Just One Catch (85 page)

“Most guys think they'll go into [the service]”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” p. 9.

“cuts to the quick”
: Roderick Nordell, “Premiere of
We Bombed in New Haven
,”
Christian Science Monitor,
December 8, 1967.

“the play is very likely the most powerful play about contemporary irrationality”
: Jack Kroll, “War Games,”
Newsweek,
December 18, 1967, p. 96.

“The evening posits war as a glamorous game”
: Walter Kerr, “Walter Kerr VS. Joseph Heller,”
New York Times,
October 27, 1968.

“imagination that created”
: Tom F. Driver, “Curtains in Connecticut,”
The
Saturday Review,
August 31, 1968, pp. 22–24.

“I have unlimited confidence”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” p. 9.

“The American government is making war”
: Seed,
The Fiction of Joseph Heller,
p. 85.

“This could end the war”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” p. 7.

“If it came to violence”
: Shenker, “Did Heller Bomb on Broadway?”

“McCarthy [is] an easy man to defend”; the “issues were so stark”; “to [his] everlasting shame”
: Israel Shenker, “Joseph Heller Draws Dead Bead on the Politics of Gloom,”
New York Times,
September 10, 1968; posted at
nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/home/heller-politics.html?_r=1
.

“Every place I went”
: ibid.

“stung by the Gene McCarthy fever”
: Erica Heller, “I Don't Want to Be in That Number When the ‘Saints' Go Marching In,”
New York Times,
September 30, 1990; posted at
nytimes.com/1990/09/30/opinion/personal-i-don-t-want-to-be-in-that-number
.

“I guess he was proud”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, May 7, 2009.

“I'm not considered a first-stringer”
: Brother Alexis Gonzales, “Notes on the Next Novel: An Interview with Joseph Heller,”
The New Orleans Review
2 (1971): 218.

“All the candidates can use humor”
: Shenker, “Joseph Heller Draws Dead Bead on the Politics of Gloom.”

Joe met Kurt Vonnegut
: All quotes and details regarding Heller and Vonnegut at Notre Dame are taken from Carole Mallory, “The Joe and Kurt Show,”
Playboy,
May 1992; posted at
vonnegutweb.com/vonnegutia/interviews/int_heller.html
.

“He lost because of the nature of American politics”
: Shenker, “Joseph Heller Draws Dead Bead on the Politics of Gloom.”

“[Politics] is not my thing”
: ibid.

“utter political disillusionment”
: Erica Heller, “I Don't Want to Be in that Number When the ‘Saints' Go Marching In.”

“With the murder of Robert Kennedy”
: Jules Witcover,
The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America
(New York: Warner Books, 1997), p. 263. For another insightful view about the atmosphere of the late 1960s in the United States, see Charles Kaiser,
1968 in America
(New York: Grove Press, 1988).

“Is it as good as our old one?”
: Unless otherwise noted, this and subsequent comments regarding Gourmet Club get-togethers are taken from Reiner,
My Anecdotal Life,
pp. 177–82.

A typical sampling
: This exchange is reported in “Eating with Their Mouths Open,”
New York Times,
November 3, 1985; posted at
select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FAOB1EFC3
.

“I imagine every amateur production”
: Robert Merrill,
Joseph Heller
(Boston: Twayne, 1987), p. 57.

“I am not at all certain what I felt”
: Clive Barnes, “Heller's
We Bombed in New Haven
Opens,”
New York Times,
October 17, 1968, p. 51.

he never again wanted anything to do with the theater
: Heller did, in fact, complete two other stage plays, both adaptations from
Catch-22. Catch-22: A Dramatization
was first performed on July 13, 1971, in the John Drew Theater in East Hampton, New York. Heller finished the play at the urging of Larry Arrick; in it, the chaplain comments on war scenes in letters he writes to his wife, and Wintergreen serves as a dispenser and censor of military information.
Clevinger's Trial
(1973) adapts chapter 8 of the novel. Samuel French published Acting Editions of both plays in 1971 and 1973, respectively, and in 1973, Delacorte Press published a trade edition of
Catch-22: A Dramatization.
In a foreword to that edition, Heller railed against the “bloody enterprise” of Vietnam, whose tragedy had been made all the more plain, he wrote, by revelations in the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

“I will weep for you”
: This and subsequent quotes from the play are taken from Heller,
We Bombed in New Haven,
pp. 216–17.

the
Eagle
's landing in the Sea of Tranquility
: Sylvan Fox, a
New York Times
editor, called Heller at the time of the
Apollo 11
moon landing and asked him to write an article of about eight hundred words on the event's historical and cultural importance. Heller was interested but said he could not write eight hundred words in the two- or three-day time period the paper's deadline required. He said he would need several weeks, and Fox did not have that much time.

“maybe a booth at which Dash Hammett once ate with Lilly Hellman”
: Tom Nolan, “Martinis and Mythology,”
Los Angeles Times Magazine,
February 6, 2000; posted at
articles.latimes.com/2000/feb/06/magazine/tom_61592?pg=3
.

[Hoffman and I became] good friends”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
p. 77.

“At first there was camaraderie”
: Mel Gussow, “The Day Dustin Hoffman's House Blew Up,” posted at
mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=524
.

14. WHERE IS WORLD WAR II?

location scouts had staked out
: Unless otherwise noted, this and all other details and quotes in this chapter regarding the filming of
Catch-22
are taken from four invaluable sources: “Some Are More Yossarian than Others,”
Time,
June 15, 1970, pp. 66–74; Buck Henry, “A Diary of Planes, Pilots, and Pitfalls,”
Life,
June 12, 1970, pp. 46, 48; Nora Ephron, “Yossarian Is Alive and Well in the Mexican Desert,”
New York Times,
March 16, 1969, posted at
nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/home/heller-yossarian,html?_r=1
; and Joseph Heller, “On Translating
Catch-22
into a Movie,” in
A “Catch-22” Casebook,
ed. Frederick Kiley and Walter McDonald (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973), pp. 346–55.

