Joseph Heller was a US satirical
novelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist,
short storyA short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
writer, and playwright. His best known work is
Catch-22Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II in 1943 and is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century...
, a novel about US servicemen during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The title of this work entered the English lexicon to refer to absurd, no-win choices, particularly in situations in which the desired outcome of the choice is an impossibility, and regardless of choice, the same negative outcome is a certainty. Heller is widely regarded as one of the best post–World War II satirists. Although he is remembered primarily for
Catch-22, his other works center on the lives of various members of the
middle classThe middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
and remain exemplars of modern satire.
Early years
Joseph Heller was born in
Coney IslandConey Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....
in Brooklyn, New York, the son of poor Jewish parents, Lena and Isaac Donald Heller, from
RussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. Even as a child, he loved to write; as a teenager, he wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland and sent it to
New York Daily NewsThe Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
, which rejected it. At least one scholar suggests that he knew that he wanted to become a writer, after recalling that he received a children's version of the
IliadThe Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
when he was ten. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Heller spent the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, a messenger boy, and a filing clerk. In 1942, at age 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Two years later he was sent to
Italian FrontThe Italian Campaign of World War II was the name of Allied operations in and around Italy, from 1943 to the end of the war in Europe. Joint Allied Forces Headquarters AFHQ was operationally responsible for all Allied land forces in the Mediterranean theatre, and it planned and commanded the...
, where he flew 60 combat missions as a B-25
bombardierA bombardier , in the United States Army Air Forces and United States Air Force, or a bomb aimer, in the Royal Air Force and other Commonwealth air forces, was the crewman of a bomber responsible for assisting the navigator in guiding the plane to a bombing target and releasing the aircraft's bomb...
. His Unit was the
488th Bombardment SquadronThe 488th Bombardment Squadron is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last was assigned to the 340th Bombardment Wing, stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.. It was inactivated on 1 September 1963-History:...
,
340th Bomb GroupThe 340th Flying Training Group is a United States Air Force unit assigned to the Air Education and Training Command Tenth Air Force...
, 12th Air Force. Heller later remembered
the warWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
as "fun in the beginning... You got the feeling that there was something glorious about it." On his return home he "felt like a hero... People think it quite remarkable that I was in combat in an airplane and I flew sixty missions even though I tell them that the missions were largely milk runs."("Milk Runs" were combat missions, but mostly uneventful due to a lack of intense opposition from enemy anti-aircraft artillery or fighters.)
After the war, Heller studied English at the
University of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
and NYU on the G.I. Bill. In 1949, he received his M.A. in English from
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. Following his graduation, he spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at
St. Catherine's CollegeSt Catherine's College, often called Catz, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its motto is Nova et Vetera...
in Oxford University. After returning home, he taught composition at The Pennsylvania State University for two years. He also taught fiction and dramatic writing at Yale. He then briefly worked for Time, Inc., before taking a job as a copywriter at a small advertising agency, where he worked alongside future novelist
Mary Higgins ClarkMary Theresa Eleanor Higgins Clark Conheeney , known professionally as Mary Higgins Clark, is an American author of suspense novels...
. At home, Heller wrote. He was first published in 1948, when
The Atlantic ran one of his short stories. That first story nearly won the "Atlantic First."
He was married to Shirley Held from 1945–1981 and they had two children, Erica (born 1952) and Ted (born 1956).
Catch-22
While sitting at home one morning in 1953, Heller thought of the lines, "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, Someone fell madly in love with him." Within the next day, he began to envision the story that could result from this beginning, and invented the characters and the plot, as well as the tone and form that the story would eventually take. Within a week, he had finished the first chapter and sent it to his agent. He did not do any more writing for the next year, as he planned the rest of the story. The initial chapter was published in 1955 as "Catch-18", in Issue 7 of
New World Writing.
Although he originally did not intend the story to be longer than a
noveletteA novelette is a piece of short prose fiction. The distinction between a novelette and other literary forms is usually based upon word count, with a novelette being longer than a short story, but shorter than a novella...
, Heller was able to add enough substance to the plot that he felt it could become his first
novelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
. When he was one-third done with the work, his agent, Candida Donadio, began submitting the novel to several publishers. Heller was not particularly attached to the work, and decided that he would not finish it if publishers were not interested. The work was never rejected, and was soon purchased by Simon and Schuster, who gave him US $750 and promised him an additional $750 when the full manuscript was delivered. Heller missed his deadline by four to five years, but, after eight years of thought, delivered the novel to his publisher.
