Just One Catch (75 page)

Joe was interred in the Cedar Lawn Cemetery in East Hampton. Jerry McQueen was one of the pallbearers. He remembered hefting Joe into the Russian Tea Room years ago when Joe—as Mario Puzo put it—had come back from the dead.

“When we left the grave site, Mel Brooks was reading some of the names on the tombstones—McCarthy, Smith, Vitale,” McQueen recalled. “Brooks said, ‘Joe, they buried you in a goy cemetery.' We all laughed”—the day's last sound.

 

Epilogue : Cleaning House

“
TWO WEEKS
[after my father died], a messenger came to me at work and delivered [my] book to me.… This was the biggest moment in my life, and I couldn't tell him about it,” Ted said. Subsequently, Ted married and had a daughter, whom he dearly wishes his father could have met. He published his second novel,
Funnymen,
in 2002.

Erica continues to live in the Apthorp. It remains a haunted house of sorts, under constant renovation (often without heat or electricity), new ownership, and with byzantine alterations to its occupancy policies. She has written a memoir of her mother and father.

Valerie sold the house she shared with Joe, but she still lives nearby.

The reception of Joe's posthumously published
Portrait of an Artist, as an old Man
was tepid. Joe's profile of an elderly fiction writer prone to frequent naps, lustful urges with no chance of fulfillment, discouraging talks with his editor, and false starts on novels (Tom Sawyer as a Wall Streeter, Hera as a harpie,
A Sexual Biography of My Wife
), met its toughest resistance from the
New York Times
' Michiko Kakutani. She called the novel “embarrassing” and expressed “regret” that it would harm a “distinguished,” “inspired,” and “sometimes brilliant” career. Heller's old skills—“bravura satire … zany, improvisational humor … ferocity and swagger”—were “sorely lacking” in
Portrait,
she said.

On the other hand,
The Observer
's Tim Adams called the novel a “sardonic little abdication address, a posthumous piece of self-parody … [and] one last muted hurrah from a writer who [knew] his place in the authorial Hall of Fame was never really in doubt.” Listing the book as one of the best American novels of 2000, David Gates, writing in
Newsweek,
said it was Heller's “slightest but scariest [production]: it amounts to a literary suicide note.… Heller must have known this book would chill every writer, and many readers, to the heart, while offering not a bit of comfort. For having that much nerve, you've got to admire him.” And
The New Yorker,
which never published Joe, even when Bob Gottlieb edited the magazine, said, “There is something bleakly bracing in [the old writer's] obsession with his own literary desiccation.”

*   *   *

A DECADE AFTER JOE'S DEATH
,
We Bombed in New Haven
was staged regularly in regional theaters (in Fullerton, California, Valparaiso, Indiana, and Portland, Oregon), its antiwar theme perpetually timely.
God Knows
had been adapted for the stage in Israel. A new Hebrew translation of
Catch-22
had become an immediate bestseller in that country.
Something Happened
served as one of the templates for cable television's hottest new show,
Mad Men,
and Joe's novels, particularly
Something Happened
and
Closing Time,
were receiving renewed scholarly attention.

In the summer of 2010, the journalist John Grant wrote that Heller's “vision” was “tragically in synch” with the “highly privatized” way the U.S. military was prosecuting its war in Afghanistan—that is, paying its enemies to run convoys delivering food and supplies to U.S. troops. “Milo Minderbinder [is alive] in Afghanistan,” Grant declared. At the same time, said the
New Statesman,
Milo oversaw British Petroleum's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “Even when it's fouling its own nest and screwing everything in sight, [Milo's] syndicate”—in which “everybody has a share,” making it too big to fail—“is good for the country. Similar logic is being used by … BP,” wrote William Wiles on the magazine's blog site.

As these references suggest, Joe's reputation and importance to American literature rests—as he always knew it would—with
Catch-22,
which has sold over ten million copies to date, is a mainstay in college courses ranging from English to history to political science, and currently averages annual sales (according to Nielson BookScan) of around 85,000 copies.

