Just One Catch

by Tracy Daugherty

  Joseph Stein spoke movingly and eloquently about his old friend with me. I am blessed to have had the chance to speak with him.

  For their help, patience, forbearance, and kindness I am also indebted to the following people. In some instances, their willingness to return my calls or answer e-mails gave the book a necessary boost. Any errors of fact or interpretation in the narrative are mine, not theirs or anyone else’s I spoke to for this project:

  Florence Aaron, Norman Barasch, Skip Blumberg, Mel Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Audrey Chestney, Margaret Dawes, Bruce Jay Friedman, Per Gedin, Barbara Gelb, Charles Gwathmey and his staff, Herman Gollob, Ronnie Heller, Christopher Hitchens, Deborah Karl, Dolores Karl, Paul Krassner, Mell Lazarus, Amy Lubelski, David Markson, Bob and Abby Mason, Gerald McQueen, Judith Ruderman, Kirkpatrick Sale, Edith Seligson, Liz Smith, Jerome Taub, A. Robert Towbin, Amanda Urban, David Wood, and Lou Ann Walther.

  I cannot claim Joseph Heller’s gift for friendship, but I am graced with marvelous friends who make all work possible and worthwhile. I gratefully acknowledge each of them for their patience with me, particularly Michelle Boisseau, Glenn Blake, Elizabeth Campbell, Tom Cobb and Randy Mott, Karen Holmberg, Sue Rodgers, and Keith Scribner.

  Kathie Lang, Keith Gregory, and George Ann Ratchford, late of SMU Press, are three reasons I was here to write this book, as is Ehud Havazelet who, in our weekly meetings, enhanced my literary education and enthusiasm.

  Marjorie Sandor and Hannah Crum: there are not enough words for our human geography. They are all yours. I wish for more.

  NOTES

  PROLOGUE: YO-YO

  In his maturity, he will concede that most of us are never more conscious: In several late-in-life interviews and in his 1998 memoir, Now and Then, Heller discussed his tendency to repress certain experiences, like war trauma and the death of his father, that might otherwise be self-revealing. See, for example, Lynn Barber, “Bloody Heller,” The Observer, March 1, 1998, posted at guardian.co.uk/books1998/mar/01/fiction. josephheller; Joseph Heller, Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 73, 178, 226, 234.

  “[h]eavy, intense and accurate”: Daniel Setzer, “Historical Sources for the Events in Joseph Heller’s Novel, Catch-22,” p. 21; posted at home.comcast.net/~dhsetzer.

  “I was in the leading flight”: Heller, Now and Then, pp. 181–82.

  “I believed with all my heart and quaking soul”: ibid., pp. 179–80.

  “The bombardier doesn’t answer”: ibid., p. 180.

  “Be nice to daddy”; “I [have] come to the wrong place”: Joseph Heller, “Catch-22 Revisited,” Holiday, April 1967, p. 53.

  “You will find out”: This and subsequent conversation regarding this incident in ibid., p. 145.

  “How they landed the plane safely”: War Diary report posted at warwingsart.com/12thAirforce/8u8p.html.

  “2nd Lt. J. Heller”; “2nd Lt. F. Yohannan”: orders for the 488th Bombardment Squadron, 340th Bombardment Group, posted at usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=91891.

  “His self-insight comes and goes”: Phillip Lopate, “Back to the Boardwalk,” New York Times, February 15, 1998.

  “I … don’t understand what’s meant by”: Ramona Koval, “Books and Writing,” ABC Radio National, 1998; transcript posted at abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2266926.htm.

  “I’m the bombardier”: This and subsequent conversation taken from Heller, Now and Then, pp. 179–80.

  1. DOMESTIC ENGAGEMENTS

  “help women who on occasion feel nervous”: This and details about San Angelo, Texas, in the 1940s are taken from Mark Kneubuhl, “Boomtown San Angelo,” posted at sanangelolive.com/node/2205.

  “were quite dubious whether or not we were capable of flying”: John V. Garrett, A Brief History of Goodfellow Air Force Base (San Angelo, Texas: 17th Training Wing History Office, 2008), p. 34.

  “scant, inacc[urate] flak”: Daniel Setzer, “Historical Sources for the Events in Joseph Heller’s Novel, Catch-22,” p. 67; posted at home.comcast.net/~dhsetzer.

