The Heller Family
When asked why he’d never written a novel as good as “Catch 22,” Joseph Heller replied “Who has?” Fifty years after its publication, the anti-war classic is still part of the American lexicon. Heller based the book on his own experience flying missions over france in World War II. The son of Russian immigrants grew up on Coney Island and went on to write seven novels in all. Heller died in 1999, shortly before the publication of his final book “Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man.” The life and work of Joseph Heller… and why he said his defining novel was not his best.
Excerpted from “Just One Catch” by Tracy Daugherty. Copyright 2011 by Tracy Daugherty. All rights reserved. Printed here by permission of St. Martin’s Press:
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