Just One Catch (81 page)

“polish silver”; Carmelite nun
: Daniel Simon, “Literature's Candida,” posted at
www.thnation.com/doc/20010528/simon
.

“She really was the agent of her generation”
: Lawrence Van Gelder, “Candida Donadio, 71, Agent Who Handled ‘Catch-22,' Dies,”
New York Times,
January 25, 2001; posted at
www.nytimes.com/2001/01/25/arts/candida-donadio-71-agent-who-handled-Catch-22
.

“Since a secretary was very important”
: ibid.

“a Bohemian Quakeress”
: letter from Victor Weybright to Mrs. Carleton Palmer, May 25, 1953,
New World Writing
Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

“[Publishing] a literary and academic journal”
: letter from Victor Weybright to Rudolf M. Littauer,
New World Writing
Collection.

“provide a friendly medium”; “Avant Garde Means You!”
: Thomas L. Bonn, “Among the Eminent, the Aspiring, and the Young: A Short History of
New World Writing,
”
Publishing Research Quarterly
(1993): 6, 17.

“cultural high-water mark”
: Kenneth C. Davis,
Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), pp. 191–92.

“difference in quality”
: Bonn, “Among the Eminent, the Aspiring, and the Young,” p. 9.

“[T]he story begins to end”
: Victor Weybright, “To the Reader,”
New World Writing 15
(1959): unpaginated.

“I should like to tell you”
: Davis,
Two-Bit Culture,
p. 200.

“him a great disservice”
: Ellis Amburn,
Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), p. 209.

“sick of well-meaning editors”
: ibid.

“Coney Island of the soul”
: Bill Morgan,
The Lost Generation in New York: A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac's City
(San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997), p. 89.

“the booze ran freely”
: Dan Wakefield,
New York in the Fifties
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), p. 283.

“It is certainly the funniest thing”
: letter from Victor Weybright to Arabel Porter, June 28, 1954,
New World Writing
Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

“Among all the recommended pieces”
: comments by Arabel Porter to Walter Freeman, June 14, 1954,
New World Writing
Collection.

“with a pain in his liver”
: This and subsequent quotes from “Catch-18” are taken from Joseph Heller, “Catch-18,”
New World Writing,
no. 7 (1955): 204–14.

“I'm not that interested in the subject of war”
: Israel Shenker, “Did Heller Bomb on Broadway?”
New York Times,
December 29, 1968.

“seek[ing] a way of telling a story”; “an act of the imagination”
: Richard B. Sale, “An Interview in New York with Joseph Heller,”
Studies in the Novel
4 (1972); reprinted in Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller,
pp. 79–80.

“literature, except for a brief period in recent history”
: Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller,
p. 79.

“[A]ny writer who doesn't regard his work”
: ibid., p. 80.

“Schweik … intervened”
: Jaroslav Hasek,
The Good Soldier Schweik,
translated by Paul Selver (1930; reprint, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1962), p. 12.

“Joseph Heller … did more to debunk the Hemingway myth”
: Pete Hamill, “The Bearing of a Green: Some Thought[s] on Being Irish-American,” posted at
petehamill.com/bearinggreen.html
.

“Joe started talking [to me] about [this] novel”
: This and subsequent remarks by Frederick Karl were 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).

“We used to tease him”
: Dolores Karl in conversation with the author, April 24, 2009.

Ideas rejected
: Notes Heller made on index cards are cited in James Nagel, “The
Catch-22
Note Cards,”
Studies in the Novel
8 (1976): 394–405. In the early 1970s, Heller gave Nagel permission to study the cards.

a character named Aarky was rechristened Aarfy
: This happened late in the process; in an undated note to his editor Robert Gottlieb, Heller explained that “[s]ince beginning [the] book, I have become associated in business with a man named Arky”—Arky Gonzalez, a colleague at
Time
—“[and it] would be embarrassing to him and me to use the name Aarky.” This note is part of the Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University Libraries, Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections Department, Waltham, Massachusetts.

“I'm not running away from my responsibilities”
: Joseph Heller,
Catch-22
(1961; reprint, New York: Dell, 1971), p. 461.

“Has he finished the novel”
: Davis,
Two-Bit Culture,
p. 200.

“Too many loose ends”
: letter from Rust Hills to Candida Donadio, March 11, 1959, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“Hungry Joe”
: Joseph Heller, draft of “Hungry Joe (from the Novel ‘Catch-18')”: Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“[Advertising work] helped me write
Catch-22
”
: Joseph Heller, interviewed by Don Swaim, “Wired for Books,” CBS Radio, September 19, 1984; audio recording posted at
wiredforbooks.org/josephheller
.

“modest maiden”
: Joseph Heller, notes for
Catch-22,
Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“somber”; “didn't expect it to happen”; “family … did not talk”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
pp. 46–47.

“America's junk culture”
: Jeet Heer, “Gil Kane and Norman Podhoretz,”
National Post,
January 8, 2004; posted at
www.jeetheer.com/comics/kanepodhoretz.htm
.

“Walt Disney had an intense dislike for Coney Island”
: Raymond M. Weinstein, “Disneyland and Coney Island: Reflections on the Evolution of the Modern Amusement Park,”
Journal of Popular Culture
26, no. 1 (1992): 131.

