“Absolutely untrue”: ibid.
“[s]uggested descriptive copy fragments”: Joseph Heller, notes on Catch-22, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
“Tell me about popular fiction”: Katherine McNamara, “A Conversation about Publishing with Samuel S. Vaughan,” Archipelago, 3, no. 2 (1999): 39.
“That’s some catch”: This and other quotes from Catch-22 on the following pages are taken from Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961; reprint, New York: Dell, 1971), pp. 47, 17, 107, 177, 449–50, 266, 463, 269, 197.
“war … without limits”: Alfred Kazin, Bright Book of Life: American Novelists and Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 83.
“I didn’t want to give him a Jewish name”: Paul Krassner, “An Impolite Interview with Joseph Heller,” The Realist, November 1962; reprinted in Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller, p. 18.
“the demented governess”: Gottlieb, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”
“We have to print 7,500”: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 486.
“If we’d had anybody to ask”: ibid.
“A funny and tragic and tonic book”: ibid.
“crazed”; “This is a book I’d get a critic”: ibid.
“One eminent critic”: ibid.
“Dear Miss Bourne”: letter from Evelyn Waugh to Nina Bourne, September 6, 1961, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
“PLEASE CONGRATULATE JOSEPH HELLER”: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 489.
“The growing ferment of interest in Catch-22”: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 488.
“spent many an evening”: Frederick Karl, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”
“regular family life”: Erica Heller, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”
“We used to go often on Sunday afternoons”: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, December 5, 2009.
“With the hope that when you read this book”: ibid.
he chided friends who bought the novel on discount: Melvin J. Grayson, who worked for a time with Heller in the promotion department at Look magazine, recalled that he bumped into Heller on Fifth Avenue right after Catch-22 was published. “Have you seen the reviews of Catch-22?” Heller asked him. “I’ll bet you wish you could write like that.” Grayson was apparently not one of Heller’s favorite people, or vice versa. Grayson recalls two other unpleasant encounters with Heller, one in Heller’s office, when Heller told Grayson to “go away” because he was busy, and one in which, as the men passed casually in the hallway, Heller told Grayson, “You have dandruff.” See the letters page of New York magazine, October 10, 1994.
“Involvement in an intense relationship”: Michael Moore, “Pathological Communication Patterns in Heller’s Catch-22,” posted at www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=17838029.
“[T]he book is no novel”: Richard G. Stern, “Bombers Away,” New York Times Book Review, October 22, 1961, p. 50.
“was not dismayed”: Frederick Karl, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”
“I didn’t think [my family and I] would ever smile again”: Harold Bloom, ed., Bloom’s Guides: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), p. 10.
“We thought we had the fix in”: Alice Denham, Sleeping with Bad Boys: A Juicy Tell-All of Literary New York in the 1950s and 1960s (New York: Book Republic Press, 2006), p. 198–99.
“Below its hilarity”: Nelson Algren, “The Catch,” The Nation, November 4, 1961, p. 358.
“Catch-22 is the debut of a writer with merry gifts”: Norman Mailer, “Some Children of the Goddess: Norman Mailer vs. Nine Writers,” Esquire, July 1963, p. 63.
“Joseph Heller’s brilliant farce-tragedy”: “Editorial: Who Gets the Awards and Why Not Everybody?” Show, June 1962, p. 14B.
“By conventional marketing standards”: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 494.
“Report on Catch-22”: ibid., p. 495.
“‘Catch’ is a classic”: Van Allen Bradley, “Bookman’s Week: Novelist Nelson Algren Campaigns for Neglected Book,” Chicago Daily News, June 23, 1962; cited in Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 496.
“Joe’s contribution”: Gottlieb, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”
“Many years later”: ibid.
“Things were pretty weird in Manhattan”: This quote and the following anecdote are taken from Robert Nedelkoff, “Catch-2008,” posted at thenewnixon.org/author/Robert-Nedelkoff.
“This is The Naked and the Dead scripted for the Marx Brothers”: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 501.
