Just One Catch (84 page)

“denigrating attitudes toward women”
: See
sinatraguide.com/filmedsinatra
.

“I've had some experiences with motion pictures”
: Joseph Heller, remarks made at the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, December 7, 1970; audio recording available at
nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/home/heller.html#hear
.

“You owe me”
: This and all other quotes and details regarding Heller's meeting with Brodax are taken from Al Brodax,
Up Periscope Yellow: The Making of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine
(Pompton Plains, NJ: Limelight Editions, 2004), pp. 53–56.

“[A] little kid”
: Bob Hieronimus, “Transcript of Interview with Lee Minoff, 12/15/97, Originator of the Story ‘Yellow Submarine' and Author of the First Script and Screenplay for the Film,” posted at 21scentury
radio.com/articles/0523005.html
.

“With Heller in [his] pocket”
: Brodax,
Up
Periscope Yellow,
p. 56.

“connection between his Yossarian”
: ibid.

“Surrealism”
;
“cultural milestone”
: Bob Spitz,
The Beatles: The Biography
(New York: Little, Brown, 2005), p. 536.

“He loved Bob Dylan”
: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, October 23, 2009.

“She told me that after about three days”
: Ken Barnard, “Interview with Joseph Heller,”
Detroit News,
September 13, 1970.

“a new trend for the … 60s”
: cited in Susan Braudy, “Laughing All the Way to the Truth,”
New York,
October 14, 1968, p. 41.

“polemic[al]”
: Jean Shepherd, “Radio Free America,”
The Realist,
May 1964, p. 27.

“[It] is [not] the function of satire”
: “Joseph Heller Replies,”
The Realist,
May 1964, p. 30.

“attempt to discredit the Student Non-Violent [
sic
] Coordinating Committee”
: Joseph Heller, “A Letter from Joseph Heller,”
The Realist,
May 1965, p. 9.

“[a]ny society that puts Cassius Clay and Benjamin Spock in jail”
: Israel Shenker, “Did Heller Bomb on Broadway?”
New York Times,
December 29, 1968.

“All I want to say is it ain't that hard”
: Richard B. Sale, “An Interview in New York with Joseph Heller,”
Studies in the Novel
4 (1972): 14. This interview was conducted in 1970.

“real Mau-Mau”; “New Left movement['s] … propaganda activities”
: Abe Peck,
Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press
(New York: Pantheon, 1985), pp. 139–41.

“[T]he FBI … placed an ad”
: ibid., pp. 174–75.

“If I wanted to destroy a nation”
: Allen J. Matusow,
The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s
(New York: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 12.

“the suburbs”
: Jacob Brackman, “The Underground Press,” posted at
trussel.com/lyman/brackman.htm
.

“I dare say that with the inspiration of the Beatles”
: Ralph J. Gleason, “Like a Rolling Stone,” posted at
jannswenner.com/Press/Like_A_Rolling_Stone.aspx
.

“Lenny Bruce was really”
: Ralph J. Gleason, “The Berkeley Concert,” posted at
golbalia.net/donlope/fz/related/Berkeley_Concert.html
.

“unpaid film critic”
: Keith Saliba, “Hayes, Herr and Sack:
Esquire
Goes to Vietnam,”
Journal of Magazine and New Media Research
9, no. 2 (2007): 12–13.

“There was a map of Vietnam”
: This and subsequent Herr quotes are taken from Michael Herr,
Dispatches
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), pp. 3–4.

“nothing if not a provocateur”
: Erica Heller, “Joseph Heller's Daughter Remembers Her Prickly Pa,”
New York Observer,
January 10, 2000; draft copy provided to the author by Erica Heller.

“She would break my heart”
: Heller,
Something Happened,
p. 120.

“You always like to give short answers”
: ibid., p. 32.

Something Happened …
was certainly [an] accurate
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, October 21, 2009.

“acknowledge[d] her resemblance to the daughter”
: Sorkin, ed.
Conversations with Joseph Heller,
p. 198.

Mario Puzo often remarked
: See ibid., p. 189.

“grumpy, disaffected, and blasé”
: Erica Heller, “Joseph Heller's Daughter Remembers Her Prickly Pa.”

“[S]he is, I fear”
: Heller,
Something Happened
, p. 66.

“What ‘happens' to Bob Slocum's children”
: Erica Heller, “It Sure Did,”
Harper's,
May 1975, p. 4.

“Erica had a tough time with her father”
: Norman Barasch in conversation with the author, April 29, 2009.

“I always felt I was a disappointment”
: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, January 19, 2010.

“the year
Sergeant Pepper
came out”
: ibid.

One day
,
Joe “… warned me”
: ibid.

“Teddy—that was a mystery”
: Audrey Chestney, in conversation with the author, January 5, 2010.

“The very qualities that had disappointed us in the past”
: Joseph Heller,
Now and Then:
From Coney Island to Here
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 59.

“passing of generations”
: ibid.

“He went to a health club called Al Roon's”
: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, October 23, 2009.

“Neither one of us has ever had a divorce”
: Barnard, “Interview with Joseph Heller.”

“Maybe we just don't quit easily”
: Merrill, “
Playboy
Interview: Joseph Heller,” pp. 66–68.

“I don't think my wife has learned how to lie to me yet”
: Heller,
Something Happened
, p. 92.

“was always afraid”; “I didn't care”
: ibid., p. 110.

“begging and nagging and driving my parents crazy”
: Erica Heller in an e-mail to the author, March 21, 2010.

