Just One Catch (87 page)

“social world … where competence doesn't count”; “just another writer now”
: Heller,
Good as Gold,
p. 462.

“Mr. Rockefeller gave Secretary of State Kissinger a $50,000 gift”
: clipping from Joseph Heller Archive.

“
Good as Gold
is a cultural event”
: Jack Beatty, review of
Good as Gold, The New Republic,
March 10, 1979, pp. 42–44.

“It is all about a society that is fast going insane”
: John W. Aldridge, “The Deceits of Black Humor,”
Harper's,
March 1979, pp. 115–18.

“[T]here is nothing in the world that can block your appointment”
: Heller,
Good as Gold,
p. 461.

“London. Michelmas term lately over”; “[S]omething happened”
: Charles Dickens,
Bleak House
(New York: Heritage House, 1942), pp. 15, 28–29.

“an astounding vision of our leaders in Washington”
: Leonard Michaels, “Bruce Gold's American Experience,”
New York Times Book Review,
March 11, 1979, p. 1.

“softball game in a schoolyard”; “Athletes in skullcaps?”
: Heller,
Good as Gold,
pp. 487–88.

“vivid an anecdote of assimilation as I could find”
: “Baseball's Jewish Accent,”
The Economist,
January 8, 1994.

“[T]he most repellent character”
: Murray N. Rothbard, “The Evil of Banality,”
Inquiry,
December 10, 1979, pp. 26–28.

“savage caricature”
: Podhoretz,
Ex-Friends,
p. 50.

“primarily a cultural crisis”
: Peter Steinfels,
The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America's Politics
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), pp. 55, 58, 64–65.

“When Bruce Gold”
: Marshall Toman, “The Political Satire in Joseph Heller's
Good as Gold,
”
Studies in Contemporary Satire
17 (1990): 6–14.

“broad gauge advisor on domestic policy”; “Don't words mean anything to you?”
: Heller,
Good as Gold,
p. 164.

“A phrase that really gets to me”
: Charlie Reilly, “An Interview with Joseph Heller,”
Inquiry,
May 1, 1979, pp. 25–26.

“The honeymoon is over for Joseph Heller”
: John Leonard, “Good as Gold,”
New York Times,
March 5, 1979; posted at
nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/home/heller-gold.html
.

“America … was where Jewish humor fantastically flourished”
: Leon Wieseltier, “Shlock of Recognition,”
The New Republic,
October 29, 1984, p. 31.

“If you want to forget all your troubles”
: Robert Alter,
Defenses of the Imagination: Jewish Writers and Modern Historical Crisis
(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1977), p. 156.

In a piece on contemporary American literature, Alter accuses a number of American writers, including Heller, of exhibiting an “apocalyptic” temperament “reworked” from the “Christian tradition” and exaggerated for absurd and picaresque effects. For a writer like Heller, with a Jewish background, such an attitude is a turning away from “Judaism's concern with ‘the factual character of human existence,'” Alter says. “There is no room for real people in apocalypses.” See Robert Alter, “The Apocalyptic Temper,”
Commentary,
June 1966, pp. 61–66.

16. HARD TO SWALLOW

“I [had] never seen [Joe] so ebullient”
: Barbara Gelb, “Catch-22 Plus: A Conversation with Joseph Heller,”
New York Times,
August 28, 1994; posted at
nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/home/heller-conversation.html?_r=1
.

“I was dry as a bone”
: Joseph Heller and Speed Vogel,
No Laughing Matter
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 244.

“on good terms with himself”
: This and subsequent quotes regarding Jerry McQueen are taken from Barbara Gelb,
On the Track of Murder: Behind the Scenes with a Homicide Commando Squad
(New York: William Morrow, 1975), pp. 15, 40, 128.

“I thought it was hysterically funny”
: Norman Barasch in conversation with the author, April 29, 2009.

recently, he had wasted a morning
: This anecdote was related by LuAnn Walther in a conversation with the author, January 26, 2010.

The day was quite chilly
: This and subsequent details and quotes regarding the onset of Heller's condition and his hospital admission are from Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
pp. 14, 18–19, 22, 23, 26, 44.

“No. But that's a lie”
: Adam J. Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), p. 198.

“pleasantly shock[ing]”; “[He] was proud”
: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, January 15, 2010. Details about Ted's work in the garment industry are from his interview with Terry Gross for National Public Radio's “Fresh Air” (WHYY-FM), March 23, 2361.

“I've got the best story in the Bible”
: Joseph Heller,
God Knows
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), p. 5.

“I see hopelessness”
: Chet Flippo, “Checking in with Joseph Heller,”
Rolling Stone,
April 16, 1981, pp. 57, 59–60.

“You've never written anything as good as
Catch-22
”
: Erica Heller, in conversation with the author, June 25, 2009.

“Sheer, stark terror”
: John Cornwell, “What's the Catch?” in
Sunday Times
[London], September 18, 1994.

“The Mogul”
: Dolores Karl in conversation with the author, April 18, 2009.

“At one point, she got a feminist shrink”
: Barbara Gelb in conversation with the author, August 2, 2010.

“I began to feel the married life”
: Joseph Heller, rough draft of
No Laughing Matter,
Joseph Heller Archive, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

“The problem”
: Cornwell, “What's the Catch?”

“Stress? Maybe”
: Joseph Heller,
Now and Then
:
From Coney Island to Here
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 221.

“fatherless Coney Island child”
: ibid., p. 216.

“The first time I met my father”
: ibid., pp. 217–18.

“You don't need that dream anymore”
: ibid., p. 219.

“All that serious stuff was easy”
: ibid., p. 221.

“My theory … about psychoanalysis”
: ibid., p. 222.

“never really wanted to live”
: Heller, rough draft of
No Laughing Matter
.

“wish to have a psychiatric medical authority”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
p. 220.

“[H]e bound me to this”
: ibid., p. 222.

“How I came to know him”
: Judith Ruderman in an e-mail to the author, January 10, 2010.

“intrepidly”
;
“[Y]ou didn't really want to do [it]”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
pp. 223–24.

“Joseph Heller took the stand”
: “Joe Heller Takes, and Takes the Fifth,”
New York Post,
October 19, 1983.

Speed Vogel named
: Heller, rough draft of
No Laughing Matter,
Joseph Heller Archive.

“friend [had] once worked at Duke University”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
p. 40.

Erica recalls long, tearful meetings
: Erica Heller in conversation with the author, June 25, 2009.

“I changed accountants”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
p. 221.

“have had a falling out”
: Edwin McDowell, “Joseph Heller in Dispute with Simon and Schuster,”
New York Times,
July 1, 1981.

please conduct any further business
: Karen Hudes, “Epic Agent: The Great Candida Donadio,”
Tin House 6
, no. 4 (2005): 158.

“agonize with her”
: ibid., p. 166.

“coming around”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
p. 265.

“so concerned about controlling his life”
: Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller,
p. 189.

“Nothing fails like success”
: Joseph Heller, rough-draft notes for
God Knows,
Joseph Heller Archive. See also
God Knows,
page 187, where King David says, “Succeeding is more satisfying than success.”

“The older I get”
;
“I would rather have my wife”
: Heller,
God Knows,
p. 3.

“party circuit”
;
“What would send me into incipient alcoholism”
: Marie Brenner, “Social Studies,”
New York,
June 22, 1981, p. 27.

“Joseph
(Catch-22)
Heller”
: “Joseph Heller's Boot-Black,”
New York Post,
October 1, 1981.

“earnestly believe[d]”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
p. 323.

“I eat only in restaurants these days”
: Fred Ferretti, “Eating Out: Their Way of Life,”
New York Times,
November 20, 1981.

“raping”;
“[Heller] announced [to his estranged wife]”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
p. 265.

“interpreters”
: ibid., p. 266.

“Rape”
;
“mischaracterization”
: ibid., p. 266.

“[e]xpressed concern over ability”
: This and other medical notes are from the Joseph Heller Archive.

“going crazy”
: Heller, rough draft of
No Laughing Matter,
Joseph Heller Archive.

“sudden attack”
: “Heller Ill,”
New York Post,
December 17, 1981.

“Jesus Christ!”
: Heller, rough draft of
No Laughing Matter,
Joseph Heller Archive.

“respiratory parameters … were deteriorating”
;
“I was agreeing to have my throat cut”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
pp. 87, 89.

“wife was … on the premises”
: ibid., p. 81.

“absolutely shocked”
: Cheryl McCall, “Something Happened,”
People,
August 23, 1982, p. 29.

“I went to Shirley”
: Robert A. Towbin in conversation with the author, April 26, 2009.

“What was she going to say”
;
“I missed my mother”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
pp. 76, 81.

“in the only way she knew how”
: Heller,
God Knows,
p. 161.

“Someday in this life”
: Heller and Vogel, “
No Laughing Matter,
p. 113.

“The décor”
;
“I had more or less assumed his identity”
: ibid., pp. 40–41.

Speed had decorated Joe's living space before. Many years earlier, when Joe first moved his family into the Apthorp apartment, he hung a large painting of Speed's on the wall. Most of Joe's family, and most visitors to the apartment, did not particularly care for the painting, which seemed out of place with the rest of the décor, but Joe liked it for that very reason.

“Joe, why haven't I heard from you?”
: ibid., p. 72.

“What're you doing here again?”
: ibid., p. 39.

“Tell me honestly”
: ibid., pp. 60–61.

“a hooker returning to the brothel”
;
“croak”; “If I was in his spot”
;
“I gotta come clean with you”
: Heller and Vogel, rough drafts of
No Laughing Matter,
Joseph Heller Archive; Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
p. 57.

Mario Puzo was not the only one with a horror of hospitals: Joe hated them, too (recall his traumatic tonsil experience). Norman Barasch, in conversation with the author on April 29, 2009, recounted the following anecdote: “[My] daughter was being treated for leukemia at MD Anderson in Houston. Joe was on a book tour in Dallas—this may have been around 1975. Joe had a friend in Houston, Jerry Argovitz, a dentist, and his wife, Elaine. They'd met at a resort or something. He put us in touch with them and they were very helpful to us. Joe made a detour and came to Houston just to see us. Now, Joe Heller was not an overly sentimental man. But Jerry told me later that he sat downstairs at MD Anderson for half an hour to compose himself to come into the room. When he did, Emily gave him a big smile. It was wonderful. He inscribed a book to us, ‘To the bravest family I know.'”

“simply marvelous”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
p. 75.

“It's not bad here”
: This and subsequent quotes regarding Joe's move to a private room and his friends' comments are from ibid., pp. 105, 125, 136–41.