Just One Catch (83 page)

“When [the] book first came out in paper”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” p. 45.

a “difficult situation”
: Davis,
Two-Bit Culture,
p. 300.

“Happy birthday CATCH-22”
: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 513.

“Without being aware of it”
: Joseph Heller, “Reeling in
Catch-22
,” in
The Sixties,
ed. Lynda Rosen Obst (New York: Rolling Stone Press/Random House, 1977), pp. 50–52.

“did their best to make us feel like exiles”
: Anatole Broyard,
Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir
(New York: Vintage Books, 1993), p. 15.

“[came] to us almost entirely in paperback”
: Eller, “Catching a Market,” p. 519.

“For sixteen years”
: letter from Stephen E. Ambrose to Joseph Heller, January 23, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

“I would very much like to know”
: letter from John Steinbeck to Joseph Heller, July 1, 1963, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

12. THE REALIST

“America in the Sixties”: Lewis A. Coser, “Faith, Hope, and the Facts,”
Commentary
31, no. 2 (1961): 181.

“drags on productivity”; “miracles of rising income”
: ibid.

“moral, spiritual, and intellectual harm”
: Norman Podhoretz, “Looking Back at
Catch-22
”; reprinted as “Norman Podhoretz on Rethinking
Catch-22,
” in
Bloom's Guides: Joseph Heller's Catch-22,
ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), p. 120.

“about a married man”
: “The Heller Cult,”
Newsweek,
October 1, 1962, pp. 82–83.

“fulcrum
[years]
of America”;
“
rendezvous with destiny”
: Tom Brokaw,
The Greatest Generation
(New York: Random House, 1998), p. 3.

“Forms and rhythms in [art]”
: quoted in Ralph Gleason, “Like a Rolling Stone,” posted at
jannswenner.com/Press/Like_A_Rolling_Stone.aspx
.

“I know so many things I'm afraid to find out”
: Joseph Heller,
Something Happened
(1974; reprint, New York: Ballantine Books, 1975), p. 154.

“motivation of my entire life”
: Bruce Weber, “Speed Vogel, Author's Aide, Dies at 90,”
New York Times,
April 18, 2008; posted at
nytimes.com/2008/04/18/books/18vogel.html
.

“Joe somehow managed”
: Joseph Heller and Speed Vogel,
No Laughing Matter
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 99.

“erections”
: Speed Vogel, “The Gourmet Club,”
The Southampton Review 2,
no. 1 (2008): 214.

“[Mel] had a blood sugar problem”; “Mr. Vogel can't speak to you now”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
p. 98.

“You snore”; “What do you want from me?”
: ibid.

“Huck Finn on his raft in Manhattan”
: Jane Ayer, “Speed Vogel Obituary,” posted at
reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS16311+18+-Apr-2008+PRN20080418
.

“Mel and Joe had tremendous similarities”
: Vogel, “The Gourmet Club,” p. 210.

“There's a side of Mel”
: Kenneth Tynan, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,”
The New Yorker,
October 30, 1978, p. 68.

“Tragedy is if I cut my finger”
: ibid., p. 94.

“Ngoot, a little guy”
: Vogel, “The Gourmet Club,” p. 208.

“If you don't have it”
: ibid., p. 209.

“It's hard to be a Jew”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
p. 105.

“Mel was strangely attracted to fire”
: Vogel, “The Gourmet Club,” p. 209.

“The trouble with fucking”
: Mario Puzo,
The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions
(Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1972), p. 226.

“I'm sure glad that happened to you”; “He wasn't being cruel”
: Tynan, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,” p. 101.

“Joe loved to move around Manhattan”
: This and other comments by Mell Lazarus are from a conversation with the author, May 20, 2009.

“The Kennedy Administration”
: Sam Merrill, “
Playboy
Interview: Joseph Heller,”
Playboy,
June 1975, pp. 66–68.

“Women flock[ed] to him”
: Adam J. Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), p. 193.

“You can't be a female fan”
: Sally Vincent, “Portrait: Catch-94,”
The Guardian
, September 24, 1994.

“I think as soon as I was old enough”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, October 21, 2009.

“[W]e were not an … affectionate family”
: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, January 15, 2010.

“[I]t is never, or hardly ever, an entirely good thing”
: Joseph Heller,
Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 214.

“He was funnier”
: Norman Barasch in conversation with the author, April 29, 2009.

a “very warm, open man”
: Erica Heller, in conversation with the author, February 18, 2010.

“He was always complaining about the food”
: Norman Barasch in conversation with the author, April 29, 2009.

“This is the world of Stevenson, Conrad, and Gauguin”
: Albert Aley, “Seven Against the Sea,” Universal City Studios LLLP, 1962. The drama is available for viewing at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles. See also the listing at at
imdb.com
.

“so long as a book is true and beautiful”
: D. J. Taylor, “Culture, Commerce, Clinton,”
The Guardian,
May 25, 2002; posted at
guardian.co.uk/books/2002/May/25/hayfestival2002.guardianhayfestival
.

“Go away, damn you!”
: Heller's account of his meeting with Bertrand Russell is related in Kinky Friedman,
'Scuse Me While I Whip This Out: Reflections on Country Singers, Presidents, and Other Troublemakers
(New York: William Morrow, 2004), p. 141.

“thrilling”
: Joseph Heller, “Joseph Heller Talks about
Catch-22,
” in Heller,
Catch as Catch Can: The Collected Stories and Other Writings,
ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Park Bucker (New York: Simon & Schuster 2003), p. 299.

