Just One Catch (80 page)

“Joe said that, in New York”
: This and subsequent comments by Bob Mason are from a conversation with the author, November 3, 2009.

“That play is a fraud”
: Weber, “Robert Anderson, Author of ‘Tea and Sympathy,' Dies at 91.”

“State Department is infested with Communists”
: Griffith,
The Politics of Fear,
p. 49.

“conspiracy so immense”
: Joseph McCarthy,
Major Speeches and Debates of Senator Joe McCarthy Delivered in the United States Senate, 1950–1951
(Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office 1953), p. 215.

“career destruction”
: Unless otherwise indicated, this and subsequent quotes from George Mandel are taken from his remarks at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”

“Jewish hang-ups”
: Seed,
The Fiction of Joseph Heller,
p. 8.

“only one of my contemporaries”
: Morris Dickstein,
Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945–1970
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 32.

“[At the time,] I could not see myself spending more than two years”
: Joseph Heller, remarks made at the James Jones Literary Society Symposium, June 1999; posted at
jamesjonesliterarysociety.org/jheller.htm
.

Joe “calculated” that his life was half over
: Barbara Gelb, in conversation with the author, August 2, 2010.

“I have the opportunity at this time”
: letter from Joseph Heller to Theodore J. Gates, May 27, 1952, Special Collections Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University, College Park, Pennsylvania.

“Mr. Heller is an accomplished writer”
: letter from Theodore J. Gates to Ben Euwema, June 2, 1952, Special Collections Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University.

“I don't hate anybody here”
: Nadine Kofman, “Novelist Taught Composition at Penn State in Early 1950s,”
Penn State Collegian,
October 21, 1974.

“It is now certain”
: letter from Joseph Heller to Theodore J. Gates, March 20, 1953, Special Collections Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University.

“ability to get along with others”
: letter from Lillian M. Farkas to Penn State University, September 1, 1953, Special Collections Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University.

“honest, dependable, and loyal”
: letter from Theodore J. Gates to the Personnel Department at the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, undated, Special Collections Library, University Libraries, Pennsylvania State University.

“He declined”
: Stanley Weintraub in an e-mail to Sandra Stelts of the Special Collections Library, Pennsylvania State University, April 23, 2009; e-mail provided to the author by Sandra Stelts on behalf of Mr. Weintraub.

9. CAUGHT INSIDE

“Isn't this the building where they found dead people on the roof?”
: Comment posted at
ny.therealdeal.com/articles/mann-slated-to-settle-apthorp-lawsuit
.

“This is like the House of Usher”
: Frank Bruni, “Dispute at Ritzy Address Is Emblem of NYC Rent Control Debate,”
New York Times,
April 13, 1997; posted at
www.tenant.net/Alerts/Guide/press/nyt/fb041397.html
.

“pigeon feathers”
: Michael Idov, “Apoplectic at the Apthorp” posted at
www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Apoplectic+at+the+Apthorp
.

The house, finished in 1764
: For details on the design of Elmwood Manor, see Ellen Susan Bulfinch, ed.,
The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1896), pp. 83–84; Kenneth Hafertepe and James F. O'Gorman,
American Architects and Their Books to 1848
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), p. 7.

“doughty royalist Charles Ward Apthorp”
: “End 100-Year Fight Over Apthorp Land,”
New York Times
, July 24, 1910; posted at
query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=l&res=9501E6DB1239E433A2575C2A9619C946196D6CF
.

a “display of horticulture”
: Christopher Gray, “The Not-So-Secret Garden in the Apthorp's Courtyard,”
New York Times,
July 22, 2007; posted at
www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/realestate/22scap.html
.

“She never had a cross word”
: “Tenants Mourn Elevator Woman Who in 35 Years Was Never Cross,”
New York Times,
October 15, 1953; posted at
spiderbites.nytimes.com/pay_1953/articles_1953_10_00003.html
.

“I was born at French Hospital”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, April 21, 2009.

“Erica, for Beethoven's Eroica Symphony”
: Jerome Taub in an e-mail to the author, January 5, 2010.

“Now here's how it was”
: Shirley Polykoff,
Does She … or Doesn't She? And How She Did It
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), p. 30.

“Your name is familiar”
: ibid., p. 108.

“gray fedora with a dark band”
: Joseph Heller,
Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 113.

“first Gibsons”
: ibid., p. 167.

“going when I came into work”
: Art Kramer, “Art Kramer's WWII Stories: The Birth of the Catches,” posted at
www.coastcomp.com/artkramer/catches.html
.

“All the copywriters were writing plays”
: Ann Waldron, “Writing Technique Can Be Taught, Says Joseph Heller,”
Houston Chronicle,
March 2, 1975.

“Even before 1960”
: Mary Wells, “The Truth About ‘Mad Men' Told by a Real-Life ‘Mad' Woman,” posted at
www.wowowow.com/print/612
.

“[I]t was from the magazine advertisements”
: Polykoff,
Does She … or Doesn't She?,
p. 10.

“On the outside”
: Martin Mayer,
Madison Avenue, U.S.A.
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), p. 7.

“[I]t can truthfully be said”
: ibid., p. 8.

“There was a steam table bar”
: Tom Messner in an e-mail to the author, September 2, 2009.

“[s]urprisingly often”
: Mayer,
Madison Avenue, U.S.A.,
p. 9.

