Heller, Joseph, 1st Lt

Completed his military service, after maxing out his combat missions, as a flight school Personnel Officer at Goodfellow AFB, San Angelo, TX -------- Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 (1961), the darkly comic World War II novel whose title became a common term for a no-win situation. The novel's protagonist, Yossarian, wants to stop flying combat missions. The military doctor explains that a pilot can get out of combat only if he is crazy. But there's a catch ("Catch-22") -- anyone who wants to get out of combat is clearly not crazy. Although the novel received mixed reviews and minor notice when it first appeared, by the end of the 1960s it had struck a chord with an American public vexed by the war in Vietnam. The book became a bestseller and is now considered a classic of modern American literature. Heller based the book on his own experiences as a bombardier during World War II. He left the Air Corps at the end of the war as a first lieutenant with a record of 60 combat missions and then studied at the University of Southern California, New York University (B.A. 1948), Columbia University (M.A. 1949) and Oxford (Fulbright scholarship, 1949-50). While occasionally publishing short fiction, he taught English for two years at Pennsylvania State University. He then moved to New York in 1952 and worked as a magazine ad writer while also writing Catch-22. Heller's place in literary history was secured with the book's success, but he still taught college English during the 1960s and '70s, leaving after the publication of his second novel, Something Happened (1974). Like his contemporary Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Heller is known for his dark humor and sardonic view of modern life, part Kafka and part Mel Brooks. His other books include Good as Gold (1979), God Knows (1984), Closing Time (1994, a sort-of sequel to Catch-22) and the autobiographical Now and Then (1998). ----------- An analysis of the relationship between Heller's own WWII air war experience and his novel Catch-22 may be found at length here: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:elA-7Jza3k0J:wlajournal.com/15_1-2/scoggins%2520213... ----------- From wikipedia: Catch-22 While sitting at home one morning in 1953, Heller thought of a hook, "It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, Someone fell madly in love with him." Within the next day, he began to envision the story that could result from this beginning, and invented the characters and the plot, as well as the tone and form that the story would eventually take. Within a week, he had finished the first chapter and sent it to his agent. He did not do any more writing for the next year, as he planned the rest of the story.[3] The initial chapter was published in 1955 as "Catch-18", in Issue 7 of New World Writing. Although he originally did not intend the story to be longer than a novelette, Heller was able to add enough substance to the plot that he felt it could become his first novel. When he was one-third done with the work, his agent, Candida Donadio, began submitting the novel to several publishers. Heller was not particularly attached to the work, and decided that he would not finish it if publishers were not interested.[3] The work was never rejected, and was soon purchased by Simon and Schuster, who gave him US $750 and promised him an additional $750 when the full manuscript was delivered.[11] Heller missed his deadline by four to five years,[11] but, after eight years of thought, delivered the novel to his publisher.[6] The finished novel describes the wartime experiences of Army Air Corps Captain John Yossarian. Yossarian devises multiple strategies to avoid combat missions, but the military bureaucracy is always able to find a way to make him stay.[12] As Heller observed, "Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts -- and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?"[6] Heller has also commented that "peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it" -- perhaps further food for thought when reading Catch-22, in which the concept and circumstances of war are so overwhelming and fundamental. Just before publication, the novel's title was changed to Catch-22 to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's new novel, Mila 18.[11] The novel was published in hardback in 1961 to mixed reviews, with the Chicago Sun-Times calling it "the best American novel in years",[8] while other critics derided it as "disorganized, unreadable, and crass".[13] It sold only 30,000 copies in the United States hardback in its first year of publication. (Reaction was very different in Great Britain, where, within one week of its publication, the novel reached number one on the bestseller lists.[11]) Once it was released in paperback in October 1962, however, Catch-22 caught the imaginations of many baby-boomers, who identified with the novel's anti-war sentiments.[12] The book went on to sell 10 million copies in the United States. The novel's title became a buzzword for a dilemma with no easy way out. Now considered a classic, the book was listed at number 7 on Modern Library's list of the top 100 novels of the century.[6] The United States Air Force Academy uses the novel to "help prospective officers recognize the dehumanizing aspects of bureaucracy." The movie rights to the novel were purchased in 1962, and, combined with his royalties, made Heller a millionaire. The film, which was directed by Mike Nichols and starred Alan Arkin, Jon Voight and Orson Welles, was not released until 1970. ----------

Joseph Heller Born: 1-May-1923 Birthplace: Brooklyn, NY Died: 12-Dec-1999 Location of death: East Hampton, NY Cause of death: Heart Failure Remains: Buried, Cedar Lawn Cemetery, East Hampton, NY Gender: Male Religion: Jewish Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Author Nationality: United States Executive summary: Catch-22 Military service: US Army Air Corps (WWII, bombadier, Corsica) Father: Isaac Heller (bakery truck driver, Russian, d. 1927) Mother: Lena Wife: Shirley Held (m. 3-Sep-1945, div. 1984, one daughter, one son) Daughter: Erica Son: Theodore Wife: Valerie Humphries (nurse, m. 1987, until his death) University: Abraham Lincoln High School (1941) University: BA, New York University (1949) University: MA, Columbia University (1949) University: Oxford University (1949-50, on a Fulbright) Prix Medicis tranger 1985 for God Knows Fulbright McCall's Promotion Manager (1958-61) Look Advertising copywriter (1956-58) Time Advertising copywriter (1952-56) Tonsillectomy Risk Factors: Guillain-Barr Syndrome Author of books: Catch-22 (1961, novel) Something Happened (1974, novel) Good as Gold (1979, novel) God Knows (1984, novel) No Laughing Matter (1988, memoir) Closing Time (1994, novel) Now and Then (1998, memoir) Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man (2000, novel) Wrote plays: We Bombed in New Haven (1968) -------- Heller was born in Brooklyn, New York, to first generation Russian-Jewish immigrants. His father, a bakery-truck driver, died after a bungled operation when Heller was only five years old. Many critics believe that Heller developed the sardonic, wisecracking humor that has marked his writing style while growing up in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. After graduating from high school in 1941, he worked briefly in an insurance office, an experience he later drew upon for the novel Something Happened (1974). In 1942, Heller enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Two years later he was sent to Corsica, where he flew sixty combat missions as a wing bombardier, earning an Air Medal and a Presidential Unit Citation. It is generally agreed that Heller's war years in the Mediterranean theater had only a minimal impact on his conception of Catch-22. Discharged from the military in 1945, Heller married Shirley Held and began his college education. He obtained a B.A. in English from New York University, an M.A. from Columbia University, and attended Oxford University as a Fulbright Scholar for a year before becoming an English instructor at Pennsylvania State University. Two years later Heller began working as an advertising copywriter, securing positions at such magazines as Time, Look, and McCall's from 1952 to 1961. The office settings of these companies also yielded material for Something Happened. During this time Heller was also writing short stories and scripts for film and television as well as working on Catch-22. Although his stories easily found publication, Heller considered them insubstantial and derivative of Ernest Hemingway's works. After the phenomenal success of Catch-22, Heller quit his job at McCall's and concentrated exclusively on writing fiction and plays. In December of 1981, he contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare type of polyneuritis that afflicts the peripheral nervous system. Heller chronicled his medical problems and difficult recovery in No Laughing Matter (1986) with Speed Vogel, a friend who helped him during his illness. Catch-22 concerns a World War II bombardier named Yossarian who believes his foolish, ambitious, mean-spirited commanding officers are more dangerous than the enemy. In order to avoid flying more missions, Yossarian retreats to a hospital with a mysterious liver complaint, sabotages his plane, and tries to get himself declared insane. Variously defined throughout the novel, "Catch-22" refers to the ways in which bureaucracies control the people who work for them. The term first appears when Yossarian asks to be declared insane. In this instance, Catch-22 demands that anyone who is insane must be excused from flying missions. The "catch" is that one must ask to be excused; anyone who does so is showing "rational fear in the face of clear and present danger," is therefore sane, and must continue to fly. In its final, most ominous form, Catch-22 declares "they have the right to do anything we can't stop them from doing." Although most critics identify Yossarian as a coward and an antihero, they also sympathize with his urgent need to protect himself from this brutal universal law. Some critics have questioned the moral status of Yossarian's actions, noting in particular that he seems to be motivated merely by self-preservation, and that the enemy he refuses to fight is led by Adolf Hitler. Others, however, contend that while Catch-22 is ostensibly a war novel, World War II and the Air Force base where most of the novel's action takes place function primarily as a microcosm that demonstrates the disintegration of language and human value in a bureaucratic state. Heller embodies his satire of capitalism in the character of Milo Minderbinder, whose obsessive pursuit of profits causes many deaths and much suffering among his fellow soldiers. Originally a mess hall officer, Milo organizes a powerful black market syndicate capable of cornering the Egyptian cotton market and bombing the American base on Pianosa for the Germans. On the surface Milo's adventures form a straightforward, optimistic success story that some commentators have likened to the Horatio Alger tales popular at the turn of the twentieth century. The narrative line that follows Yossarian, on the other hand, is characterized by his confused, frustrated, and frightened psychological state. The juxtaposition of these two narrative threads provides a disjointed, almost schizophrenic structure that re-asserts the absurd logic depicted in Catch-22. Structurally, Catch-22 is episodic and repetitive. The majority of the narrative is composed of a series of cyclical flashbacks of increasing detail and ominousness. The most important recurring incident is the death of a serviceman named Snowden that occurs before the opening of the story but is referred to and recounted periodically throughout the novel. In the penultimate chapter, Yossarian relives the full horror and comprehends the significance of this senseless death as it reflects the human condition and his own situation. This narrative method led many critics, particularly early reviewers, to condemn Heller's novel as formless. Norman Mailer's oft-repeated jibe: "One could take out a hundred pages anywhere from the middle of Catch-22, and not even the author could be certain they were gone" has been refuted by Heller himself, and has inspired other critics to carefully trace the chronology of ever-darkening events that provide the loose structure of this novel. Heller poignantly and consistently satirizes language, particularly the system of euphemisms and oxymorons that passes for official speech in the United States Armed Forces. In the world of Catch-22 metaphorical language has a dangerously literal power. The death of Doc Daneeka is an example: when the plane that Doc is falsely reported to be on crashes and no one sees him parachute to safety, he is presumed dead and his living presence is insufficient to convince anyone that he is really alive. Similarly, when Yossarian rips up his girlfriend's address in rage, she disappears, never to be seen again. Marcus K. Billson III summarized this technique: "The world of [Catch-22] projects the horrific, yet all too real, power of language to divest itself from any necessity of reference, to function as an independent, totally autonomous medium with its own perfect system and logic. That such a language pretends to mirror anything but itself is a commonplace delusion Heller satirizes throughout the novel. Yet, civilization is informed by this very pretense, and Heller shows how man is tragically and comically tricked and manipulated by such an absurdity.".. Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/joseph-heller --------