“What are you doing tonight?”
: Heller told the story of meeting James Jones at the James Jones Literary Society Symposium in June 1999; posted at
jamesjonesliterarysociety.org/jheller.htm
.

“I always felt it wasn't too easy to lose a boat”
: Joseph Heller, “PT 73, Where Are You?” Universal City Studios LLLP, 1962.

“Friends of mine in TV”
: letter from Joseph Heller to Jay Sanford, July 20, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.

“I would like to assure you, Joe”
: letter from Edward J. Montagne to Joseph Heller, August 6, 1962, Joseph Heller Collection, Brandeis University.

Comedy [variety] shows were out of style”
: Tynan, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,” p. 49.

“generally ignored the satirical cabaret performers”
: Arthur Gelb,
City Room
(New York: Berkley Books, 2003), p. 304.

“I didn't mean to be subversive”
: ibid., p. 306.

Lenny Bruce
: All quotes by and about Lenny Bruce, including a link to the “Petition Protesting the Arrest of Lenny Bruce, June 13, 1964,” are taken from Doug Linder, “The Trials of Lenny Bruce,” posted at
law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/bruce/bruceaccount.html
.

“[P]olice payoffs”
: Gelb,
City Room,
p. 310.

“I feel the hints, the clues”
: Abe Peck,
Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press
(New York: Pantheon, 1985), p. 9.

The Realist: For details about Paul Krassner, William Gaines, and
The Realist
, see ibid., pp. 10–13.

“I had gone to my first literary cocktail party”
: Paul Krassner in an e-mail to the author, July 5, 2009.

“quote an orthodox book”
: This and subsequent quotes from the interview are taken from Paul Krassner, “An Impolite Interview with Joseph Heller,”
The Realist,
November 1962; reprinted in Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller,
pp. 6–7, 8–9, 10, 22.

“pretended he had taken the subway”
: Paul Krassner in an e-mail to the author, July 5, 2009.

“We moved to [a] much larger apartment”
: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, October 22, 2009. The apartment was 10C.

“the housewife-mother”
: Kenneth C. Davis,
Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America
(Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1984), p. 304.

“Give up Dr. Spock?”
: ibid., p. 9.

“I think that when women are encouraged”
: Gail Collins,
When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present
(New York: Little, Brown, 2009), p. 11.

“natural restriction”
;
“grace”
: ibid.

“Men went mad”
: Joseph Heller,
Catch-22
(1961; reprint, New York: Dell, 1971), p. 16.

“[W]omen's … lives [are] confined”
: Davis,
Two-Bit Culture,
p. 304.

13. BOMBS

“sour … irritation”
: Unless otherwise noted, this and subsequent quotes regarding the visit to Corsica are taken from: Joseph Heller, “Catch-22 Revisited,”
Holiday,
April 1967, pp. 45–60, 120, 141–42, 145.

“[My son's] terror”
: Joseph Heller,
Something Happened
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1974), p. 524.

“Up until [this] time”
: Erica Heller, reader comment, “The View Remains the Same … Thankfully,” posted at
wowowow.com/post/the-view-from-my-horizon
.

“little jewel of a hotel”
: ibid.

“I started worrying about money”
: Chet Flippo, “Checking in with Joseph Heller,”
Rolling Stone,
April 16, 1981, reprinted in Adam J. Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), p. 229.

various projects they started together
: These projects included a screenplay based on Mandel's novel
The Breakwater.

“much music”
: Joseph Heller and George Mandel, “The Big Squeeze,” rough draft, Joseph Heller Archive, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

Rather than rejecting kittenish femininity
: See Jennifer Scanlon,
Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 69.

“I told you that a hundred thousand dollars ago”
: ibid., p. 113.

“spice things up”
: ibid.

“two young, muddled protagonists”
: A. H. Weiler, “Screen: Promoting Those Castles in Spain: ‘The Pleasure Seekers' and Other Films Bow, ‘Sex and Single Girl,' Tenor's Biography,”
New York Times,
December 26, 1964; posted at
movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=l&res=9501E7DD143BE53ABC4E51DFB4
.

“We had never experienced anything like that [summer]”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, January 4, 2010.

“I just ran up to her like a lunatic”
: ibid.

“I remember thinking the boats and cars I was seeing”
: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, January 19, 2010.

“had a natural flair for comedy”
: Suzanne Finstad,
Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood
(New York: Random House, 2009), p. 252.

“needed the money to settle a divorce”
: Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller,
p. 166.

“told me that he and I both did a version of the same scene”
: Sam Merrill, “
Playboy
Interview: Joseph Heller,”
Playboy,
June 1975, pp. 66–68.

“was tempting”
: Joseph Heller, “How I Found James Bond, Lost My Self-Respect and Almost Made $150,270 in My Spare Time,”
Holiday,
June 1967, p. 123.

“When you put glasses on them”
;
“No background dogs in my picture!”
: “General Information, Casino Royale, 1967,” posted at
007museum.com/casino_royale-1967.htm
.

“ninety minute[s] … of what appears to be Frank [Sinatra]”
: See
sinatraguide.com/filmedsinatra
.

“worst movie you ever saw”
;
“sort of on impulse”
: Tayt Harlin, “Inteview with David Markson,” posted at
conjunctions.com/webcon/harlinmarkson07.htm
.