The finished novel describes the wartime experiences of Army Air Corps Captain John Yossarian. Yossarian devises multiple strategies to avoid combat missions, but the military bureaucracy is always able to find a way to make him stay. As Heller observed, "Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts — and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?"
Heller has also commented that
"peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it" — perhaps further food for thought when reading
Catch-22, in which the concept and circumstances of war are so overwhelming and fundamental.
Just before publication, the novel's title was changed to
Catch-22 to avoid confusion with
Leon UrisLeon Marcus Uris was an American novelist, known for his historical fiction and the deep research that went into his novels. His two bestselling books were Exodus, published in 1958, and Trinity, in 1976.-Life:...
's new novel,
Mila 18Mila 18 is a novel by Leon Uris set in German-occupied Warsaw, Poland before and during World War II. Leon Uris's work, based on real events, covers the Nazi occupation of Poland and the atrocities of systematically dehumanising and eliminating the Jewish People of Poland...
. The novel was published in hardback in 1961 to mixed reviews, with the
Chicago Sun-TimesThe Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
calling it "the best American novel in years", while other critics derided it as "disorganized, unreadable, and crass". It sold only 30,000 copies in the United States hardback in its first year of publication. (Reaction was very different in Great Britain, where, within one week of its publication, the novel reached number one on the bestseller lists.) Once it was released in paperback in October 1962, however,
Catch-22 caught the imaginations of many baby-boomers, who identified with the novel's anti-war sentiments. The book went on to sell 10 million copies in the United States. The novel's title became a
buzzwordA buzzword is a term of art, salesmanship, politics, or technical jargon that is used in the media and wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context....
for a dilemma with no easy way out. Now considered a classic, the book was listed at number 7 on
Modern LibraryThe Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer...
's list of the top 100 novels of the century. The
United States Air Force AcademyThe United States Air Force Academy is an accredited college for the undergraduate education of officer candidates for the United States Air Force. Its campus is located immediately north of Colorado Springs in El Paso County, Colorado, United States...
uses the novel to "help prospective officers recognize the dehumanizing aspects of bureaucracy."
The movie rights to the novel were purchased in 1962, and, combined with his royalties, made Heller a millionaire.
The filmCatch-22 is a 1970 satirical war film adapted from the book of the same name by Joseph Heller. Considered a black comedy revolving around the "lunatic characters" of Heller's satirical anti-war novel, it was the work of a talented production team which included director Mike Nichols and...
, which was directed by
Mike NicholsMike Nichols is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate...
and starred
Alan ArkinAlan Wolf Arkin is an American actor, director, musician and singer. He is known for starring in such films as Wait Until Dark, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, The In-Laws, Edward Scissorhands, Glengarry Glen Ross, Marley & Me, and...
,
Jon VoightJonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight is an American actor. He has received an Academy Award, out of four nominations, and three Golden Globe Awards, out of nine nominations. Voight is the father of actress Angelina Jolie....
and
Orson WellesGeorge Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, was not released until 1970.
Other works
Shortly after
Catch-22 was published, Heller thought of an idea for his next novel, which would become
Something HappenedSomething Happened is Joseph Heller's second novel . Its main character and narrator is Bob Slocum, a businessman who engages in a stream of consciousness narrative about his job, his family, his childhood, his sexual escapades, and his own psyche.While there is an ongoing plot about Slocum...
, but did not act on it for two years. In the meantime he focused on scripts, completing the final screenplay for the movie adaptation of
Helen Gurley BrownHelen Gurley Brown , is an author, publisher, and businesswoman. She was editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years.-Personal life and career:...
's
Sex and the Single GirlSex and the Single Girl was written in 1962 by Helen Gurley Brown, as an advice book that encouraged women to become financially independent and experience sexual relationships before or without marriage...
, as well as a television comedy script that eventually aired as part of "
McHale's NavyMcHale's Navy is an American television sitcom series which ran for 138 half-hour episodes from October 11,1962, to August 31, 1966, on the ABC network. The series was filmed in black and white and originated in a one-hour drama called Seven Against the Sea, broadcast on April 3, 1962...
