Just One Catch (77 page)

“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.

“Pepsi Cola hits the spot”; “If there's a gleam in her eye”
: Heller,
Closing Time,
pp. 205, 208.

“This is the voice of”
: letter from the
Jewish Daily Forward
in 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. 107.

“[w]e were prudent with money”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
p. 17.

“Miss Peck or Miss Beck”; “dark, buxom, married, mature”
: ibid., p. 131.

College was out of reach for them financially
: In
Now and Then
(page 22), Heller wrote that as a “concession to respectable conformity,” he applied to night school at Brooklyn College when he was eighteen, though this was not financially feasible and he “much preferred [his] nighttime social life” to the idea of going to night classes.

“[You] have been reading about the bad break I got”
: Lou Gehrig, speech at Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939; posted at
lougehrig.com/about/speech.htm
.

“fragrances of olive oil”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
p. 136.

“Circumcised”
: ibid., p. 156.

“[At the time,] we did not know about the concentration camps”
: “World War II Writers Symposium” at the University of South Carolina, April 12–14, 1995,” in
Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1995,
ed. Matthew Bruccoli (Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 1996), p. 157.

“[B]y the end of 1942”
: ibid., p. 139.

“The day I enlisted”
: ibid., p. 153.

In the hours following the invasion at Pearl Harbor
: LeRoy Ashby,
With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), pp. 263–64.

“[T]he feeling after Pearl Harbor was nationwide”
: “World War II Writers Symposium,” p. 156.

“[S]ociety in America”
: ibid., p. 143.

“
‘
moratorium' that emerges in the lives”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
pp. 166–67.

4. A COLD WAR

aviation cadet training
: According to Susan Braudy, “First Heller went to armorers' school. Then he transferred to cadet school when rumors began to circulate that armorers became gunners. Gunners didn't last long in combat.” See Susan Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes, Maybe Yes, But Not the Whole Book,”
The New Journal
26 (1967): 9–10.

“You have a twisted brain”
: Joseph Heller,
Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 151.

Years later, Heller recalled doing the lindy hop
: See Joseph Heller,
Closing Time
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 221–22. The character of Sammy Singer in the novel shares almost identical biographical experiences with Heller. According to journalist Philip Marchand, “[Heller] admits that
Closing Time
's Singer is based on himself.” See Philip Marchand, “Joseph Heller Looks Back with Fondness,”
Toronto Star,
April 7, 1998.

“I loved Denver”
: Joseph Heller, “I Am the Bombardier!”
New York Times Magazine,
May 7, 1995, p. 61.

“They put us in dark rooms”
: “World War II Writers Symposium” at the University of South Carolina, April 12–14, 1995, in
Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1995,
ed. Matthew Bruccoli (Farmington Hills, MI: Thompson Gale, 1996), p. 162.

“The most surprising thing about preflight school”
: Samuel Hynes,
Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator
(New York: Penguin, 1988), p. 37.

“weird, twisted pieces of metal”; “The Norden bombsight”
: “World War II Writers Symposium,” pp. 159–60.

“Mindful of the secret trust”
: The Bombardier's Oath is posted on numerous Web sites. See, for example,
centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary/NORDEN_BOMBSIGHT/DI145.htm
.

“not all that it should be to obtain the maximum efficiency”
: See
389thbombgroup.com/timeline01.php
.

“the President ha[d] appointed and commissioned [him]”
: The standard appointment letter can be seen at
reddog1944.com/charles_cook_air_corps_bio001.htm
.

By the end of the following month
: Joseph Heller, individual flight record, March 1944, Joseph Heller Archive, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

“entertainment [in Columbia] was limited”
: See “History: Activation and Training Period Before Departure, Sept. 11, 1942 to Feb. 14, 1943,” posted at
reddog1944.com/487th_Squadron_Album_History%20of%20the%20340
th
.htm
.

logged over 230 hours in the air
: Joseph Heller, individual flight record, April 25, 1944, Joseph Heller Archive.

The B-25s on which he trained
: For details on bomber training, I have drawn upon Samuel Hynes's
Flights of Passage,
reddog1944.com
, and Harry D. George and Harry D. George, Jr.,
Georgio Italiano: An American Pilot's Unlikely Tuscan Adventure
(Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2000).

“jackassing around”; “It is an unwritten law”
: Captain Everett B. Thomas,
Round the World with the 488th Bombardment Squadron, Aug. 20, 1942–Nov. 7, 1945
(privately printed yearbook, 1946), pp. 11, 15. A rare copy of this yearbook is kept in the Joseph Heller Archives.

“[T]hey weren't entirely at home with its raucous splendor”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
p. 136.

“in transit overseas”
: Joseph Heller, individual flight record, April 27, 1944, Joseph Heller Archive.