On that basis alone, Thomas Edwards was right when he asserted in
The New York Review of Books
that “Heller is among the novelists of the last [few] decades who matter.”

“[
Catch-22
] still blows me away,” says Carl Hiassen. “[It] is one of the most phenomenal novels in the English language because of Heller's ability to make you laugh literally on every page while writing about the darkest of all human conditions, wartime.”

Recently, Adam Mars-Jones, grousing in
The Observer
about what he felt was an overpraised new war novel, said, “Joseph Heller found … [that] a pose of heartlessness twists the knife more than any amount of earnest pain: thanks to this discovery, a book written about the second world war, published in 1961 (the year Hemingway died), belongs to the future rather than the past.”

*   *   *

IN RECENT YEARS
, with the deaths of Norman Mailer, John Updike, and J. D. Salinger, following the earlier losses of Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Donald Barthelme, Grace Paley, Bernard Malamud, William Gaddis, Susan Sontag, and Joe, among others, readers, critics, and observers of American culture have noted the passing of an astonishingly fertile era of U.S. literature.

It has coincided with the disappearance of the World War II generation. “Veterans of the Second World War dominated American public life for decades, but [John Paul] Stevens is practically the last one still holding a position of prominence. He is the only veteran of any kind on the [Supreme] Court,” Jeffrey Toobin wrote in the March 22, 2010, issue of
The New Yorker.
“The war helped shape his jurisprudence, and even today shapes his frame of reference.”

Weeks later, Stevens announced his retirement.

With the advent of the e-book, publishing, as understood by Joe's generation (one that still believed in the possibility of the Great American Novel and an underground press), may also have reached the finish line—or at least found a tipping point, with ramifications for authors, editors, booksellers, and readers still unclear.

Exactly ten years after the night Joe died, the
New York Times
, whose print version, like that of most newspapers and magazines, was struggling to remain afloat financially, reported that a legal battle had commenced for the digital rights to
Catch-22.
“[E]xactly who owns the rights to such [a title] is in dispute” among authors' heirs, traditional print publishers, and purveyors of new electronic formats, “making it a rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry's last remaining areas of growth,” Mokoto Rich wrote.

If he were here, Joe might ask if digital money was the same as printed money. In any case, his response to the information revolution, and the turmoil into which it has plunged publishing, would likely be a laugh and a shrug. Writing is just a form of procrastination, he used to say. What's all the fuss?

*   *   *

ON THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY
of Joe's death, Christopher Buckley published a piece on the op-ed page of the
New York Times
. He yearned to know what Joe would have thought about America's absurd and terrifying entry into the twenty-first century, including incidents such as “9/11 … Saddam Hussein's hanging, available on cellphone and YouTube, Dick Cheney shooting his lawyer … John Kerry, war hero, being depicted as a Swift-boating wimp … A.I.G. bonuses … [and] President Obama's accepting the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after ordering 30,000 more Americans to war.”

But the world, propelled or pulled by events, ignores us—as Joe recognized in his most intimate writings. Perhaps the purest measure of a woman or man is not in the moments we manage to catch and consider publicly, but in the instants, minute to minute, we nearly miss.

Like this: “In the early 1980s, I was cleaning houses with my friend Mary in East Hampton and we had Joseph Heller's house on our schedule. I'd been there a few times and I remember it as very simply done inside. It seemed exactly the kind of house a man who was focused on other things would keep: it had only the essentials. It wasn't homey. It didn't show any personality. It was just pleasant and practical. That made it really easy to clean,” says Margaret Dawe, now an associate professor of English at Wichita State University. “One day, Mary and I were simultaneously having family/love crises. On the way to Joseph Heller's we stopped and bought lottery tickets because we were desperate for something good to happen.

