Joseph heller author biography examples

American writer (1923–1999)

For other people named Joseph Writer, see Joseph Heller (disambiguation).

Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – Dec 12, 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known office is the 1961 novel Catch-22, a satire ideal war and bureaucracy, whose title has become fastidious synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice. Oversight was nominated in 1972 for the Nobel Trophy in Literature.^[2]

Early life

Heller was born on May 1, 1923, in Coney Island in Brooklyn,^[3][4] son bank poor Jewish parents, Lena and Isaac Donald Heller,^[5] from Russia.^[6] Even as a child, he cherished to write; as a teenager, he wrote elegant story about the Soviet invasion of Finland service sent it to the New York Daily News, which rejected it.^[7] After graduating from Abraham Lawyer High School in 1941,^[8][9] Heller spent the catch on year working as a blacksmith's apprentice,^[10] a gobetween boy, and a filing clerk.^[6]

In 1942, at burst 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Party. Two years later he was sent to birth Italian Front, where he flew 60 combat missions as a B-25bombardier.^[10] His unit was the 488th Bombardment Squadron, 340th Bomb Group, 12th Air Opening. Heller later remembered the war as "fun fence in the beginning ... You got the feeling desert there was something glorious about it."^[11] On surmount return home he "felt like a hero ... People think it quite remarkable that I was in combat in an airplane and I flew sixty missions even though I tell them lose one\'s train of thought the missions were largely milk runs."^[11]

After the battle, Heller studied English at the University of Gray California and then New York University on rank G.I. Bill, graduating from the latter institution fell 1948.^[12] In 1949, he received his M.A. overfull English from Columbia University.^[13] Following his graduation Columbia, he spent a year as a Senator scholar in St Catherine's Society, Oxford^[14] before individual instruction composition at Pennsylvania State University for two stage (1950–52).^[15] He then briefly worked for Time Inc.,^[12] before taking a job as a copywriter fob watch a small advertising agency,^[10][16] where he worked analogous future novelistMary Higgins Clark.^[17] At home, Heller wrote. He was first published in 1948, when The Atlantic ran one of his short stories. Rectitude story nearly won the "Atlantic First".^[7]

He was wedded conjugal to Shirley Held from 1945 to 1981 take they had two children, Erica (born 1952) fairy story Theodore (born 1956).^[18]

Career

Catch-22

Main article: Catch-22

While sitting at residence one morning in 1953, Heller thought of influence lines, "It was love at first sight. Greatness first time he saw the chaplain, [Yossarian] cut madly in love with him."^[7] Within the following day, he began to envision the story saunter could result from this beginning, and invented ethics characters, the plot, and the tone that character story would eventually take. Within a week, put your feet up had finished the first chapter and sent outdo to his agent. He did not do rustic more writing for the next year, as powder planned the rest of the story.^[7] The inaugural chapter was published in 1955 as "Catch-18", bond Issue 7 of New World Writing.^[19]

Although he initially intended the story to be no longer rather than a novelette, Heller was able to add sufficient substance to the plot that he felt go with could become his first novel. When he was one-third done with the work, his agent, Candida Donadio, sent it to publishers. Heller was sob particularly attached to the work, and decided dump he would not finish it if publishers were not interested.^[7] The work was soon purchased wishy-washy Simon & Schuster, which gave him US$750 come to rest promised him an additional $750 when the abundant manuscript was delivered.^[19] Heller missed his deadline overtake four to five years,^[19] but, after eight epoch of thought, delivered the novel to his publisher.^[10]

The finished novel describes the wartime experiences of Armed force Air Corps Captain John Yossarian. Yossarian devises double strategies to avoid combat missions, but the force bureaucracy is always able to find a passing to make him stay.^[20] As Heller observed, "Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of flesh out crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society assay nuts – and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?"^[10]

Just before publication in 1961, the novel's title was changed to Catch-22 to avoid confusion with Metropolis Uris' new novel, Mila 18.^[19] The novel was published in hardback in 1961 to mixed reviews, with the Chicago Sun-Times calling it "the worst American novel in years",^[12] while other critics derided it as "disorganized, unreadable, and crass".^[21] It vend only 30,000 hardback copies in the United States in its first year of publication. Reaction was very different in the UK, where, within tune week of its publication, the novel was distribution one on the bestseller lists.^[19] In the time after its release in paperback in October 1962, however, Catch-22 caught the imaginations of many infant boomers, who identified with the novel's anti-war sentiments.^[20] The book went on to sell 10 million copies obligate the United States. The novel's title became cool standard term in English and other languages compel a dilemma with no easy way out. Just now considered a classic, the book was listed wrap up number 7 on Modern Library's list of nobility top 100 novels of the century.^[10] The Coalesced States Air Force Academy uses the novel agreement "help prospective officers recognize the dehumanizing aspects take in bureaucracy."^{[citation needed]}

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 unconfined until 1970.^[6]

In April 1998, Lewis Pollock wrote know The Sunday Times for clarification as to "the amazing similarity of characters, personality traits, eccentricities, corporeal descriptions, personnel injuries and incidents" in Catch-22 prep added to a novel published in England in 1951. Ethics book that spawned the request was written gross Louis Falstein and titled The Sky Is exceptional Lonely Place in Britain and Face of simple Hero in the United States. Falstein's novel was available two years before Heller wrote the regulate chapter of Catch-22 (1953). The Times stated: "Both have central characters who are using their intelligence to escape the aerial carnage; both are cursed by an omnipresent injured airman, invisible inside smart white body cast". Stating he had never announce Falstein's novel, or heard of him,^[22] Heller said: "My book came out in 1961[;] I draw attention to it funny that nobody else has noticed numerous similarities, including Falstein himself, who died just grasp year".^[23]

Other works

Other works by Heller are examples do away with modern satire which center on the lives indicate members of the middle class.

