Joseph Heller Books In Order

Catch-22

Fifty years after its original publication, Catch 22 remains a cornerstone of American lit erature and one of the funniest and most celebrated novels of all time. In recent years it has been named to best novels lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer. Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he ll be in violation of Catch 22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. Since its publication in 1961, no novel has matched Catch 22 s intensity and brilliance in depicting the brutal insanity of war. This fiftieth anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; personal essays on the genesis of the novel by the author; a wealth of critical responses and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller s personal archive; and a selection of advertiseme*nts from the original publishing campaign that helped turn Catch 22 into a cultural phenomenon. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.

Closing Time

Thirty-three years and over ten million copies later…
the classic story continues.

Yossarian returns — older, if not wiser — to face a new foe.

An instant classic when published in 1961, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 still ranks among the funniest — and most serious — novels ever written about war. Now Heller has dared to write the sequel to his 10-million copy bestseller, using many of Catch-22‘s characters to deftly satirize the realities and the myths of America in the half century since they fought World War II.

In Closing Time, a comic masterpiece in its own right, Heller spears the inflated balloons of our national consciousness — the absurdity of our politics, the decline of society and our great cities, the greed and hypocrisy of our business and culture — with the same ferocious humor that he used against the conventional view of warfare. Back again are characters familiar from Catch-22, including Yossarian and Milo Minderbinder, the chaplain, and little Sammy Singer, as they come to the end of their lives and the end of the century — all linked, this time, in uneasy peace and old age…
fighting not the Germans, but The End.

Outrageously funny and totally serious, and as brilliant and successful as Catch-22 itself, Closing Time is a fun-house mirror that captures, at once grotesquely and accurately, the truth about ourselves.

Something Happened‎

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 fantasies and memories that complete the story of his life. The result is a novel as original and memorable as his Catch 22.

Good as Gold

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.

God Knows

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.

Picture This

Picture This: Rembrandt is creating his famous painting of Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer. As soon as he paints an ear on Aristotle, Aristotle can hear. When he paints an eye, Aristotle can see. And what Aristotle sees and hears and remembers from the ancient past to this very moment provides the foundation for this lighthearted, freewheeling jaunt through 2,500 years of Western Civilization. Picture This is an incisive fantasy that digs deeply into our illusions and customs. Nobody but Joseph Heller could have thought of a novel like this one. Nobody but Heller could have executed it so brilliantly.

Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man

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 undertakes as he sifts through the detritus of his life in an effort to settle on a subject for his final work. He talks to everyone, including his wife, his old lovers, and his editor. While everyone has ideas, no one offers any real answers. Written with sections that alternate between Pota’s real life efforts to settle on what novel to write and his many and various false starts writing that novel, Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man is a rare and enthralling look into the artist’s search for creativity.

No Laughing Matter

MEMOIR It all began one typical day in the life of Joe Heller. He was jogging four miles at a clip these days, working on his novel God Knows, coping with the complications of an unpleasant divorce, and pigging out once or twice a week on Chinese food with cronies like Mel Brooks, Mario Puzo, and his buddy of more than twenty years, Speed Vogel. He was feeling perfectly fine that day but within twenty four hours he would be in intensive care at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital. He would remain hospitalized for nearly six months and leave in a wheelchair. Joseph Heller had Guillain Barr syndrome, a debilitating, sometimes fatal condition that can leave its victims paralyzed from head to toe. The clan gathered immediately. Speed sometime artist, sometime businessman, sometime herring taster, and now a coauthor moved into Joe’s apartment as messenger, servant, and shaman. Mel Brooks, arch hypochondriac of the Western world, knew as much about Heller’s condition as the doctors. Mario Puzo, author of the preeminent gangster novel of our time, proved to be the most reluctant man ever to be dragged along on a hospital visit. These and lots of others rallied around the sickbed in a show of loyalty and friendship that not only built a wild and spirited camaraderie but helped bring Joe Heller, writer and buddy extraordinaire, through his greatest crisis. This book is an inspiring, hilarious memoir of a calamitous illness and the rocky road to recuperation as only the author of Catch 22 and the friend who helped him back to health could tell it. No Laughing Matter is as wacky, terrifying, and great hearted as any fiction Joseph Heller ever wrote.

Now and Then

From the author of two of our most legendary novels, Catch 22 and SomethingHappened, comes a slyly funny, vastly revelatory memoir that is at once a lovingevocation of a lost America and an exploration of the frontier where life turnsinto literature. Now and Then follows Joseph Heller from his fatherless childhood on theboardwalks of Depression era Coney Island, where he grew up amid the rumble ofthe Cyclone and the tantalizing aroma of Mrs. Shatzkin’s knishes. It offers adizzying bombardier’s eye view of the sky over wartime Italy, where Hellerencountered the characters and incidents he would later translate into Catch 22. It depicts a writer coming to terms with both rejection and celebrity. Here, inshort, is a life filled with incident and insight, recollected with subversivehumor, exquisite timing, and a fine appreciation for the absurd.