“When I began reading Catch-22”: Philip Toynbee, “Here’s Greatness—In Satire,” The Observer, June 17, 1962; reprinted in Frederick Kiley and Walter McDonald, eds., A “Catch-22” Casebook (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973), p. 12.
“We sold just over 800 copies”: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 499.
“It is hard to imagine [Heller’s] book”: W. J. Weatherby, “The Joy Catcher,” The Guardian, November 20, 1962.
“The thesis of ‘Catch-22’”: Anthony Burgess, “Review of Catch-22,” Yorkshire Evening Post, June 28, 1962; cited in Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 503.
“Come on! Don’t let the English beat us!”: Eller, “Catching a Market,” pp. 504–05.
“Heller’s a hell of a good publicist”: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” p. 39.
I don’t know yet whether I’ll do the play”: Eugene Arthur, “‘Catch-22’ Movie Set by Columbia,” New York Times, August 22, 1962.
“It was wonderful for Joe”: Hudes, “Epic Agent,” p. 154.
“They had an idea I was supposed to look like Thomas Wolfe”: Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller, p. 123.
“Both [success and failure] are difficult to endure”: ibid., p. 164.
“Catch-22 is taking off!” The quote and the ensuing conversation are taken from Denham, Sleeping with Bad Boys, p. 201.
“A matter has been troubling me”: letter from Robert O. Shipman to Simon & Schuster, May 14, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
“matter was entirely coincidental”: letter from Joseph Heller to Robert O. Shipman, May 18, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
“Eek”: note from Paula Diamond to Joseph Heller, August 6, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
“as Jacob wrestled with the angel”: letter from Joseph Heller to Paula Diamond, October 30, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
“how well I think you substituted for the name”: letter from Robert O. Shipman to Joseph Heller, April 18, 1963, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
“no permanent resentment exist[ed]”: letter from Joseph Heller to Robert O. Shipman, June 10, 1963, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
“The success of [Catch-22 in paperback]”: Kenneth C. Davis, Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), pp. 298–300.
“[A] nation-wide sensation”: ibid., p. 299.
“Not since The Catcher in the Rye”: “The Heller Cult,” Newsweek, October 1, 1962, pp. 82–83.
Joe appeared on NBC’s Today show: Heller recounts this anecdote in “Preface to Catch-22,” written in 1994 for a new edition of the novel (London: Vintage, 1995).
“[T]he war that I [was] really dealing with”: Creath Thorne, “Joseph Heller: An Interview,” The Chicago Literary Review: Book Supplement to the Chicago Maroon, December 3, 1974, p. 8.
“I don’t think I’ll ever recover”: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 514.
“[A]t the University of Chicago”: ibid., p. 515.
“The young people”: ibid.
“At some point, I outgrew the school library”: Mark Moskowitz; Stone Reader (Jet Films LLC, 2002); transcribed by the author.
“When [the] book first came out in paper”: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” p. 45.
a “difficult situation”: Davis, Two-Bit Culture, p. 300.
“Happy birthday CATCH-22”: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 513.
“Without being aware of it”: Joseph Heller, “Reeling in Catch-22,” in The Sixties, ed. Lynda Rosen Obst (New York: Rolling Stone Press/Random House, 1977), pp. 50–52.
“did their best to make us feel like exiles”: Anatole Broyard, Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), p. 15.
“[came] to us almost entirely in paperback”: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 519.
“For sixteen years”: letter from Stephen E. Ambrose to Joseph Heller, January 23, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
“I would very much like to know”: letter from John Steinbeck to Joseph Heller, July 1, 1963, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
12. THE REALIST
“America in the Sixties”: Lewis A. Coser, “Faith, Hope, and the Facts,” Commentary 31, no. 2 (1961): 181.
“drags on productivity”; “miracles of rising income”: ibid.
“moral, spiritual, and intellectual harm”: Norman Podhoretz, “Looking Back at Catch-22”; reprinted as “Norman Podhoretz on Rethinking Catch-22,” in Bloom’s Guides: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), p. 120.