A former employee at BBDO recalls
: This information was provided to the author in an e-mail on September 8, 2009, by a person who wishes to remain anonymous.

According to
Advertising Age: Mayer,
Madison Avenue, U.S.A.,
p. 11.

“I thought it bizarre”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
p. 109.

“The media people come first”
: Mayer,
Madison Avenue, U.S.A.,
p. 15.

“man's world”
: Jane Maas,
Adventures of an Advertising Woman
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp. 21–22.

“beetle brows”
: ibid., p. 22.

“during the World Series”
;
“prevailed during business hours”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
pp. 110–11.

“We were pregnant together”
: Audrey Chestney in conversation with the author, January 5, 2010.

“[There] was a rumor”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
p. 111.

“Now, here, you see”
: ibid., p. 112.

“slept little and gamboled much”
;
“distinctive taverns”
;
“lucky”
: George Mandel,
Flee the Angry Strangers
(1952; reprint, New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003), pp. x, xiii.

“never could understand artists and writers”; “They had a bunch of creeps come in there”
: Roy Thomas, “‘Comics Were Great!': A Colorful Conversation with Mickey Spillane,” posted at
twomorrows.com/alterego/articles/11spillane.html
.

“All [his friends] were ecstatically astonished”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
p. 252.

“transition between … [a] wail of hopelessness”
: Thomas Newhouse,
The Beat Generation and the Pop Novel in the United States, 1945–1970
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000), p. 105.

degraded into
pot;
“Madison Avenue”
: Mandel,
Flee the Angry Strangers,
p. xiv.

“Nembutal goofballs and pod”
: ibid., p. 164.

“An old line”
: Tom Messner in an e-mail to the author, September 2, 2009.

“sought people who were funny”
: ibid.

“It took … the Jews”
: Wells, “The Truth About ‘Mad Men' Told by a Real-Life ‘Mad' Woman,” posted at
www.wowowow.com/print/612
.

“World War II vets”
: Tom Messner in an e-mail to the author.

“Cheater's Night”
: Noted in an e-mail to the author on September 8, 2009, by a person who wishes to remain anonymous.

“girls came to the windows of the dorms”
: Dan Wakefield,
New York in the Fifties
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), pp. 206–07.

“Why aren't [the panty raiders] in the Army”
: ibid., p. 207.

“female contraceptive[s], a plug”
: ibid., p. 233.

“an event of great importance in our culture”
: ibid., p. 204.

“there was lots of underground romantic stuff”
: ibid., p. 231.

“affairs”
: Lynn Barber, “Bloody Heller,”
The Observer,
March 1, 1998; posted at
guardian.co.uk/books1998/mar/01/fiction.josephheller
.

“womanizer”
: ibid.

“I would … say that my imagination”
: Adam J. Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), p. 174.

“A friend from
Time
”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
p. 113.

“most intensely and destructively competitive”
: Mayer,
Madison Avenue, U.S.A.,
p. 187.

“feel”
: This and subsequent Gilbert Lea quotes are taken from ibid., p. 180.

“The Togetherness theme”
: ibid., p. 179.

“great bulk of advertising”
: ibid., p. 315.

“Advertising requires extreme simplification”
: ibid., p. 316.

10. 18

“The novel, you know”
: Susan Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes, Maybe Yes, But Not the Whole Book”:
The New Journal
26 (1967): 7.

“the parties”
: Joseph Heller and George Mandel, Dramatist's Guild Collaboration Contract, October 17, 1952, Joseph Heller Archive, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

“across the street from a railroad yard”
: This and subsequent quotes from Joseph Heller and George Mandel, “The Bird in the Flevverbloom Suit,” are taken from the draft of the play, Joseph Heller Archive.

“There was a terrible sameness”; “conversations with two friends”
: W. J. Weatherby, “The Joy Catcher,”
The Guardian,
November 20, 1962.

The Czech writer Arnold Lustig
: Arnold Lustig, with Frantisek Cinger,
3
X
18: Portraits and Insights
(Prague: Nakladatelstvi Andrej Stastny, 2003), p. 271.

“I was lying in bed”
: Adam J. Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), pp. 106–107.

“a flier facing the end of his missions”
: letter from Whit Burnett to Joseph Heller, August 22, 1946, Archives of
Story
magazine and Story Press, 1981–1989, Princeton University Manuscripts Division, Princeton University Library.

“arrived at work”
: Joseph Heller,
Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 167.

“The agents were not impressed”
: Joseph Heller, “Preface to
Catch-22,
” in
Catch-22
(1961; reprint with a preface by Heller, London: Vintage, 1994), unpaginated.

“While he was alive”; “She saw something”
: Karen Hudes, “Epic Agent: The Great Candida Donadio,”
Tin House
6, no. 4 (2005): 153.

“Candida, this is completely wonderful”
: Jonathan R. Eller, “Catching a Market: The Publishing History of
Catch-22,
”
Prospects: An Annual Journal of American Cultural Studies
17 (1992): 478.

“socialized most agreeably”
: Heller,
Now and Then,
p. 249.

“Joe would call him”
: This and all other comments by Dolores Karl are from a conversation with the author, April 24, 2009.

“I grew up with the Heller kids”
: Deborah Karl in conversation with the author, April 18, 2009.

“She had more synonyms for excrement”; [S]he used to say all the time”
: Hudes, “Epic Agent,” p. 152.

“People tell a lot of contradictory stories”
: ibid., p. 155.