold for a pilot after dark.

  Gently, Joe ran his hand along the plane’s glass curvature. His arm trembled. Honestly, he said, the war “was the most memorable and best period of my life. Because we were young. It was an adventure, and we were considered heroes when we came back.”

  “The B-25 is a wonderful prop,” said Dale Minor, a senior producer, watching Joe quietly. “But the magic is in Joe Heller.”

  “Most of the time I have nothing to do,” Joe said, as if speaking to himself. “Most of the parties [around here] I’m not invited to. They either don’t want me or they know I won’t come.… Writing and thinking about writing and taking part in things connected with writing is pretty much my major recreation.… Unlike many people I know out here, I’m not interested in tennis, I’m not interested in golf, I’m not interested in sailing, and I don’t really enjoy cocktail parties anymore.… I read and I write.… And I drink and I eat.… There’s really nothing else I’d rather do. I no longer experience any pressure.… As I look back,” he said, staring straight into the bombardier’s glass bowl, “it has been a wonderful life.”

  * * *

  CLOSING TIME had been a major summing up, but Joe wouldn’t believe it was his swan song as a novelist. If he didn’t write, he didn’t know what to do with himself. In early April 1995, he wrote Christopher Buckley, “I’ve got one more VE Day just ahead, and then I’ll have nothing to do … but [start] another novel. Some fun.”

  Valerie, in the back garden with a watering can and shears, could tell when he’d had a poor or productive morning, depending on how quickly he emerged from his lair.

  He’d go to lunch with Speed and B. J. Friedman. Sometimes, eavesdropping on silly conversations at nearby tables, he wished Shirley were sitting beside him so the two of them could make fun of people’s talk, the way they used to.

  Back pains plagued him and his walk had slowed.

  He welcomed opportunities to mentor Chris Buckley. “You spread yourself too thin,” he advised. “[Y]ou have a good heart—keep it in good shape.… [B]efore you know it, in only thirty years, you’re going to be as old as I am now.… You will be surprised at how much you will want a [pension plan] and how quickly the day will rush to you when you’re entitled to it. I talk from experience.”

  He told Buckley to wrangle “a corporate furnished apartment in Manhattan for your … business and pleasure, or do you prefer hotels?”

  When Buckley asked Joe to critique a piece intended for The New Yorker, Joe shot back, “Why in heaven’s name are you sending [this] to … me who never could earn more than a dismissive one-sentence rejection slip from anyone there?”

  Meanwhile, his daughter quietly informed him her mother was ill.

  What’s the matter? Joe asked.

  Lung cancer.

  Erica had moved back into the Apthorp from her Upper East Side studio to care for Shirley. Norman and Gloria Barasch arrived in the city to treat Erica to lunch and dinner every day and drive her home at night. “[We’re] not about to let you go through all this yourself,” Norman said.

  In swift succession, Shirley braved lung surgery, brain surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation at Sloan-Kettering.

  Joe called Erica every evening, his voice gravelly and shaken. What were the doctors saying? Was Shirley eating anything? Getting fresh air? He couldn’t bring himself to talk to his former wife.

  Was she taking her medications?

  Wearily, patiently, night after night, Erica answered his questions. She heard the hurt bewilderment in his voice.

  He sat on his back patio, watching the moon rise, recalling times he had spent with Shirley in this house, remembering the taste of meatballs w
rapped in cabbage she’d cook every summer for East Hampton lawn parties, the trips they’d taken together to Stuart’s Fish Market over in Amagansett.…

  “It is painful for me to recall how my wife was, to know the kind of person she used to be and would have liked to remain, and to see what is happening to her now, as it is painful for me to witness the deterioration of any human being who has ever been dear (or even near) to me,” he had written, presciently, in Something Happened.

  But of course, he wasn’t witnessing what was happening.

  Late one evening, exhausted and sad, impatient with the terror conveyed by her father’s silences on the phone, Erica raised her voice: he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t make an attempt to communicate with Shirley before she died. “Call her. Write to her. Send flowers, but do something,” she said. “There isn’t much time left and if you don’t, I just feel that you will always be sorry.”

  For what felt like several minutes, a sound like ocean surf washed across the phone line. Finally, Joe said, “I don’t need you to tell me what to do,” and hung up.

  The next day—it was late spring 1995—an orderly knocked on the door of Shirley’s room at Sloan-Kettering. He delivered a spray of flowers. A “sumptuous truckload,” Erica said, “the most exquisite flowers I had ever seen.” Their stems curled elegantly from a cut crystal vase. Erica placed the bouquet on a table next to her mother’s bed. She opened the card and read aloud: “My darling Shirley. I am so sorry. Joe.”

  Shirley, frail, hands resting lightly on the sheets, said, “Joe who?”

  “Joe Heller,” Erica said softly.

  “Well, he is a sorry soul.”

  “But he sent you flowers. They’re from Dad.”

  Shirley asked what she wanted her to do—hire jugglers? It was the kind of wit Joe had heard, over and over, in imaginary conversations with her. Jugglers indeed: bused in, perhaps, from the old, defunct Grossinger’s. Shirley turned her head, closed her eyes, and went to sleep.