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COPYRIGHT 1998 University of Wisconsin Press
Despite the fact that he has also composed two memoirs (No Laughing Matter [1986] and Now and Then [1998]) and a drama (We Bombed in New Haven [1967]), Joseph Heller's reputation rests, in general, upon his six novels, and in particular upon the first of those six, Catch-22 (1961). Although Catch-22 remains his most celebrated work, each of Heller's novels was written and has been received as a work of literary fiction, and each has been praised in that special context. His rich humor, high satire, and relentless experimentation have earned him professorships (at Oxford, Yale, and Penn, to name a few), honors, and literally millions of readers during his four and one-half decades of writing.
Though laced with humor, Heller's novels are fiercely critical of his times. As is often the case with satire, again and again his works involve a startling confrontation with the reader. The world of Heller's fiction is an eerily insane one--perhaps an eerily sane one--filled with preposterous characters mired in outrageous circumstances. But long before each novel's end, the reader recognizes the connections between Heller's apparent absurdity and the target of his satire. Though speaking about Catch-22, Heller described his overall modus operandi when he said to me, "My objective is not merely to tell the reader a story but to make him a participant--to have him experience the book rather than read it" (Delaware Literary Review Spring 1975).
With more than ten million copies sold, Catch-22 remains one of modern literature's most admired novels. Drawing upon his World War II experiences as a bombardier, Heller plunges the reader into a world in which generals cheerfully send men to be slaughtered, officers lie and steal, whores become heroines, and, as Falstaff puts it in a similar context, "Honor is a mere scutcheon." Time has been turned upside down in the world of Catch-22. Characters killed off in early passages pop up noisily in later chapters; dead men live on in empty tents; living men are "disappeared." Some characters get rich selling chocolate-covered cotton; others vault hundreds of miles in apparent seconds. When all is said and done, Heller composed a brilliant attack not only upon the horror and lunacy of a just-completed war but upon the hypocrisy and savagery of the ongoing McCarthy witch-hunts. In addition, as he explains in this interview, his work was closely entwined with Homer's Iliad. And, with "Catch-22" itself, he added a phrase to the language.
Conscious of his first novel's extraordinary success, Heller spent thirteen years "doing something different." The result, Something Happened (1974), is a chilling description of the deterioration and breakdown of a Manhattan business executive. Again, Heller's work operates in the worlds of literature and satire. The author does not hesitate to credit Samuel Beckett's Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable for the book's most striking feature: the forlorn, almost detached voice of its first-person narrator. Heller's attack on the aridity and agonies of corporate existence is superbly handled, but more than anything else it is the narrator's description of his own dissolution which makes the novel so arresting.
Each of the next three works reflects Heller's determination not to repeat himself and his continued use of satire and literature. Good as Gold (1979) ferociously criticizes modern politics in general and Henry Kissinger in particular. Its method of narration is reminiscent of a Barth-like postmodernism: the unnamed third-person narrator plays an important role in the tale and at one point butts in to concede that he could have better served the protagonist. But Heller's inspiration predates postmodernism: much of his manipulation of point of view, he has said, derived from Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy ("Talking with Joseph Heller," Critical Essays on Joseph Heller [Hall, 1984] 178-79).
God Knows (1984) continues the march. Again, the work is filled with satiric humor. Again, it is rich in literary allusions. God Knows is a lengthy deathbed monologue by the Bible's King David. On the one hand, David seems like a stand-up comedian, railing against a God who owes him an apology, deploring the thick-wittedness of his son Solomon, and shaking his head over Michelangelo's depiction of an uncircumcised member. On the other hand, Heller comments tellingly about the misapprehensions and misery that have followed in the wake of far too many Biblical passages.
Picture This (1988) raises Heller's fascination with narrative point of view to new heights. Reduced to its simplest terms, the book considers Rembrandt's famous painting Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer. But the novel is really a satire on war and politics--in ancient Athens and Sparta, in seventeenth-century Holland and Vietnam, and in twentieth-century America and Vietnam. Heller's use of point of view in Picture This is his most ambitious to date, with his tale alternately "told" by Rembrandt, Aristotle, and Homer, each brilliantly re-created.
Closing Time (1994), the subject of this interview, reflects a startling change for Joseph Heller. For the first time in his fiction, he comes face to face with the legacy of Catch-22--and does so in a sequel which resurrects some of the more memorable creations of that legendary first novel. In the interview, Heller speaks tenderly of the "real life" characters in his book, the most realistic he has ever created, and describes the intricate and carefully planned method he uses to create his novels. In addition, he speaks at length about his use of a dual point of view, the relationships between Catch-22 and Closing Time, and the connections between Catch-22 and the Iliad.
This interview took place on October 24,...
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