  Transportation home could be delayed for many reasons: Daniel Setzer in an e-mail to the author, July 9, 2009.

  “I pretty much enjoyed [Texas]”: Joseph Heller, Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 194.

  “his large nose and his eyes”: Susan Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes, Maybe Yes, But Not the Whole Book,” The New Journal 26 (1967): 7.

  “almost nothing to do”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 194.

  “I was so terrified on my last few missions”: Sam Merrill, “Playboy Interview: Joseph Heller,” Playboy, June 1975, pp. 64–66.

  “turned out to be true”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 172.

  the number of training accidents: History of the 2533rd AAF Base Unit (Pilot School, Prim-Basic) at Goodfellow Field, San Angelo, Texas, p. 46. For further information on domestic accidents involving military aircraft, see “USAAF Stateside Accident Reports,” posted at aviationarchaeology.com/src/AARmonthly.

  “hard-nosed, sexist attitudes”: Heller, Now and Then, pp. 186–87.

  “He turned over on his back”: Joseph Heller, “I Don’t Love You Any More,” in Catch as Catch Can: The Collected Stories and Other Writings, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Park Bucker (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 5.

  “boyish and ravenous satyr”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 170.

  “I married you because it was part of the dream”: Heller, Catch as Catch Can, p. 3.

  “I don’t want to sit in a room filled with people”: ibid.

  “mountains had everything”: Joey Adams, with Henry Tobias, “Comics, Singers, and Tummlers,” in In the Catskills: A Century of the Jewish Experience in “The Mountains,” ed. by Phil Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 233.

  “This is what it was like”: Joyce Wadler, “The Fine Art of Mountain Tummling,” in In the Catskills, ed. Brown, 248.

  “air was redolent”: Brown, ed., In the Catskills, p. 269.

  “I learned to spot a single woman”: Tania Grossinger, Growing Up at Grossinger’s (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2008), p. 14.

  “[G]oods and entertainment that were previously unavailable”: Phil Brown, Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat’s Memories of the Great Jewish Resort Area (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), p. 182.

  “There was not time for subtle flirtations”: Grossinger, Growing Up at Grossinger’s, p. 19.

  “I met the girl”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 197.

  “At a dance contest one night”: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, August 26, 2009.

  “They had each grown up very poor”: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, July 11, 2009.

  “He was very handsome”: ibid.

  “derived from tumult-maker”: Adams “Comics, Singers, and Tummlers,” p. 228.

  “included a whole variety of ethnic caricatures”: Ellen Schiff, “Shylock’s Mishpocheh: Anti-Semitism on the American Stage,” in Anti-Semitism in American History, ed. David Gerber (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), p. 84.

  “I returned to the city”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 197.

  “sugar and tinsel dream of life”: Heller, Catch as Catch Can, p. 3.

  “A pitcher of beer”: ibid., p. 5.

  In 1942, for both economic and patriotic reasons: See “Combatting Advertising Decline in Magazines During WWII: Image Ads Promoting Wartime Themes and the War Loan Drives,” WJMCR 1, no. 1 (1997), posted at scripps.ohiou.edu/wjmcr/vol01/1-1a-B.htm.

  2. A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND

  “At Coney Island”: Alex Marshall, “Coney Island: The Train Is the Thing,” posted at alexmarshall.org/index.php?pageId=96.

  “One must go to Coney Island”: Michael Immerso, Coney Island: The People’s Playground (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), p. 127.

  “vomiting multitudes”: ibid.

  “If France is Paris”: ibid., p. 50.

  “rac
e up and down the hard sand”: ibid., p. 14.

  George Tilyou: For details regarding Tilyou’s hucksterism and the founding of Steeplechase Park, see Jeffrey Stanton, “Coney Island—First Steeplechase,” posted at westland.net/coneyisland/articles/steeplechase1.htm.

  “glorified city of flame”: Immerso, Coney Island, p. 79.

  “moving like [the] compositions of Michelangelo and Rubens”: Richard Cox, “Coney Island: Urban Symbol in American Art,” in Brooklyn USA: The Fourth Largest City in America, ed. Rita Seiden Miller (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1979), p. 145.

