Just One Catch (89 page)

“There are such musical, soothing phrases”
: Seed,
The Fiction of Joseph Heller,
p. 171.

“I could do without the city”
: Shirley Horner, “About Books,”
New York Times,
March 1, 1987; posted at
nytimes.com/1987/03/01/nyregion/about-books.html?pagewanted=all
.

“bulked-up”;
Henry Dasko, “Kosínski's Afterlife,” posted at
xtract.art.pl/daskografia/x/2004-Afterlife.html
.

“As far as a literary scene”
: Horner, “About Books.”

“Media and communications conglomerates”
: Dasko, “Kosínski's Afterlife.”

“Since that time”
: Trip Gabriel, “Call My Agent!”
New York Times Magazine,
February 19, 1989; posted at
nytimes.com/1989/02/19/magazine/call-my-agent.html?pagewanted=all
.

“It is the easiest thing”
: ibid.

“I wanted the book”
: LuAnn Walther in conversation with the author, January 26, 2010.

“[made] books” [like] “Spielberg [made] movies”; “mogul mode”; “only breakfast meeting where no food is served”
: Marion Maneker, “Now for the Grann Finale,” posted at
nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/5618/
.

“back-and-forth exchange[s]”; “first time I was to edit [Joe]”
: Gerald C. Gross,
Editors on Editing
(New York: Grove Press, 1994), p. 271.

“You mustn't sound mean”
: Faith Sale's note on rough-draft page of
No Laughing Matter,
Joseph Heller Archive, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

“I'm not that way”
: This quote and the following exchange with Speed and Valerie is from Henry Kisor, “Joseph Heller's Pen Pal: Author and Crony Tell Two Humorous Views of Road to Recovery,”
Chicago Sun-Times,
February 23, 1986; posted at
highbeam.com
.

“Here's an entry for you”;
“You can use this”
: Joseph Heller's notes on rough-draft pages of
No Laughing Matter,
Joseph Heller Archive.

“the sort of person who regards life as a roller coaster”
: Sanford Pinsker,
Understanding Joseph Heller
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), p. 135.

“an altered mental state”
: Jay I. Meltzer, “Long Island Book,”
East Hampton Star,
July 3, 1986.

“Consider how much
[artifice]”
: Seed,
The Fiction of Joseph Heller,
pp. 182–83.

“With a peaceful smile”
: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
pp.
333–
34.

“I did no such thing”
: ibid., p. 334.

“[T]his is an intoxicating experience”
: This and subsequent quotes regarding Heller's visit to the Air Force Academy are from Andrew H. Malcolm, “‘Catch-22': Cadets Hail a Chronicler of the Absurd,”
New York Times,
October 6, 1986.

“monumental artifact of contemporary American literature”
: John W. Aldridge, “The Loony Horror of It All: ‘Catch-22' Turns 25,”
New York Times,
October 26, 1986.

“stupefies … sickens … infuriates”
: Philip Roth quoted in ibid.

“[T]he novel's first and greatest sequel”
: J. Hoberman, “Only One Catch—Social Influence of the Book
Catch-22,
” posted at
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_n2_v33/ai_16315374/
.

“Joe is one of the greatest writers of my generation”; “If all the rumors”; “I will only confirm”
: Edwin McDowell, “‘Catch-22' Sequel by Heller,”
New York Times,
April 8, 1987; posted at
nytimes.com/1987/04/08/books/catch-22-sequel-by-heller.html?pagewanted=1
. See also David Straitfeld, “Catch-23,”
New York,
September 12, 1994, p. 103.

“write good novels”
: This and subsequent quotes from the interview with Heller are from Charles Ruas,
Conversations with American Writers
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), pp. 172, 179.

“badly about the other”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, March 28, 2010.

“Stanley Cohen and Toby Molenaar”
: On Heller's first outing with Valerie Humphries, when doctors at the Rusk Institute allowed him to stay in his own apartment, Cohen was the friend with whom the couple dined. In France's Loire Valley, Cohen and Molenaar owned a fifteenth-century mill that had once belonged to the sculptor Alexander Calder. They also owned a house in Sag Harbor, at which Molenaar created a spectacular garden.