“Disney understood well the mood”
: ibid., p. 52

The Left's dithering
: See Norman Podhoretz,
Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer
(San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000), pp. 10–11.

“business civilization”
: Judith Smith, “Writing the Intellectual History of
Fortune
Magazine's Corporate Modernism,”
Reviews in American History
33, no. 3 (2005): 419. For more background on Henry Luce's corporate philosophy, see Michael Augspurger,
An Economy of Abundant Beauty: Fortune Magazine and Depression America
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

“I am biased in favor of God”
: James L. Baughman,
Henry R. Luce and the Rise of the American News Media
(Boston: Twayne, 1987), p. 173.

“Christianity is not a religion for weaklings”
: James Gilbert,
Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the 1950s
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 127.

“I never talk alone with a woman”; “lovesick women [and] bobby soxers”
: ibid., p. 125.

“In wartime the Armed Services”
: Adam Parfrey,
It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps
(Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003), p. 5.

“just the way things were”
: This and subsequent quotes from Bruce Jay Friedman are taken from ibid., pp. 15–17.

“Damsels [had] been distressed”
: Parfrey,
It's a Man's World
, p. 178.

“dehumanized” and “repetitious”; “wholesome, entertaining and educational”
: Nathan Abrams, “From Madness to Dysentery:
Mad
's Other New York Intellectuals,”
Journal of American Studies
37, no. 3 (2003): 437.

“Of course, we had the big problem”
: ibid., p. 438.

“[B]oys were allowed to purchase [men's] magazines”
: Parfrey,
It's a Man's World
, p. 178.

“In many ways
Mad
represented”
: Abrams, “From Madness to Dysentery,” p. 439.

“Beneath the pile of garbage”
: ibid., p. 440.

“[W]e like to say that
Mad
”
: ibid., p. 441.

“the essence of
Mad
's
success”; “Is Your Bathroom Breeding Bolsheviks?”
: ibid., pp. 443, 447.

“
Mad
expresses … the teenagers' cynicism”
: ibid., p. 449.

“Paperback books and the baby boomers”
: Davis,
Two-Bit Culture,
p. 1.

“political and ideological novel”
: William Barrett, “Lapse of a Novelist,” posted at
commentarymagazine.com
.

“One senses the joy”
: Norman Podhoretz, “The Language of Life,” posted at
commentarymagazine.com
.

“
the
novel of the fifties”
: This and subsequent Karl quotes are taken from Frederick Karl,
American Fictions 1940–1980
(New York: Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 179–80.

“[H]e was drunk by the time he appeared on stage”; “Kerouac was not only giving our generation a bad name”
: Wakefield,
New York in the Fifties,
pp. 167–68.

“Please, Alice”
: This and all other quotes regarding Denham are taken from 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), pp. 96–98.

“I loved it there”
: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, October 7, 2009.

“[I] … was catapulted”; “That question still makes me squirm”; “[I]t was only then”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
pp. 227–29.

“Critics and publishers”
: publishers' note,
New World Writing,
no. 7 (1955).

“Men went mad and were rewarded with medals”
: Heller,
Catch-22,
p. 16.

11. 22

“At that moment in the demented history of Simon & Schuster”
: Robert Gottlieb, 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).

“why this applicant”; “[g]o home and write me a letter”; “brooded about this”; “Dear Mr. Goodman”
: Peter Schwed,
Turning the Pages: An Insider's Story of Simon & Schuster 1924–1984
(New York: Macmillan, 1984), pp. 235–36.

“Until the 1920s”
: This and subsequent Korda quotes are taken from Michael Korda,
Another Life
(New York: Dell, 2000), pp. 46–48, 41–42, 52, 53–55.

“Whatever I look at”
: Larissa MacFarquhar, “Robert Gottlieb: The Art of Editing I,”
The Paris Review
36, no. 132 (1994): 222.

“I thought my navel would unscrew”
: Karen Hudes, “Epic Agent: The Great Candida Donadio,”
Tin House
6, no. 4 (2005): 152.

“a creature from a Roman fresco”
: ibid.

“Language means the most to me”
: “The Agents: Writing with a $ Sign,” posted at
www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,900028,00.html
.

“I remember thinking”
: Adam J. Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), p. 115.

“He knew all along”
: Frederick Karl, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”

“I liked it”
: Fred Kaplan,
1959: The Year Everything Changed
(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009), p. 17.

“Jazz is orgasm”
: This and subsequent quotes from the essay are taken from Norman Mailer, “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster,”
Dissent
4 (1957): 276–93; reprinted in Norman Mailer,
Advertisements for Myself
(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1959), pp. 337–58.

“frantic swings”
: Kaplan,
1959,
p. 21.

“I … love this crazy book”
: Robert Gottlieb, reader's report on
Catch-22,
dated February 12, 1958, cited in Jonathan R. Eller, “Catching a Market: The Publishing History of
Catch-22,
”
Prospects: An Annual Journal of American Cultural Studies
17 (1992): 480.

“It is a very rare approach to the war”
: ibid.