  “The only thing about America that interests me”: Immerso, Coney Island, p. 3.

  “Centrifugal force never fails”: ibid., p. 55.

  “scarier than flying”: “The Riegelmann Boardwalk Is Built,” The American Experience, Public Broadcasting Service (WGBH), 1999–2000; posted at pbs.org/wgbh/amex/coney/peopleevents/pande10.html.

  “succeeded because they combined socially acceptable thrills”: Marshall, “Coney Island.”

  “barnfires”; “mickeys”: Joseph Heller, Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 79.

  “It brent a fire in street”: Joseph Heller, Good as Gold (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), p. 323. Heller spoke openly about the autobiographical nature of the Coney Island sections in Good as Gold. See, for example, Adam J. Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), p. 195.

  “I was not aware of coldness or warmth”: ibid., p. 194.

  “I … never grappled much with the idea”: Heller, Now and Then, pp. 233–34.

  “from somewhere in western Russia”: ibid., p. 38.

  Ambiguity clouds the family name: Details and surmises about Heller family history are taken from various sources. See “The Heller Surname,” posted at ancestry.com/facts/Heller-places-origin.ashx, as well as discussions on the Heller Family Genealogy Forum, posted at genforum.genealogy.com/heller. For information about Yom-Tov Lipmann, see Joseph Davis, Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller (Oxford: Littman Library, 2004) and The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1900–1906). See also C. U. Lipschitz and Neil Rosenstein, The Feast and the Fast (New York: Maznaim, 1984). I am grateful to Sheila Heller, who shared information with me in an e-mail on July 14, 2009.

  fourteenth census of the United States: 1920 United States Federal Census, posted at ancestry.com.

  ship manifest: “New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957,” posted at ancestry.com.

  The likely possibilities: A useful online database for locating alternate names and spellings of Eastern European cities, past and present, can be found in ShtetlSeeker database at jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.dll?jg~jgsys~shtetlexp5.

  “redistributing [America’s] wealth”: “Roosevelt’s Super-Socialism,” New York Times, September 30, 1913.

  “Not to take [the] paper”: Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made (New York: Shocken, 1989), p. 518.

  “where the doctors eat”: Various publications have reported versions of Handwerker’s story. See, for example, Bee Wilson, “Dog’s Dinner,” The New Statesman, January 21, 2002, p. 47.

  “People often need the opportunity”: Isaac Metzger, ed., A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward (New York: Shocken, 1971), p. 13.

  “I am a girl from Galicia”: letter cited in “The Bintel Brief” at pbskids.org/bigapplehistory/life/topic6.html. See also Sarah Weiss, “‘A Bintel Brief’: A Journey to America,” The Concord Review 9, no. 4 (1999): 220. Weiss’s essay provides useful background information on the Jewish Daily Forward’s advice column.

  “strangers to [your] own neighbors”: Weiss, “‘A Bintel Brief,’” p. 218.

  “If you got money, come down and buy”: Charles T. Powers, “Joe Heller, Author on Top of the World,” Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1975; reprinted in Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller, pp. 142–43.

  “He used to wet my carriage”: Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller, p. 195.

  “There were lots of Jewish criminals around”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 233.

  “When you come from California”: ibid., p. 231.

  The 1930 census: 1930 United States Federal Census, posted at ancestry.com.

  “I was told [by my playmates] to lie on the ground”: letter from Lee Heller to Joseph Heller, undated, Joseph Heller Archive, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

  he began to bite his nails: Heller, Now and Then, p. 14.

  “I approached [the Chaser]”: Joseph Heller, “Coney Island: The Fun Is Over,” Show, July 1962, p. 50.

  “[Eventually,] I could anticipate”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 50.

  “chozzer mart”: ibid., p. 37.

  “real impression”: Dale Gold, “Portrait of a Man Reading,” Washington Post Book World, July 20, 1969; reprinted in Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller, p. 57.

  “Joe brought home a note”: Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller, pp. 195–96.

  “He was brighter than all of us”: ibid., p. 195.

  “emotional surge”: Mervyn Rothstein, “Morris Lapidus, an Architect Who Built Flamboyance into Hotels, Is Dead at 98,” New York Times, January 19, 2001.

