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Review by Roger Miller
Joseph Heller says in his memoir, "Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here", that he has no desire for awards, "although I would like to get my hands on a Nobel Prize or two." He adds, perhaps only semi-self-mockingly, "God knows I deserve it."
But, as he doubtless knows full well, he has achieved something more enduring than any Nobel Prize, deserved or not: He has added a phrase to the American lexicon. The phrase, of course, is the title of his first and most famous novel, "Catch-22."
It has become so common that probably most people do not know its origin and, in fact, substitute it for the older, simpler "catch." All catches have become Catch-22, whereas in his World War II novel it was attached to a specific dilemma: The only acceptable medical excuse for not flying more combat missions was to be crazy, but if you said you didn't want to fly that proved you were sane, and so you had to continue to fly.
Adding a phrase to the language is something few writers, and still fewer Nobel winners, attain, Sinclair Lewis being a notable, and double-barreled, exception ("Main Street," "Babbitt").
Actually, at the end of this engaging memoir, Heller expresses awe at all he has managed to achieve as the child of immigrant Jewish parents growing up in straitened circumstances during the Depression. It is a familiar refrain by people of his generation who have pulled out of poverty into prosperity.
He does not say it out of the arrogance of a world-renowned author. Indeed, there is an attitude of gratefulness in these pages. He knows he has been lucky as well as talented.
The luck lies mainly in where and when he grew up -- with his mother and half-brother and half-sister in Coney Island. When his father died, his mother was left alone to raise him and his two half-siblings, who were stepchildren to her, but she raised them all equally lovingly and dutifully.
Again and again he mentions the element of childhood security, more precious than wealth. "Our street and neighborhood felt safe, insular, and secure . . . There was just about no fear of violence in that part of Coney Island where I lived and grew up. And there was practically no crime."
People are frequently surprised to learn that he, or anyone, lived in the area of the famous amusement park, "the playground of the poor." He is clearly proud to have grown up in Coney Island, and laments its long decline, though he long ago moved away.
There seems much of the regular guy about this famous writer. His attitudes are mildly quirky: He's not a joiner, he doesn't go to reunions, he never keeps awards, he doesn't vote, and as for politicians, it's a plague on both their houses.
But the opinion that I, as a person who believes that organized adolescent sport is organized for the adults rather than the adolescents, found most endearing was this: "I take it as a cause for some negative pride that not a single one of the fellows I grew up with ever amounted to much as an athlete, or tried to."
Most of the book deals with Heller's youth, though it does span his entire life. He remembers with fondness the 1950s when he worked in advertising sales promotion for various magazines in New York. This is somewhat surprising, since detestation of workaday work is often what spurs writers to write, but Heller says he misses the larky days when the magazines were at their zenith and the working atmosphere was pleasant.
Other parts of his life are treated spottily. There is not a lot about his first wife, Shirley, to whom he was married for 35 years before they divorced. She has since died and he has remarried. He seems to remember her with fondness, too, so it would be interesting to know what, from his perspective, was going on there.
His account of his wartime days as a bombardier reveals several incidents and people who were models for "Catch-22" scenes and characters. But as for personal experiences, he does not go much beyond the comment, "It was all very much more dangerous, I realize now, than I had let myself recognize at the time and since." Here again we would like to know more.
Maybe he is saving it for the sequel he promises. If it is anything like this volume, it will be well worth reading.
Roger Miller is a freelance writer in Lopez, Pennsylvania. He can be reached at roger_miller@bookpage.com.
©1998, ProMotion, inc.
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