Just One Catch (82 page)

“[W]hen I had been at Simon & Schuster a year”
: MacFarquhar, “Robert Gottlieb,” p. 208.

“I suppose our convoluted, neurotic”
: ibid., p. 187.

“two great qualities”
: Gottlieb, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”

“battlefield sequences”
: MacFarquhar, “Robert Gottlieb,” p. 213.

“I probably wouldn't send”
: ibid.

“I think I was [Bob's] first writer”; “It came so hard”
: Robert Alan Aurthur, “Hanging Out,”
Esquire,
September 1974, pp. 54, 64.

“The two enlisted men”
: This and subsequent quotes are from the rough drafts of
Catch-22,
Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University Libraries, Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections Department, Waltham, Massachusetts.

“I'm a chronic fiddler”; “I don't understand the process of imagination”
: Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller
, pp. 161, 107.

“true literary genius”
: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 481.

“It had upset many people”
: Korda,
Another Life,
p. 53.

“strange period”
: ibid., p. 94.

“endlessly retyped”
: ibid., p. 77.

“impoverished vocabulary”
: This and other quotes from Robert Gottlieb on the following pages are taken from MacFarquhar, “Robert Gottlieb,” pp. 186–87, 197–98, 199, 200.

“Some of Bob's suggestions”
: MacFarquhar, “Robert Gottlieb,” p. 205.

“aura of myth”
: Korda,
Another Life,
p. 53.

“Sicilian Earth Mother”
;
“had a way of dismissing those”
: ibid., pp. 236–37.

“who misunderstood her instructions”
: Seth Kupferberg and Greg Lawless, “Joseph Heller: 13 Years from
Catch-22
to
Something Happened
,”
Harvard Crimson,
October 11, 1974.

“The S & S house style”
: Schwed,
Turning the Pages
, p. 156.

“lucky and glad”
: Steven Heller,
Design Literary
(New York: Allworth Press, 2004), p. 241.

“I'd always tell myself”; “I did a jacket”
: ibid., pp. 238, 240.

“all that expense-account food;” “the Locust”; “Whatever was there”
: Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller,
pp. 103–04.

“[I remember] my mother, brother, and I stayed at this motel”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, December 30, 2009. Ms. Heller is not certain about the timing of this motel stay. Initially, she thought it was the summer of 1961, but later she believed it could have been the summer of 1962. Her descriptions of her father's work at the time inclined me to place the incident in 1961.

“fantastic sense of the trends of the times”
: Susan Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes, Maybe Yes, But Not the Whole Book,”
The New Journal
26 (1967): 39, 40.

“He was a self-made man”
: Rinker Buck,
Flight of Passage
(New York: Hyperion, 1997), p. 5.

“just going to brood and not work”; “Joe worked [hard]”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” p. 40.

“[W]e were all in despair”
: Hudes, “Epic Agent,” p. 153.

“The name of the book is now CATCH-14”
: note from Joseph Heller to Robert Gottlieb, January 29, 1961, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer took Random House public”
: Korda,
Another Life,
p. 102.

“extensions of the possible into the fantastic”
: This and all subsequent quotes regarding the novel and its relationship to real-life events are taken from Joseph Heller's notes to Robert Gottlieb, analysis of characters in
Catch-22,
Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“22 was chosen”;
Hudes, “Epic Agent,” pp. 153–54.

“Absolutely untrue”
: ibid.

“[s]uggested descriptive copy fragments”
: Joseph Heller, notes on
Catch-22,
Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“Tell me about popular fiction”
: Katherine McNamara, “A Conversation about Publishing with Samuel S. Vaughan,”
Archipelago,
3, no. 2 (1999): 39.

“That's some catch”
: This and other quotes from
Catch-22
on the following pages are taken from Joseph Heller,
Catch-22
(1961; reprint, New York: Dell, 1971), pp. 47, 17, 107, 177, 449–50, 266, 463, 269, 197.

“war … without limits”
: Alfred Kazin,
Bright Book of Life: American Novelists and Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 83.

“I didn't want to give him a Jewish name”
: Paul Krassner, “An Impolite Interview with Joseph Heller,”
The Realist,
November 1962; reprinted in Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller,
p. 18.

“the demented governess”
: Gottlieb, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”

“We have to print 7,500”
: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 486.

“If we'd had anybody to ask”
: ibid.

“A funny and tragic and tonic book”
: ibid.

“crazed”; “This is a book I'd get a critic”
: ibid.

“One eminent critic”
: ibid.

“Dear Miss Bourne”
: letter from Evelyn Waugh to Nina Bourne, September 6, 1961, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“
PLEASE CONGRATULATE JOSEPH HELLER
”
:
Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 489.

“The growing ferment of interest in
Catch-22”
: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 488.

“spent many an evening”
: Frederick Karl, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”

“regular family life”
: Erica Heller, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”

“We used to go often on Sunday afternoons”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, December 5, 2009.

