From the author of two of our most legendary novels, Catch-22 and Something Happened, comes a slyly funny, vastly revelatory memoir that is at once a loving evocation of a lost America and an exploration of the frontier where life turns into literature. Now and Then follows Joseph Heller from his fatherless childhood on the boardwalks of Depression-era Coney Island, where he grew up amid the rumble of the Cyclone and the tantalizing aroma of Mrs. Shatzkin's knishes. It offers a dizzying bombardier's-eye view of the sky over wartime Italy, where...
From the author of two of our most legendary novels, Catch-22 and Something Happened, comes a slyly funny, vastly revelatory memoir t...
A darkly comic and ambitious sequel to the American classic Catch-22. In Closing Time, Joseph Heller returns to the characters of Catch-22, now coming to the end of their lives and the century, as is the entire generation that fought in World War II: Yossarian and Milo Minderbinder, the chaplain, and such newcomers as little Sammy Singer and giant Lew, all linked, in an uneasy peace and old age, fighting not the Germans this time, but The End. Closing Time deftly satirizes the realities and the myths of America in the half century since WWII: the...
A darkly comic and ambitious sequel to the American classic Catch-22. In Closing Time, Joseph Heller returns to the charact...
Bruce Gold, a middle-aged, Jewish professor of English literature, finds himself on the brink of a golden career in politics -- and not a moment too soon, as Gold yearns for an opportunity to transform a less-than-picture-perfect life: His children think little of him, his intimidating father endlessly bullies him, and his wife is so oblivious that she doesn't even notice he's left her. As funny as it is sad, Good as Gold is a story of children grown up, parents grown old, and friends and lovers grown apart -- a story that is inimitably Heller.
Bruce Gold, a middle-aged, Jewish professor of English literature, finds himself on the brink of a golden career in politics -- and not a moment too s...
Bob Slocum was living the American dream. He had a beautiful wife, three lovely children, a nice house...and all the mistresses he desired. He had it all -- all, that is, but happiness. Slocum was discontent. Inevitably, inexorably, his discontent deteriorated into desolation until...something happened. Something Happened is Joseph Heller's wonderfully inventive and controversial second novel satirizing business life and American culture. The story is told as if the reader was overhearing the patter of Bob Slocum's brain -- recording what is going on at the office, as well as his...
Bob Slocum was living the American dream. He had a beautiful wife, three lovely children, a nice house...and all the mistresses he desired. He had it ...
This zany, sexy version of the story of King David, told as a modern allegory of what it is like for a Jew to survive in a hostile world, is "original, sad, wildly funny, and filled with roaring. . . . Heller's King David, a splendid creation, is not so much a man for all seasons as man in all his seasons" ("The New York Times Book Review").
This zany, sexy version of the story of King David, told as a modern allegory of what it is like for a Jew to survive in a hostile world, is "original...
This study of The Stern Gang attempts to demythologize the image of this extremist, Zionist underground group. The book analyzes the party's split from the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) and its attempts to synthesize the politics and ideals of the right and left.
This study of The Stern Gang attempts to demythologize the image of this extremist, Zionist underground group. The book analyzes the party's split fro...
Imagine that the novelist -- his name here is Eugene Pota -- realizes that the days are dwindling and he needs to come up with one more novel. But what should he write? That first novel, the one that launched him, the one that made him into the cultural icon he seems fated to remain, has become a touchstone for his life, and his life since has pretty much been a critical failure. And now, when he is faced with the compulsion to write one more novel, to take a stab at the even bigger one, what should it be? Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man follows the journey that Eugene Pota...
Imagine that the novelist -- his name here is Eugene Pota -- realizes that the days are dwindling and he needs to come up with one more novel. But wha...
Joseph L. Heller Park Bucker Matthew Joseph Bruccoli
A collection of short stories and other miscellaneous writings by Joseph Heller, one of America's most influential and idiosyncratic writers. Years before the publication of Catch-22--which was called "a monumental artifact of contemporary literature" by The New York Times, "an apocalyptic masterpiece" by the Chicago Sun-Times, and "one of the most bitterly funny works in the language" by The New Republic--Joseph Heller began sharpening his skills as a writer, searching for the voice that would best express his own peculiarly wry view of the world. In...
A collection of short stories and other miscellaneous writings by Joseph Heller, one of America's most influential and idiosyncratic writers. Year...
Spanning three decades of his literary career, from Catch-22 to comments on the Persian Gulf War, Conversations with Joseph Heller contains a selection of the most significant, informative, and interesting interviews with one of America's foremost novelists.
In these interviews Heller reveals his interest in the structure, effects, and themes of his works, his satirical purposes, the influences upon him, his writing methods, his political opinions, and a host of other topics that challenge and engage his lively and reflective mind.
Included here are two interviews not previously...
Spanning three decades of his literary career, from Catch-22 to comments on the Persian Gulf War, Conversations with Joseph Heller contains ...