“[A]ctors ranging”
: 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), p. 348.

write an original play
: Heller told journalist Beatrice Berg that he was about 250 pages into writing
Something Happened,
and he wrote a scene where Slocum's son asks him, “Do I have to go into the army?” The chapter started him thinking, he said. He set the novel aside and began writing ideas that eventually became
We Bombed in New Haven.
See Beatrice Berg, “Heller of
Catch-22,
”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
November 17, 1968.

“purportedly for writing reasons”
: Ted Heller in an e-mail to the author, October 23, 2009.

“Welcome to the Uppa West Side!”
: This and subsequent quotes regarding Heller and Denham are taken from Alice Denham,
Sleeping with Bad Boys: A Juicy Tell-All of New York in the 1950s and 1960s
(New York: Book Republic Press, 2006), pp. 225–27, 283.

“Except for Joe, all of us are quite short”
: Kenneth Tynan, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,”:
The New Yorker,
October 30, 1978, p. 102.

“Wassah matter with you fucking guys”
: Unless otherwise noted, this and subsequent quotes and details regarding the Gourmet Club are taken from Joseph Heller and Speed Vogel,
No Laughing Matter
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), pp. 106–10.

“Once—and only once”
: Tynan, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,” pp. 101–02.

“The members [were] very polite”
: ibid., p. 102.

“I'd rather have a bad meal out”
: ibid.

“From the very start”
: ibid., p. 106.

“Here, I'll serve”
: There are several versions of this story, related by different members of the Gourmet Club. See, for example, Speed Vogel, “The Gourmet Club,”
The Southampton Review
2, no. 1 (2008), p. 211; Carl Reiner,
My Anecdotal Life: A Memoir
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003), p. 180.

“deserved”
: This and all other quotes from the excerpt of
“Something Happened”
are taken from Joseph Heller, “Something Happened,”
Esquire,
September 1966, pp. 136–41, 212–13.

“how our red-blooded campus heroes”
: This and other quotes from articles in this issue of
Esquire
are from ibid., pp. 115, 121, 128–29.

“first Yiddish stage production”
: Irving Howe,
World of Our Fathers: The Journey of East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), pp. 461–62.

Joe mentioned to Robert Brustein
: Heller first met Brustein in 1961, when they attended a party at the home of a
Village Voice
art critic.

“manuscript to be read like a novel”
: David Seed,
The Fiction of Joseph Heller: Against the Grain
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989), p. 72.

“born promotion man”
: This and subsequent quotes regarding Heller's talk at Calhoun College are taken from Susan Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes, Maybe Yes, But Not the Whole Book,”
The New Journal
26 (1967): 7.

Brustein had made the Yale Drama School a center
: Seed,
The Fiction of Joseph Heller,
p. 73.

“Heller's script offers a perfect skeleton”
: Elenore Lester, “Playwright-in-Anguish,”
New York Times,
December 3, 1967.

“Today's Rosh Hashanah”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” pp. 9–10.

“If he said that, then he's a schmuck”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” pp. 9–10.

“What is there to keep me here?”
: Samuel Beckett,
Endgame
(New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 58.

“I'd rather read him than see him staged”
: Lester, “Playwright-in-Anguish.”

“[L]et me in on the biggest military secret of all”
: Joseph Heller,
We Bombed in New Haven
(New York: Dell, 1967), p. 14.

“art and trash”
: Howe,
World of Our Fathers,
p. 477.

“[I]f someone wants to call my movies art or crap”
: Tynan, “Frolics and Detours of a Short Hebrew Man,” p. 56.

“What else, I wanted to make a million dollars”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” pp. 9–10.

heard maniacs in the room
: ibid.

“For god's sake, speak up”
: ibid.

“They're not really idiots”
: Israel Shenker, “Did Heller Bomb on Broadway?”
New York Times,
December 29, 1968.

“told lies”
: ibid.

“I'm learning”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” p. 10.

“It's not that I'm trying to dominate the director”
: Lester, “Playwright-in-Anguish.”

“Listen, who's nervous?”
: Braudy, “A Few of the Jokes…,” p. 10.

“The real truth”
: Lester, “Playwright-in-Anguish.”

“close … to the Jewish sensibility”
: ibid.

“There's nothing really funny about this”
: Heller,
We Bombed in New Haven,
p. 122.

“I thought we were going to have a good time”
: Lester, “Playwright-in-Anguish.”

“He lumbered to his classes”
: In addition to the stress of rehearsals and anticipating the play's opening, Heller missed the amenities of New York. Susan Braudy, a young journalist who audited Heller's playwriting course, wrote: “I was dying to learn how to be a writer. But all Heller wanted to talk about was Zabar's. Actually, he bragged about his proximity to the greatest delicatessen in the world. He was unseemly in his pride. He wagged [a] finger … ‘This orange drink here at Yale is terrible.' He raised his voice. ‘Zabar's fresh orange juice is the best in the world, and it's only a few blocks from my apartment.' When he wasn't talking about the wonders of, say, Zabar's cheeses, he bragged about New York. “Everybody's a little Irish, a little Jewish, and more than a little black.' See “Susan Braudy's Manhattan Diary: An Introduction to Zabar's from Joseph Heller,” posted at
www.dnainfo.com
.

“It's not really very expensive”
: Lester, “Playwright-in-Anguish.”

“Heller's ending”
: Seed,
The Fiction of Joseph Heller,
p. 73.

“There's no remission at the end of my play”
: Shenker, “Did Heller Bomb on Broadway?”