“With the hope that when you read this book”
: ibid.

he chided friends who bought the novel on discount
: Melvin J. Grayson, who worked for a time with Heller in the promotion department at
Look
magazine, recalled that he bumped into Heller on Fifth Avenue right after
Catch-22
was published. “Have you seen the reviews of
Catch-22?
” Heller asked him. “I'll bet you wish you could write like that.” Grayson was apparently not one of Heller's favorite people, or vice versa. Grayson recalls two other unpleasant encounters with Heller, one in Heller's office, when Heller told Grayson to “go away” because he was busy, and one in which, as the men passed casually in the hallway, Heller told Grayson, “You have dandruff.” See the letters page of
New York
magazine, October 10, 1994.

“Involvement in an intense relationship”
: Michael Moore, “Pathological Communication Patterns in Heller's
Catch-22,
” posted at
www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=17838029
.

“[T]he book is no novel”
: Richard G. Stern, “Bombers Away,”
New York Times Book Review,
October 22, 1961, p. 50.

“was not dismayed”
: Frederick Karl, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”

“I didn't think [my family and I] would ever smile again”
: Harold Bloom, ed.,
Bloom's Guides: Joseph Heller's Catch-22
(New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), p. 10.

“We thought we had the fix in”
: 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), p. 198–99.

“Below its hilarity”
: Nelson Algren, “The Catch,”
The Nation,
November 4, 1961, p. 358.

“
Catch-22
is the debut of a writer with merry gifts”
: Norman Mailer, “Some Children of the Goddess: Norman Mailer vs. Nine Writers,”
Esquire,
July 1963, p. 63.

“Joseph Heller's brilliant farce-tragedy”
: “Editorial: Who Gets the Awards and Why Not Everybody?”
Show,
June 1962, p. 14B.

“By conventional marketing standards”
: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 494.

“Report on
Catch-22
”
: ibid., p. 495.

“
‘
Catch' is a classic”
: Van Allen Bradley, “Bookman's Week: Novelist Nelson Algren Campaigns for Neglected Book,”
Chicago Daily News,
June 23, 1962; cited in Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 496.

“Joe's contribution”
: Gottlieb, remarks made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration.”

“Many years later”
: ibid.

“Things were pretty weird in Manhattan”
: This quote and the following anecdote are taken from Robert Nedelkoff, “Catch-2008,” posted at
thenewnixon.org/author/Robert-Nedelkoff
.

“This is
The Naked and the Dead
scripted for the Marx Brothers”
: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 501.

“When I began reading
Catch-22
”
: Philip Toynbee, “Here's Greatness—In Satire,”
The Observer,
June 17, 1962; reprinted in Frederick Kiley and Walter McDonald, eds.,
A “Catch-22” Casebook
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973), p. 12.

“We sold just over 800 copies”
: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 499.

“It is hard to imagine [Heller's] book”
: W. J. Weatherby, “The Joy Catcher,”
The Guardian
, November 20, 1962.

“The thesis of ‘Catch-22'
”: Anthony Burgess, “Review of
Catch-22
,”
Yorkshire Evening Post,
June 28, 1962; cited in Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 503.

“Come on! Don't let the English beat us!”
: Eller, “Catching a Market,” pp. 504–05.

“Heller's a hell of a good publicist”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” p. 39.

I don't know yet whether I'll do the play”
: Eugene Arthur, “‘Catch-22' Movie Set by Columbia,”
New York Times,
August 22, 1962.

“It was wonderful for Joe”
: Hudes, “Epic Agent,” p. 154.

“They had an idea I was supposed to look like Thomas Wolfe”
: Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller
, p. 123.

“Both [success and failure] are difficult to endure”
: ibid., p. 164.

“
Catch-22
is taking off!”
The quote and the ensuing conversation are taken from Denham,
Sleeping with Bad Boys
, p. 201.

“A matter has been troubling me”
: letter from Robert O. Shipman to Simon & Schuster, May 14, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“matter was entirely coincidental”
: letter from Joseph Heller to Robert O. Shipman, May 18, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“Eek”
: note from Paula Diamond to Joseph Heller, August 6, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“as Jacob wrestled with the angel”
: letter from Joseph Heller to Paula Diamond, October 30, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“how well I think you substituted for the name”
: letter from Robert O. Shipman to Joseph Heller, April 18, 1963, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“no permanent resentment exist[ed]”
: letter from Joseph Heller to Robert O. Shipman, June 10, 1963, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“The success of [
Catch-22
in paperback]”
: Kenneth C. Davis,
Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), pp. 298–300.

“[A] nation-wide sensation”
: ibid., p. 299.

“Not since
The Catcher in the Rye”: “The Heller Cult,”
Newsweek,
October 1, 1962, pp. 82–83.

Joe appeared on NBC's
Today
show
: Heller recounts this anecdote in “Preface to
Catch-22,
” written in 1994 for a new edition of the novel (London: Vintage, 1995).

“[T]he war that I [was] really dealing with”
: Creath Thorne, “Joseph Heller: An Interview,”
The Chicago Literary Review: Book Supplement to the Chicago Maroon,
December 3, 1974, p. 8.

“I don't think I'll ever recover”
: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 514.

“[A]t the University of Chicago”
: ibid., p. 515.

“The young people”
: ibid.

“At some point, I outgrew the school library”
: Mark Moskowitz;
Stone Reader
(Jet Films LLC, 2002); transcribed by the author.