  “morbid[ity]” and “comedy” in his writing: Joseph Heller, remarks made at Michigan State University, March 9, 1992; audio recording available at matrix.msu.edu/cls/viewcelebrity?first=Joseph&last=Heller.

  “when the ticket booths close[d]”: Heller, Now and Then, pp. 100–01.

  “My world was small and horrible”: Isaac Babel, “The Story of My Dovecot,” in Collected Stories, trans. David McDuff (New York: Penguin, 1994), pp. 38–39.

  “I didn’t realize then how traumatized I was”: Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller, p. 195.

  “As always, when talking of his parents”: ibid., p. 196.

  “Joe was a nervous wreck”: ibid.

  “I do recall”: George Mandel in an e-mail to the author, July 20, 2009.

  “suffering headaches”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 14.

  “I was in heaven”: ibid., p. 10.

  “[F]ew pleasures are so thoroughly reinforcing”: ibid.

  “I associate money with life”: ibid., p. 118.

  “Extra! Hitler dies”: ibid., p. 10.

  “First this was Coney Island”: Heller, Good as Gold, p. 319.

  “repeal unemployment”: “Third Parties: Repeal Unemployment,” Time, August 8, 1932; posted at time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,744111,00.html.

  “Hoover, Hoover, rah, rah, rah!”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 25.

  “haunted imagination”: ibid., p. 72.

  “You’ve got a twisted brain”; “Ma, can I have a glass of milk”: ibid., p. 75.

  “At once I saw with terror”: ibid.

  “How long have you been doing that?”: ibid., pp. 138–39.

  he married a sweet woman named Perle: Perle Ingber, who came from Brooklyn, went to work for the President Novelty and Jewelry Company in Manhattan.

  though he was not her biological son: Heller, Now and Then, pp. 5–6. See also Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller, pp. 196–97.

  3. FEAR OF FILING

  “I felt victimized, disgraced”; “I [fell] silent”: Joseph Heller, Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 6.

  “to stifle painful emotion”; “walking proof”: ibid., p. 73.

  “Our stepmother raised us”: Adam J. Sorkin, ed. Conversations with Joseph Heller (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), p. 197.

  The Lapland’s manifest: “New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957,” posted at ancestry.com. Sylvia’s stepson, Charles Gurian, has discovered that Isaac Heller’s first wife was named Pauline Yellin. Born in Russia, she died in the United States on March
14, 1918.

  “just mom and me”: letter from Lee Heller to Joseph Heller, undated, Joseph Heller Archive, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

  “I still am unable to decide”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 15.

  “coming to [his listeners] from the city of New York”: Joseph Heller, Closing Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 207.

  “Coney Island whitefish”: ibid., p. 131.

  though the teachers were mostly second-generation Jewish college graduates: Deborah Dash Moore, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p. 98.

  “Okay, youse guys, quiet down”: letter from Lillian Morgenstern to Joseph Heller, undated, Joseph Heller Archive.

  “Titty Bottles”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 86.

  “I didn’t even know what Protestant was”: Heller, Good as Gold, p. 115.

  “Where does a Jew come to a horse?” ibid.

  “We all hated [it]”: letter from Sylvia Heller Gurion to Joseph Heller, February 14, 1976, Joseph Heller Archive.

  “I taught you how to hustle, so listen to me”: Richard Lehan and Jerry Patch, “Catch-22: The Making of a Novel,” in Critical Essays on Catch-22, ed. by James Nagel (Encino, CA: Dickenson, 1974), pp. 39–40.

  “When I [finally] came in contact with good literature”: Joseph Heller, interviewed by Don Swaim, “Wired for Books,” CBS Radio, September 19, 1984; audio recording available at wiredforbooks.org/josephheller.

  “secret and serious, nonsexual crush[es]”: Heller, Now and Then, p. 94.

  “prowl[ed] about the kitchen”: ibid., p. 75.

  “[One evening] I learned”: ibid., p. 82.

  “perceptive enough to be wary of [people]”: George Mandel, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration,” a memorial service held at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on June 13, 2000. Transcribed by the author from a video recording (courtesy of Erica Heller).

  the comic-book industry was beginning to burgeon: For an overview of the comic-book industry, see Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 1–29.