“moved the industry one step closer”
: Jon Lewis,
American Film: A History
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), pp. 278–79.

“A peculiarly American brand
of
auteurism”
: ibid., p. 282.

incidents threatened crew morale
: In his memoir,
Halfway through the Door
(New York: Harper & Row, 1979), Alan Arkin wrote that “the film took a direction I could not understand, and this became a source of great pain for me.… [I was] isolated and on edge … in emotional limbo” (p. 13). Art Garfunkel, who had a small role in the movie, was apparently at odds with his singing partner, Paul Simon, over the movie's shooting schedule. Simon wanted Garfunkel back in New York to work on the
Bridge Over Troubled Water
album (initially, Simon also had a part in
Catch-22,
but his role was written out—possibly another source of Simon's irritation). The song “The Only Living Boy in New York” was reportedly written to chide Garfunkel. It refers to getting a plane on time and flying to Mexico. The song is addressed to “Tom,” a name Simon sometimes used for Garfunkel, as the duo billed itself as Tom and Jerry when they first started singing together.

“it seemed … [like] two movies”
: Jacob Brackman, “Review of
Catch-22,
”
Esquire,
September 1970, pp. 12, 14.

“Mike Nichols'
Catch-22”: Grover Sales, “Catch-$22,”
San Francisco,
October 1970, pp. 9–10.

“WE did this ‘Insane War Picture' bit FIRST”
: Mort Drucker and Stan Hart, “Catch-All-22,”
MAD,
March 1971, p. 10.

15. THE WILLIES

“It was after the war,”
: Joseph Heller,
Something Happened
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), p. 78.

“thousand-and-first version”
;
“this written-to-death situation”
: Kurt Vonnegut, “Something Happened,”
New York Times Book Review,
October 6, 1974, pp. 1–2.

“There's no reason why I couldn't work at home”
: Alden Whitman, “Something Always Happens on the Way to the Office: An Interview with Joseph Heller,” in
Pages: The World of Books, Writers, and Writing,
ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and C. E. Frazer Clark, Jr. (Detroit: Gale, 1976), p. 78.

“stood around all day”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, December 3, 2009.

“As the sixties passed”
: This and subsequent quotes regarding Heller's move to Knopf are taken from Michael Korda,
Another Life
(New York: Dell, 2000), pp. 229–30, 236–38.

“When he finished
Catch-22
”; “[I
always
knew]
he'd turn it in
”: Israel Shenker, “Second Heller Book Due 13 Years After First,”
New York Times,
February 18, 1974; posted at
nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/home/heller-due.html
.

“We were of an age”
: Unless otherwise noted, this and subsequent quotes regarding Candida Donadio are taken from Karen Hudes, “Epic Agent: The Great Candida Donadio,”
Tin House
6, no. 4 (2005): 154, 161, 163.

“She had forgotten to mention [the bird]”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, June 8, 2009.

“sibling rivalry amongst her other charges”
: Howard Junker, “Will This Finally Be Philip Roth's Year?”
New York,
January 13, 1969, p. 46.

“Teaching takes a lot of my time”
;
“It's a job I would like to keep”
: Robert Alan Aurthur, “Hanging Out,”
Esquire,
September 1974, p. 64; Creath Thorne, “Joseph Heller: An Interview,”
Chicago Literary Review,
December 1974, pp. 1, 8.

“I was a really thin man”
: Aurthur, “Hanging Out,” p. 54.

“The Angel of Death is in the gym today”
: Joseph Heller,
Good as Gold
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), p. 200.

“I figured if a car hit me”
: Edwin McDowell, “Often Lost, Sometimes Found, Authors Tell about Manuscripts,”
Ocala Star Banner,
September 23, 1983.

“I asked him what would happen”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, May 29, 2009.

“I think I'm in trouble”
: This and other rough-draft sentences are from the
Something Happened
note cards, Joseph Heller Archive, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

“If I live to be a hundred and fifty”
: This and subsequent quotes are from the
Something Happened
note cards.

“I don't think of myself as a naturally gifted writer”
: Adam J. Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993), p. 111.

“I miss my dead boy”
: This and subsequent quotes are from the rough draft of
Something Happened,
Joseph Heller Archive.

“My mother is a fish”
: William Faulkner,
As I Lay Dying
(New York: Random House, 1990), p. 84.

“The moocow came down the road”
: James Joyce,
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(New York: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 7.

“I put everything I knew”
: Sam Merrill, “
Playboy
Interview: Joseph Heller,”
Playboy,
June 1975, pp. 66–68.

“What should I call the guy”
: Aurthur, “Hanging Out,” p. 54.

“I was carrying the manuscript”
: ibid.

“[We]
have
children”
: Kenneth Tynan, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,”
The New Yorker,
October 30, 1978, p. 92.

“I may look a little bit Jewish”
: Heller,
Something Happened,
pp. 349–50.

“Joe [, you] wouldn't do that!”
: Sorkin, ed.,
Conversations with Joseph Heller
, pp. 173–74.

“Bob and I think of each other as close friends”
: Larissa MacFarquhar, “Robert Gottlieb: The Art of Editing I,”
The Paris Review
36, no. 132 (1994): 218.

“no book like it”
: Israel Shenker, “Joseph Heller Draws Dead Bead on the Politics of Gloom,”
New York Times,
September 10, 1968.