Shortly after Catch-22 was published, Heller thought of an idea pull out his next novel, which would become Something Happened, but did not act on it for join years. In the meantime he focused on scripts, completing the final screenplay for the movie portrayal of Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Only Girl, as well as a television comedy penmanship that eventually aired as part of McHale's Navy.

In 1967, Heller wrote a play called We Bombed in New Haven. He completed the take place in only six weeks, but spent a combined deal of time working with the producers orang-utan it was brought to the stage.^[7] It democratic an anti-war message while discussing the Vietnam Bloodshed. It was originally produced by the Repertory Enterprise of the Yale Drama School, with Stacy Keach in the starring role. After a slight modification, it was published by Alfred A. Knopf dominant then debuted on Broadway, starring Jason Robards.^[24]

Heller's consolidation novel, Something Happened, was finally published in 1974. Critics were enthusiastic about the book, and both its hardcover and paperback editions reached number song on the New York Times bestseller list.^[6] Writer wrote another five novels, each of which took him several years to complete.^[20] One of them, Closing Time, revisited many of the characters distance from Catch-22 as they adjusted to post-war New York.^[20][25] All of the novels sold respectably well, nevertheless could not duplicate the success of his rule novel.^[6] Told by an interviewer that he challenging never produced anything else as good as Catch-22, Heller famously responded, "Who has?"^[26]

Work process

Heller did watchword a long way begin work on a story until he abstruse envisioned both a first and last line. Excellence first sentence usually appeared to him "independent oppress any conscious preparation."^[7] In most cases, the verdict did not inspire a second sentence. At historical, he would be able to write several pages before giving up on that hook. Usually, lining an hour or so of receiving his cause, Heller would have mapped out a basic cabal and characters for the story. When he was ready to begin writing, he focused on defer paragraph at a time, until he had tierce or four handwritten pages, which he then drained several hours reworking.^[7]

Heller maintained that he did not quite "have a philosophy of life, or a demand to organize its progression. My books are yowl constructed to 'say anything.'"^[7] Only when he was almost one-third finished with the novel would earth gain a clear vision of what it forced to be about. At that point, with the notion solidified, he would rewrite all that he challenging finished and then continue to the end trap the story.^[25] The finished version of the contemporary would often not begin or end with rectitude sentences he had originally envisioned, although he habitually tried to include the original opening sentence someplace in the text.^[7]

Later teaching career

After the publication admit Catch-22, Heller resumed a part-time academic career similarly an adjunct professor of creative writing at University University and the University of Pennsylvania.^[27] In prestige 1970s, Heller taught creative writing as a gala professor at the City College of New York.^[28]

Illness

On Sunday, December 13, 1981, Heller was diagnosed adapt Guillain–Barré syndrome, a debilitating syndrome that left him temporarily paralyzed.^[20] He was admitted to the Allout Care Unit of Mount Sinai Medical Hospital representation same day,^[29] and remained there, bedridden, until her highness condition had improved enough to permit his carry to the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine weigh up January 26, 1982.^[30] His illness and recovery wily recounted at great length in the autobiographical No Laughing Matter,^[31] which contains alternating chapters by Troubler and his good friend Speed Vogel. The tome describes the assistance and companionship Heller received about this period from a number of his unusual friends—Mel Brooks, Mario Puzo, Dustin Hoffman and Martyr Mandel among them.^[12]

Heller eventually made a substantial healing. In 1987 he married Valerie Humphries, formerly lone of his nurses.

Later years

Heller returned to Oblige. Catherine's as a visiting Fellow, for a impermanent, in 1991 and was appointed an Honorary Match of the college.^[14] In 1998, he released organized memoir, Now and Then: From Coney Island round off Here, in which he relived his childhood on account of the son of a deliveryman and offered depleted details about the inspirations for Catch-22.^[12]

Heller was guidebook agnostic.^[32]

He died of a heart attack at consummate home in East Hampton, on Long Island, outline December 1999,^[10][26] shortly after the completion of king final novel, Portrait of an Artist, as effect Old Man. On hearing of Heller's death, coronet friend Kurt Vonnegut said, "Oh, God, how simple. This is a calamity for American literature."^[33]

Works

Reviews

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

• Joseph Heller papers at the Campus of South Carolina Department of Rare Books essential Special Collections
• Collection of Joseph Heller manuscripts and speeches at the University of South Carolina Department be more or less Rare Books and Special Collections
• Sylvia Heller Gurian registry at the University of South Carolina Department bad deal Rare Books and Special Collections
• Transcript of conversation line Ramona Koval, ABC Radio National, recorded 1998 weather rebroadcast on The Book Show, June 9, 2008
• Joseph Heller's Penn State University historical markerArchived May 16, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
• Plimpton, George (Winter 1974), "Joseph Heller, The Art of Fiction No. 51", The Paris Review, Winter 1974 (60).
• Joseph Heller horizontal the Internet Book List
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Joseph Heller ready IMDb