". He also completed a play in only six weeks, but spent a great deal of time working with the producers as it was brought to the stage.
In 1969, Heller wrote a play called
We Bombed in New Haven. It delivered an anti-war message while discussing the
Vietnam WarThe Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. It was originally produced by the Repertory Company of the
YaleYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
Drama School, with Stacey Keach in the starring role. After a slight revision, it was published by
Alfred KnopfAlfred Knopf is the name of:*Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. , founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the publishing company*Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. , son of Alfred A. Knopf, Sr.*Alfred A. Knopf or Knopf Publishing Group, subsidiary of Random House...
and then debuted on
BroadwayBroadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, starring
Jason RobardsJason Nelson Robards, Jr. was an American actor on stage, and in film and television, and a winner of the Tony Award , two Academy Awards and the Emmy Award...
.
Heller's follow-up novel,
Something HappenedSomething Happened is Joseph Heller's second novel . Its main character and narrator is Bob Slocum, a businessman who engages in a stream of consciousness narrative about his job, his family, his childhood, his sexual escapades, and his own psyche.While there is an ongoing plot about Slocum...
, was finally published in 1974. Critics were enthusiastic about the book, and both its hardcover and paperback editions reached number one on the
New York Times bestseller list.
Heller wrote another five novels, each of which took him several years to complete. One of them,
Closing TimeClosing Time is a 1994 novel by Joseph Heller, written as a sequel to the popular Catch-22. It takes place in New York City in the 1990s, and revisits some characters of the original, including Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder and Chaplain Tappman....
, revisited many of the characters from
Catch-22 as they adjusted to post-war New York. All of the novels sold respectably well, but could not duplicate the success of his debut. Told by an interviewer that he had never produced anything else as good as
Catch-22, Heller famously responded, "Who has?"
Work process
Heller did not begin work on a story until he had envisioned both a first and last line. The first sentence usually appeared to him "independent of any conscious preparation". In most cases, the sentence did not inspire a second sentence. At times, he would be able to write several pages before giving up on that hook. Usually, within an hour or so of receiving his inspiration, Heller would have mapped out a basic plot and characters for the story. When he was ready to begin writing, he focused on one paragraph at a time, until he had three or four handwritten pages, which he then spent several hours reworking.
Heller maintained that he did not "have a philosophy of life, or a need to organize its progression. My books are not constructed to 'say anything.'" Only when he was almost one-third finished with the novel would he gain a clear vision of what it should be about. At that point, with the idea solidified, he would rewrite all that he had finished and then continue to the end of the story. The finished version of the novel would often not begin or end with the sentences he had originally envisioned, although he usually tried to include the original opening sentence somewhere in the text.
Later teaching career
In the 1970s Heller taught creative writing at the
City College of New YorkThe City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
.
After the publication of
Catch-22, Heller resumed a part-time academic career as a teacher of creative writing at Yale University and at the University of Pennsylvania.
Illness
On Sunday, December 13, 1981, Heller was diagnosed with
Guillain-Barré syndromeGuillain–Barré syndrome , sometimes called Landry's paralysis, is an acute inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy , a disorder affecting the peripheral nervous system. Ascending paralysis, weakness beginning in the feet and hands and migrating towards the trunk, is the most typical symptom...
, a debilitating syndrome that was to leave him temporarily paralyzed. He was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of Mount Sinai Medical Hospital the same day, and remained there, bedridden, until his condition had improved enough to permit his transfer to the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, which occurred on January 26, 1982. His illness and recovery are recounted at great length in the autobiographical
No Laughing MatterNo Laughing Matter is a 1986 book co-authored by Joseph Heller and Speed Vogel.-History:On Sunday, December 13, 1981, Heller was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a debilitating syndrome that was to leave him temporarily paralyzed...
, which contains alternating chapters by Heller and his good friend
Speed VogelIrving "Speed" Vogel was an American sculptor, painter, and co-author, along with Joseph Heller, of the best-selling memoir, No Laughing Matter....
. The book reveals the assistance and companionship Heller received during this period from a number of his prominent friends—
Mel BrooksMel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...
,
Mario PuzoMario Gianluigi Puzo was an American author and screenwriter, known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather , which he later co-adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola...