“I was helpless”
: This and Heller's subsequent remarks about his courtship of Valerie are from Marian Christy, “Joseph Heller: Getting Back to Wellness,”
Boston Globe,
February 4, 1987; posted at,
highbeam.com
.

“I'm in the twilight of my career”
: Kevin Haynes, “Contemplating Joseph Heller,”
W,
September19–26, 1988.

“[W]riting … has this strange quality”
: Plato,
Phaedrus,
trans. W. C. Helmbold and W. G. Rabinowitz (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), p. 69.

“I like to think of the books I write as being interesting in themselves”
: Charles T. Powers, “Joe Heller, Author on Top of the World,”
Los Angeles Times,
March 30, 1975.

“If you're a guy who has a wife and children”
: Jeffrey Goldberg, “Puzo Knows,”
New York,
July 29, 1996, p. 40.

“[T]here's … something contradictory in what I say”
: Betty Sue Flowers, ed.,
Bill Moyers
:
A World of Ideas
(New York: Doubleday, 1989), p. 37.

“To a country whose economic health depended on sea voyages”
: Joseph Heller,
Picture This
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1988), p. 116.

“reputation had dimmed”
: ibid., p. 17.

“From Athens to Syracuse”
: ibid., p. 208.

“A man cannot expect to make money out of the community”
: ibid., pp. 70–71.

“[T]here was [no] tolerance”
: ibid., p. 26.

“Aristophanes was writing [satirically]”
: ibid., p. 176.

“In what I hope is an amusing way”
: This and subsequent quotes from the Moyers interview are from Flowers, ed.:
Bill Moyers,
pp. 28–37.

embittered, sassy Mark Twain
: Robert M. Adams, “History Is a Bust,”
New York Times Book Review,
September 11, 1988, p. 9.

“most endearing quality”
: Richard Raynor, “Another Mission Flown; Author of
Catch-22,
Joseph Heller,”
The Times
(London), October 19, 1998.

“[I]t represents very spaced out writing”
: Robert M. Adams, “History Is a Bust,” p. 9.

“[t]hought
-
provoking”
: cited in the ad copy of the paperback edition of
Picture This
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1988).

“It's true, as Dr. Johnson put it”
: Jonathan Yardley, “Musings Minus the Muse; From Joseph Heller, Flat Philosophizing,”
Washington Post Book World,
August 31, 1988.

“We have picked up a word from the Greeks”
: Walter Goodman, “Heller Contemplating Rembrandt,”
New York Times,
September 1, 1988; posted at
nytimes.com/1988/09/01/books/books-of-the-times-heller-contemplating-rembrandt.html
.

“had a devastating effect on me”
: Straitfeld, “Catch 23,” p. 102.

“Very few complex good books”
: ibid., p. 103.

18. THE NEW WORLD

“Is [the spa] sanitary?”; “I didn't know you're a writer”
: Sidney Offit,
Friends, Writers, and Other Countrymen
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008), pp. 240–41.

“She [is] a person”; “Like Browning's ‘Last Duchess'
”: Heller and Vogel,
No Laughing Matter,
p. 148.

“I still use fifty dishes”
: This and subsequent remarks about Heller's eating habits at home are from Graham Bridgstock, “Happiness Is My Catch Number 2,”
Evening Standard
(London), February 7, 1995.

“I became aware of the old island here”
: F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925), p. 182.

“Boy, this guy really likes to read books by Joseph Heller!”
: Skip Blumberg in an e-mail to the author, May 9, 2009.

Regis Philbin; “I acted like I didn't know who he was”; “Stephen King has been in here three times”
: Diane Ketcham, “About Long Island: Hamptons Bookstores Take Extra Steps for Hometown Writers,”
New York Times,
September 10, 1995; posted at
nytimes.com/1995/09/10/nyregion/about-long-island-hamptons-bookstores-take-extra-steps-for-hometownwriters.html
.