“about a married man”: “The Heller Cult,” Newsweek, October 1, 1962, pp. 82–83.
“fulcrum [years] of America”; “rendezvous with destiny”: Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (New York: Random House, 1998), p. 3.
“Forms and rhythms in [art]”: quoted in Ralph Gleason, “Like a Rolling Stone,” posted at jannswenner.com/Press/Like_A_Rolling_Stone.aspx.
“I know so many things I’m afraid to find out”: Joseph Heller, Something Happened (1974; reprint, New York: Ballantine Books, 1975), p. 154.
“motivation of my entire life”: Bruce Weber, “Speed Vogel, Author’s Aide, Dies at 90,” New York Times, April 18, 2008; posted at nytimes.com/2008/04/18/books/18vogel.html.
“Joe somehow managed”: Joseph Heller and Speed Vogel, No Laughing Matter (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 99.
“erections”: Speed Vogel, “The Gourmet Club,” The Southampton Review 2, no. 1 (2008): 214.
“[Mel] had a blood sugar problem”; “Mr. Vogel can’t speak to you now”: Heller and Vogel, No Laughing Matter, p. 98.
“You snore”; “What do you want from me?”: ibid.
“Huck Finn on his raft in Manhattan”: Jane Ayer, “Speed Vogel Obituary,” posted at reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS16311+18+-Apr-2008+PRN20080418.
“Mel and Joe had tremendous similarities”: Vogel, “The Gourmet Club,” p. 210.
“There’s a side of Mel”: Kenneth Tynan, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,” The New Yorker, October 30, 1978, p. 68.
“Tragedy is if I cut my finger”: ibid., p. 94.
“Ngoot, a little guy”: Vogel, “The Gourmet Club,” p. 208.
“If you don’t have it”: ibid., p. 209.
“It’s hard to be a Jew”: Heller and Vogel, No Laughing Matter, p. 105.
“Mel was strangely attracted to fire”: Vogel, “The Gourmet Club,” p. 209.
“The trouble with fucking”: Mario Puzo, The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1972), p. 226.
“I’m sure glad that happened to you”; “He wasn’t being cruel”: Tynan, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,” p. 101.
“Joe loved to move around Manhattan”: This and other comments by Mell Lazarus are from a conversation with the author, May 20, 2009.
“The Kennedy Administration”: Sam Merrill, “Playboy Interview: Joseph Heller,” Playboy, June 1975, pp. 66–68.
“Women flock[ed] to him”: Adam J. Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), p. 193.
“You can’t be a female fan”: Sally Vincent, “Portrait: Catch-94,” The Guardian, September 24, 1994.
“I think as soon as I was old enough”: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, October 21, 2009.
“[W]e were not an … affectionate family”: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, January 15, 2010.
“[I]t is never, or hardly ever, an entirely good thing”: Joseph Heller, Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 214.
“He was funnier”: Norman Barasch in conversation with the author, April 29, 2009.
a “very warm, open man”: Erica Heller, in conversation with the author, February 18, 2010.
“He was always complaining about the food”: Norman Barasch in conversation with the author, April 29, 2009.
“This is the world of Stevenson, Conrad, and Gauguin”: Albert Aley, “Seven Against the Sea,” Universal City Studios LLLP, 1962. The drama is available for viewing at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles. See also the listing at at imdb.com.
“so long as a book is true and beautiful”: D. J. Taylor, “Culture, Commerce, Clinton,” The Guardian, May 25, 2002; posted at guardian.co.uk/books/2002/May/25/hayfestival2002.guardianhayfestival.
“Go away, damn you!”: Heller’s account of his meeting with Bertrand Russell is related in Kinky Friedman, ’Scuse Me While I Whip This Out: Reflections on Country Singers, Presidents, and Other Troublemakers (New York: William Morrow, 2004), p. 141.
“thrilling”: Joseph Heller, “Joseph Heller Talks about Catch-22,” in Heller, Catch as Catch Can: The Collected Stories and Other Writings, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Park Bucker (New York: Simon & Schuster 2003), p. 299.