,
Dustin HoffmanDustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....
and
George MandelGeorge Mandel is an American novelist and short story writer.A native of New York City, Mandel was educated at the Pratt Institute, The Art Students League of New York and The New School...
among them.
Heller eventually made a substantial recovery. In 1984, while in the process of divorcing his wife of 35 years, he met Valerie Humphries, the nurse who had helped him to recover, and later married her.
Later years
Heller returned to St. Catherine's as a visiting Fellow, for a term, in 1991 and was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the college. In 1998, he released a memoir,
Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here, in which he relived his childhood as the son of a deliveryman and offered some details about the inspirations for
Catch-22.
He died of a heart attack at his home in
East HamptonThe Town of East Hampton is located in southeastern Suffolk County, New York, at the eastern end of the South Shore of Long Island. It is the easternmost town in the state of New York...
, on Long Island, in December 1999, shortly after the completion of his final novel,
Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. On hearing of Heller's death, his friend
Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
said, "Oh, God, how terrible. This is a calamity for American literature."
Catch-22 controversy
In April 1998, Lewis Pollock wrote to
The Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
for clarification as to "the amazing similarity of characters, personality traits, eccentricities, physical descriptions, personnel injuries and incidents" in
Catch-22 and a novel published in England in 1951. The book that spawned the request was written by Louis Falstein and titled
The Sky is a Lonely Place in Britain and
Face of a Hero in the United States. Falstein's novel was available two years before Heller wrote the first chapter of
Catch-22 (1953) while he was a student at
OxfordThe city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
.
The Times stated: "Both have central characters who are using their wits to escape the aerial carnage; both are haunted by an omnipresent injured airman, invisible inside a white body cast". Stating he had never read Falstein's novel, or heard of him, Heller said: "My book came out in 1961[;] I find it funny that nobody else has noticed any similarities, including Falstein himself, who died just last year".
Autobiographies
- No Laughing Matter
No Laughing Matter is a 1986 book co-authored by Joseph Heller and Speed Vogel.-History:On Sunday, December 13, 1981, Heller was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a debilitating syndrome that was to leave him temporarily paralyzed...
(1986)
- Now And Then
Now and Then is Joseph Heller's 1998 memoir. The first half of the memoir focuses on Heller's childhood in Coney Island and is, in fact, as much about the place as it is about the man...
(1998)
Novels
- Catch-22
Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II in 1943 and is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century...
(1961)
- Something Happened
Something Happened is Joseph Heller's second novel . Its main character and narrator is Bob Slocum, a businessman who engages in a stream of consciousness narrative about his job, his family, his childhood, his sexual escapades, and his own psyche.While there is an ongoing plot about Slocum...
(1974)
- Good as Gold (1979)
- God Knows (1984)
- Picture This
Picture This is a 1988 novel from Joseph Heller, the satiric author of the acclaimed Catch-22.The novel is an eclectic historical journey across three periods of history, all connected by a single painting: Rembrandt van Rijn's Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer...
(1988)
- Closing Time
Closing Time is a 1994 novel by Joseph Heller, written as a sequel to the popular Catch-22. It takes place in New York City in the 1990s, and revisits some characters of the original, including Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder and Chaplain Tappman....
(1994)
- Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (2000)
Plays
- We Bombed in New Haven (1967)
- Catch 22
Catch-22 is a satirical, historical fiction, theatre production by the American author Joseph Heller, first produced in 1971. The novel Catch-22, on which this play is based, is set during the latter stages of the Second World War from 1943 onwards...
(1973)
- Clevinger's Trial (1973)
Screenplays
- Sex and the Single Girl
Sex and the Single Girl was written in 1962 by Helen Gurley Brown, as an advice book that encouraged women to become financially independent and experience sexual relationships before or without marriage...
(1964)
- Casino Royale
Casino Royale is a 1967 comedy spy film originally produced by Columbia Pictures starring an ensemble cast of directors and actors. It is set as a satire of the James Bond film series and the spy genre, and is loosely based on Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel.The film stars David Niven as the...
(1967) (uncredited)
- Dirty Dingus Magee
Dirty Dingus Magee is a comic 1970 anti-western film starring Frank Sinatra as the title outlaw and George Kennedy as a sheriff out to capture him...
(1970)
External links