“Writers out here are like earthworms”
: This and subsequent quotes about the Hamptons, unless otherwise noted, are from Anthony Haden-Guest, “Out Here in the Hamptons: Snapshots of a Literary Life,”
New York,
September 1, 1975, pp. 43–47.

Of course, Long Island had a history
: For a detailed summary of Long Island's attraction for writers, see Constance Ayers Denne, “Writers of the East End: Responses to a Special Place,” transcript of a lecture delivered at the East Hampton Library, August 1998; posted at
easthamptonlibrary.org/history/lecture/19980828.pdf
.

“[E]very summer, I think Great Gatsbys are giving big parties”
: Joseph Heller speaking on the program “Great Scott,” PBS
NewsHour,
September 27, 1996; transcript posted at
pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment.october96/fitz_9-27.html
.

“a successful writer”
: ibid.

“bumps he had taken in his life”
: This and subsequent remarks by Bruce Jay Friedman were made at “Joseph Heller: A Celebration,” a memorial service held at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on June 13, 2000. Transcribed by the author from a video recording (courtesy of Erica Heller).

“people my age are either portly or dying”; “He likes coffee”; “He's my favorite”
: Diane Ketcham, “Meeting with a Group of Cronies to Chew the Fat, but There's a Catch,”
New York Times,
May 18, 1997; posted at
nytimes.com/1997/05/18/nyregion/meeting-with-a-group-of-cronies-to-chew-the-fat-but-theres-a-catch.html
.

“color of lobelia”; “She'd be happy even if she was a Kurd”
: Sally Vincent, “Portrait: Catch-94,”
The Guardian
, September 24, 1994; Carole Mallory, “The Joe and Kurt Show,”
Playboy,
May 1992, posted at
vonnegutweb.com/vonnegutia/interviews/int_heller.html
.

Mostly, he went for the food
: A source who wishes to remain anonymous related this anecdote to the author in an email, April 1, 2010.

Artists and Writers Softball Game
: For a lively description of this annual event, and many other Hamptons people, places, and incidents, see Dan Rattiner,
In the Hamptons
(New York: Harmony Books, 2008), pp. 332–44.

“downright Byzantine”
: Florence Fabricant, “At a Gathering of Top Chefs, the Food Gets Star Billing,”
New York Times,
September 5, 1990; posted at
nytimes.com/1990/09/05/garden/at-a-gathering-of-top-chefs-the-food-gets-star-billing.html
.

“Yeah, he lived the celebrity life”
: Robert A. Towbin in conversation with the author, April 26, 2009.

One night, at a billionaire's party
: Famously, Vonnegut commemorated this event in a poem published in the May 16, 2005, issue of
The New Yorker.

“Valerie was a bit of a dipsy-doodle”
: Florence Aaron in conversation with the author, May 29, 2009.

“for a transitory enchanted moment”
: Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby,
p. 182.

19. CLOSING TIME

“This is no way for any writer to cap a career”
: This and all other quotes regarding the publication of
Closing Time,
unless otherwise noted, are from David Straitfeld, “Catch-23,”
New York,
September 12, 1994, pp. 102–05.

he would write a nonfiction book for them
: See Edwin McDowell, “Book Notes: A '93 Sequel to Catch-22,”
New York Times,
February 27, 1991; posted at
nytimes.com/1991/02/27/books/book-notes-768091.html
.

“maternal and nurturing”; “Well, she lied [to me]”
: Karen Hudes, “Epic Agent: The Great Candida Donadio,”
Tin House
6, no. 4 (2005): 163.

She was often inebriated
;
“She seemed so grief-stricken”
: ibid., pp. 166–68.

“dealt with her kindly but firmly”
: Robert Gottlieb in conversation with the author, August 29, 2010.

“… in the hospital, Yossarian dreamed of his mother”
: Joseph Heller,
Closing Time
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 19.