“We went into his kitchen to start and by then we were in tears. Usually, Mr. Heller left for the day when we came and we didn't know he was there. We were standing at the sink filling a bucket of water and we'd already sprinkled the Spic and Span and we were both crying as the water ran, when Mr. Heller walked into the kitchen. I knew him from pictures in the paper. He was one of the writers who turned me upside down. I was fifteen when I read
Catch-22,
and I was laughing so hard reading it, the tears ran down my face.

“When he walked in the kitchen, we were all surprised to see one another and he saw us just sobbing and everyone kind of stopped. I was so embarrassed. And he looked from one of our faces to the other and he said, ‘Is there anything I can do except leave?' Everything dire and dreadful inside us melted and Mary and I threw our heads back laughing. So, you know, we
did
win the lottery.”

Joe hesitated only a moment between the freezer full of ice cream and the bucket of warm cleanser, in the presence of laughing women in tears, in sunlight promising good work hours ahead, and slipped quietly out of the kitchen.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MICHAEL HOMLER
of St. Martin's Press asked me one day if anyone had written a full-length biography of Joseph Heller, and this project was born. I am grateful to Michael for his suggestion and pitch-perfect editorial guidance. It has been a pleasure to work once more with Michael, George Witte, and the St. Martin's team. My thanks to Henry R. Kaufman for his legal counsel, Carol Edwards for the copyediting, and John Morrone for overseeing editorial production.

Kit Ward's enthusiasm and wisdom were essential to the book.

Kerry Ahearn, Chair of the English Department at Oregon State University, arranged for a sabbatical leave which enabled me to research and write. To Kerry, Ann Leen, and my colleagues in the College of Liberal Arts at OSU, I am grateful for years of friendship and support.

Ted Leeson is the best prose-doctor in the country. He coaxed several of my sentences to life.

Ryan Wepler at Brandeis University proved to be an efficient and discerning research assistant. Thanks to Rebecca Olson for putting me in touch with Ryan. At the University of South Carolina's Thomas Cooper Library, Patrick Scott, Jeffrey Malkala, and Elizabeth Sudduth offered me warmth, hospitality, and help. Sandra Stelts at Penn State University was gracious in gathering Helleriana for me.

Daniel Setzer's and Don Kaiser's military knowledge is matched by their generosity. Their research and resources are invaluable to all students of World War II. At Goodfellow Field, the base historian, Chad Dull, treated my father and me to a wonderful day while providing fascinating information about the base during Heller's time there. Betty Whitely, Archives Technician at the Military Personnel Records Facility of the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis ably assisted Erica Heller and me in our search for Joseph Heller's military discharge records.

Phyllis Bobb, Tammy Carter at the University of Arizona, Nancy Crampton, Jill Krementz, Jonathan Barth, and Susan Wood Richardson were very kind in helping me secure photographs and permissions.

At the Jewish Theological Seminary, Ellen Kastel offered patient aid and kindness.

For their expert guidance through the world of 1950s American advertising, I am indebted to Bob Levenson, Tom Messner, and Curvin O'Reilly.

I am grateful to Robert Gottlieb for walking me through some of the ins and outs of publishing, particularly with reference to
Good as Gold
.

Joseph Heller was blessed with a capacity for friendship, as evidenced by the eagerness of so many of his family, friends, and colleagues to speak of him openly and with tremendous warmth. In particular, Erica Heller has gone out of her way to help me and her father's readers know his life as well as it can be known. Our many exchanges have been as delightful as they were fruitful, and her tour of the Apthorp was lovely. Ted Heller has been exceptionally generous. I am more grateful than I can say for his help and good humor.

My sincere thanks to Valerie Heller, George Mandel, and Luann Walker for sharing glimpses of their lives with Joe and Speed Vogel. Valerie was most helpful in providing encouragement, contact information, and rare photographs.

Joseph Stein spoke movingly and eloquently about his old friend with me. I am blessed to have had the chance to speak with him.

For their help, patience, forbearance, and kindness I am also indebted to the following people. In some instances, their willingness to return my calls or answer e-mails gave the book a necessary boost. Any errors of fact or interpretation in the narrative are mine, not theirs or anyone else's I spoke to for this project: