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In time for the 50th anniversary of Catch-22, Tracy Daugherty, the critically acclaimed author of Hiding Man (a New Yorker and New York Times Notable book), illuminates his most vital subject yet in this first biography of Joseph Heller.
Joseph Heller was a Coney Island kid, the son of Russian immigrants, who went on to great fame and fortune. His most memorable novel took its inspiration from a mission he flew over France in WWII (his plane was filled with so much shrapnel it was a wonder it stayed in the air). Heller wrote seven novels, all of which remain in print.?Something Happened and?Good as Gold, to name two, are still considered the epitome of satire. His life was filled with women and romantic indiscretions, but he was perhaps more famous for his friendships?he counted Mel Brooks, Zero Mostel, Carl Reiner, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Mario Puzo, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen, and many others among his confidantes. In 1981 Heller was diagnosed with Guillain-Barr? Syndrome, a debilitating syndrome that could have cost him his life. Miraculously, he recovered. When he passed away in 1999 from natural causes, he left behind a body of work that continues to sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year.
Just One Catch is the first biography of Yossarian?s creator, with cooperation by the estate.
About the Author
TRACY DAUGHERTY is the author of four novels, four short story collections, and a book of personal essays.? His critically acclaimed biography of Donald Barthelme,?HIDING MAN was published in 2009.?? He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and?the National Endowment for the Arts.? Currently, he is Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at Oregon State University.
Review
This hefty 471 page biography begins with Joseph Heller?s Coney Island childhood, the early influences of his family and friends, then takes us through his war experiences that inspired Catch 22, examines the effects on him of fame, shows his unsuccessful struggle to duplicate the popularity of Catch 22, and concludes in his later years with his second wife and ends with his death in East Hampton in 1999 at age 76.
This comprehensive, often compelling story of Joseph Heller, shows how he was influenced and how he influenced the attitudes and issues of the ever changing era in which he lived. His post war novel about WWII became the anti war novel of the 1960?s.
He grew up poor in the 1930?s in the lights and shadows of a garish amusement park, the ?Nickel Empire? of Coney Island in a neighborhood teeming with Russians, Germans, Italians and Armenians. His mother only spoke Yiddish.
Contradictions began early. He learned his brother and sister were not really his brother and sister. When he was four years old he attended a party his family held and found out it was really his father?s funeral.
He was a gunner in WWII. He held low level jobs. He worked in Ad agencies. He attended the University of Southern California, NYU and Columbia, taught college in Pennsylvania and he was restless and he agonized and he bit his nails and he wrote.
Joseph Heller bit his nails throughout his life. He worried that he was not a natural writer. His short stories were often rejected. His first story was published for $25.00. It made him happier than learning about the end of the war.
He was working at Time Magazine when he wrote Catch 22 at his kitchen table. It took him a year to draft the second chapter. The book shows us Joseph Heller?s agonized, slow writing, how he outlined each chapter, catalogued each of his war missions and had drawers full of file cards. But editors and publishers thought the first chapter of Catch 18, as it was called at the time was almost incoherent and sloppy. If it weren?t for his agent Candida Donadio?s faith in him and her promotion of the book, we probably would have never heard of Catch 22, the novel that became a classic.
Just One Catch shows the effects of Joseph Heller?s fame, the affairs, the friendships with famous people like Dustin Hoffman, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, the travels, the money, the jealousies and insecurities, the failed marriage, the failed novels, and finally the comfortable pride and satisfaction of not just attaining celebrity or renown as a famous author, but the status of a man of letters.
Joseph Heller did not always have a happy life but Joseph Heller lived a rich and wonderful life. This is a wonderful book about it. ? Lita Perna, Amazon.Com Customer Review
The Catching of Two Joseph Hellers
The New York Times Book Review ? July 27, 2011 (Excerpt)
?Just One Catch? is a soup-to-nuts chronicle of the life of?Joseph Heller. It is by Tracy Daugherty, who should not be confused with Mr. Heller?s daughter. Erica Heller?s own book about her father is ?Yossarian Slept Here,? and there are many places where Heller?s daughter and Mr. Daugherty overlap. This situation is so jarring that it has driven Christopher Buckley, not ordinarily known for cornball silliness, to two giddy attacks of wordplay. About the biography he blurbs, ?A major achievement, or should I say major major major?? in honor of Major Major, a major character in Heller?s ?Catch-22.? His blurb for Ms. Heller: ?I think this is going to be one hell(er) of a memoir.?
So the combined effects of these two books can be dizzying, even though the authors? vantage points and attitudes are very different. Mr. Daugherty writes in a thoroughgoing academic style, cherry-picks an unconscionable amount of material from Heller?s own memoirs, paraphrases dreadfully (with ? shock[ingly] heavy use of ? b[rackets] and ellipses ? and parentheses) and does not show signs of assurance until he has occasion to analyze Heller?s writing career ? at which point ?Just One Catch? gets a lot better. And it is the first important biography to arrive about Heller, who died in 1999.
Ms. Heller?s book, which will be published on Aug. 23, gives a narrower but livelier sense of her father?s caustic, self-centered nature. She is both charming and combative. When Heller wrote witheringly about a man?s disappointing marriage and children in ?Something Happened,? Ms. Heller struck back with a 1975 piece in Harper?s called ?It Sure Did.? He was, after all, a father who once told an interviewer, ?I don?t do children.?
Here?s how the head-spinning interplay between these books works: Mr. Daugherty used Ms. Heller?s e-mails, other comments and unpublished manuscript as source material, with her cooperation. But the same thoughts are tonally different in the authors? different versions.
Each book is revealing in its choice of starting point. Mr. Daugherty?s chronicle begins very strangely. In a prologue he makes a point that may surprise readers who know little about Heller?s World War II experiences: that Heller flew as a bombardier, just as his ?Catch-22 protagonist, Yossarian, did, and that he, like Yossarian, witnessed the gruesome death of a comrade who eerily spoke two words that became unforgettable: ?I?m cold.? [Read the full article...]
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Source: http://frogenyozurt.com/2011/07/just-one-catch-a-biography-of-joseph-heller-by-tracy-daugherty/
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