“What are you doing tonight?”: Heller told the story of meeting James Jones at the James Jones Literary Society Symposium in June 1999; posted at jamesjonesliterarysociety.org/jheller.htm.
“I always felt it wasn’t too easy to lose a boat”: Joseph Heller, “PT 73, Where Are You?” Universal City Studios LLLP, 1962.
“Friends of mine in TV”: letter from Joseph Heller to Jay Sanford, July 20, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.
“I would like to assure you, Joe”: letter from Edward J. Montagne to Joseph Heller, August 6, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.
Comedy [variety] shows were out of style”: Tynan, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,” p. 49.
“generally ignored the satirical cabaret performers”: Arthur Gelb, City Room (New York: Berkley Books, 2003), p. 304.
“I didn’t mean to be subversive”: ibid., p. 306.
Lenny Bruce: All quotes by and about Lenny Bruce, including a link to the “Petition Protesting the Arrest of Lenny Bruce, June 13, 1964,” are taken from Doug Linder, “The Trials of Lenny Bruce,” posted at law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/bruce/bruceaccount.html.
“[P]olice payoffs”: Gelb, City Room, p. 310.
“I feel the hints, the clues”: Abe Peck, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press (New York: Pantheon, 1985), p. 9.
The Realist: For details about Paul Krassner, William Gaines, and The Realist, see ibid., pp. 10–13.
“I had gone to my first literary cocktail party”: Paul Krassner in an e-mail to the author, July 5, 2009.
“quote an orthodox book”: This and subsequent quotes from the interview are taken from Paul Krassner, “An Impolite Interview with Joseph Heller,” The Realist, November 1962; reprinted in Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller, pp. 6–7, 8–9, 10, 22.
“pretended he had taken the subway”: Paul Krassner in an e-mail to the author, July 5, 2009.
“We moved to [a] much larger apartment”: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, October 22, 2009. The apartment was 10C.
“the housewife-mother”: Kenneth C. Davis, Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1984), p. 304.
“Give up Dr. Spock?”: ibid., p. 9.
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�I think that when women are encouraged”: Gail Collins, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (New York: Little, Brown, 2009), p. 11.
“natural restriction”; “grace”: ibid.
“Men went mad”: Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961; reprint, New York: Dell, 1971), p. 16.
“[W]omen’s … lives [are] confined”: Davis, Two-Bit Culture, p. 304.
13. BOMBS
“sour … irritation”: Unless otherwise noted, this and subsequent quotes regarding the visit to Corsica are taken from: Joseph Heller, “Catch-22 Revisited,” Holiday, April 1967, pp. 45–60, 120, 141–42, 145.
“[My son’s] terror”: Joseph Heller, Something Happened (New York: Ballantine Books, 1974), p. 524.
“Up until [this] time”: Erica Heller, reader comment, “The View Remains the Same … Thankfully,” posted at wowowow.com/post/the-view-from-my-horizon.
“little jewel of a hotel”: ibid.
“I started worrying about money”: Chet Flippo, “Checking in with Joseph Heller,” Rolling Stone, April 16, 1981, reprinted in Adam J. Sorkin, ed., Conversations with Joseph Heller (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), p. 229.
various projects they started together: These projects included a screenplay based on Mandel’s novel The Breakwater.
“much music”: Joseph Heller and George Mandel, “The Big Squeeze,” rough draft, Joseph Heller Archive, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.
Rather than rejecting kittenish femininity: See Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 69.
“I told you that a hundred thousand dollars ago”: ibid., p. 113.
“spice things up”: ibid.
“two young, muddled protagonists”: A. H. Weiler, “Screen: Promoting Those Castles in Spain: ‘The Pleasure Seekers’ and Other Films Bow, ‘Sex and Single Girl,’ Tenor’s Biography,” New York Times, December 26, 1964; posted at movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=l&res=9501E7DD143BE53ABC4E51DFB4.
“We had never experienced anything like that [summer]”: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, January 4, 2010.
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