Joseph Heller and his fiction
10 million copies and never out of print
The Economist, Oct 8th 2011 | http://www.economist.com/node/21531414
LATE in life, Joseph Heller was occasionally asked why he had never written anything else as good as “Catch-22”. “Who has?” he’d reply with a self-satisfied grin. Heller was haunted by the long shadow cast by his absurdist first novel, which has sold over 10m copies since it was published in 1961. But he was also proud, glad to have elbowed his way into the literary canon despite being raised in Coney Island by a poor widow who knew more Yiddish than English. The book earned him notoriety, confidence, a dictionary entry and lots of money. Yet Heller kept writing till he died in 1999, aged 76, each time believing the scribbles on his legal pad could contain the next Great American novel. “Nothing fails like success,” exclaims King David in Heller’s 1984 book, “God Knows”.
The 50th anniversary of “Catch-22” has prompted a flood of fresh ink, including a special edition of the wartime farce, an affecting new memoir from Erica Heller, his battle-weary daughter, and the first full biography of the man, “Just One Catch”, by Tracy Daugherty. This is not just a cynical way to cash in on a trusted brand; it is worth remembering that “Catch-22” is indeed one humdinger of a book.
With its mix of vaudeville slapstick and Kafka-like anxiety, the novel is unlike anything that came before. Heller took war as his subject, but he didn’t write about backslapping brothers in arms. Rather, he wrote about an American soldier named Yossarian who knew his government was sending him to his death, but who wasn’t ready to die. It was a hauntingly prescient look at the senselessness of war, released just as the country was learning how senseless it could be. And he made it funny, too.
Heller is a worthy subject, complicated and appealing. He was a difficult father, an unfaithful husband and a selfish friend. But he was charismatic and magnetic, with a wry sense of humour and sexy confidence. His ticket out of Brooklyn was first the draft—he served as a bombardier in Corsica—and then the GI Bill. He followed one degree with another, and spent a year at Oxford as a Fulbright scholar. All the while he wrote stories—derivative short ones—until he realised he needed to stop writing and read a lot more. He “wanted to be new”, in the way that Nabokov, Céline, Faulkner and Waugh were new; “not necessarily different, but new. Original.”
The thrill of this biography is in the years and months leading up to Heller’s breakout book, originally called “Catch-18” (but changed when Leon Uris released his “Mila 18” the same year). It took Heller nine years to stitch together some kind of story, but his book only saw the light of day with help from some brave characters: Candida Donadio, his agent, who was 24 when she saved his manuscript from the slush pile; and Robert Gottlieb, Heller’s wunderkind editor who spent years whipping the book into shape.
Mr Daugherty’s biography is a eulogy for a time in book publishing when editors rolled up their sleeves and everyone aimed to create literature. But like Heller’s own career, “Just One Catch” starts to lose steam after his second novel, “Something Happened”, which Mr Gottlieb counted as his favourite. Heller enjoyed being a public figure, making speeches and going to parties. He liked being paid well, especially the record $2m advance for his third book, “Good as Gold”, which came out in 1979.
Mr Daugherty tries to sustain interest in Heller’s subsequent books, but finds it hard going. He also never quite paints a picture of the man; instead he creates Heller’s shape by filling in everything around him. A novelist and the author of an acclaimed biography of Donald Barthelme, Mr Daugherty is an evocative writer and an acute literary critic. But he relies heavily on Heller’s own memoir and the published observations of others. This book is rich with quotes, but few seem to have come from original interviews.
By the end of Heller’s life, the reviews were scathing. “There comes a time when an author just can’t write anymore,” gouged one critic about “Closing Time”, a controversial sequel to “Catch-22”. “‘God Knows’ is junk,” complained Leon Wieseltier in the New Republic. No one could forgive Heller for still writing books when his best work was clearly behind him. But for Heller, writing was his life. He couldn’t imagine how anyone survived who didn’t have a novel to write.
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