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Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad, the Apthorp Was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22
THROUGHOUT ERICA HELLER’S LIFE, when people learned that Joseph Heller was her father, they often remarked, “How terrific!” But was there a catch? Like his most famous work, her father was a study in eccentric, brilliant, and voracious, but also mercurial, competitive, and stubborn, with a love of mischief that sometimes cut too close to the bone. Being raised by such a larger than- life personality could be claustrophobic, even at the sprawling Upper West Side apartments of the Apthorp, which the Hellers called home—in one way or another—for forty-five years.
Yossarian Slept Here is Erica Heller’s wickedly funny but also poignant and incisive memoir about growing up in a family—her iconic father; her wry, beautiful mother, Shirley; her younger brother, Ted; her relentlessly inventive grandmother Dottie—that could be by turns caring, infuriating, and exasperating, though anything but dull. From the forbidden pleasures of ordering shrimp cocktail when it was beyond the family’s budget to spending a summer, as her father’s fame grew, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Erica details the Hellers’ charmed—and charmingly turbulent— trajectory. She offers a rare glimpse of meetings with the Gourmet Club, where her father would dine weekly with Mel Brooks, Zero Mostel, and Mario Puzo, among others (and from which all wives and children were strictly verboten). She introduces us to many extraordinary residents of the Apthorp, some famous—George Balanchine, Sidney Poitier, and Lena Horne, to name a few—and some not famous, but all quite memorable. Yet she also manages to limn the complex bonds of loyalty and guilt, hurt and healing, that define every family. Erica was among those present at her father’s bedside as he struggled to recover from Guillain-Barré syndrome and then cared for her mother when Shirley was diagnosed with terminal cancer after the thirty-eight-year marriage and intensely passionate partnership with Joe had ended.
Witty and perceptive, and displaying the descriptive gifts of a born storyteller, this authentic and colorful portrait of life in the Heller household unfolds alongside the saga of the family’s moves into four distinctive apartments within the Apthorp, each representing a different phase of their lives together—and apart. It is a story about achieving a dream; about fame and its aftermath; about lasting love, squandered opportunities, and how to have the best meal in Chinatown.
Yossarian Slept Here is Erica Heller’s wickedly funny but also poignant and incisive memoir about growing up in a family—her iconic father; her wry, beautiful mother, Shirley; her younger brother, Ted; her relentlessly inventive grandmother Dottie—that could be by turns caring, infuriating, and exasperating, though anything but dull. From the forbidden pleasures of ordering shrimp cocktail when it was beyond the family’s budget to spending a summer, as her father’s fame grew, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Erica details the Hellers’ charmed—and charmingly turbulent— trajectory. She offers a rare glimpse of meetings with the Gourmet Club, where her father would dine weekly with Mel Brooks, Zero Mostel, and Mario Puzo, among others (and from which all wives and children were strictly verboten). She introduces us to many extraordinary residents of the Apthorp, some famous—George Balanchine, Sidney Poitier, and Lena Horne, to name a few—and some not famous, but all quite memorable. Yet she also manages to limn the complex bonds of loyalty and guilt, hurt and healing, that define every family. Erica was among those present at her father’s bedside as he struggled to recover from Guillain-Barré syndrome and then cared for her mother when Shirley was diagnosed with terminal cancer after the thirty-eight-year marriage and intensely passionate partnership with Joe had ended.
Witty and perceptive, and displaying the descriptive gifts of a born storyteller, this authentic and colorful portrait of life in the Heller household unfolds alongside the saga of the family’s moves into four distinctive apartments within the Apthorp, each representing a different phase of their lives together—and apart. It is a story about achieving a dream; about fame and its aftermath; about lasting love, squandered opportunities, and how to have the best meal in Chinatown.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published August 23, 2011
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May 29, 2018Verbatim Purgatory
When I started to read Erica Heller’s affectionate memoir of life with her father (and mother), I wondered what insights it would have into the fictional family of Bob Slocum in her father's novel, “Something Happened”.
Was the Slocum family Joe Heller’s own? Was the unnamed daughter based on Erica?
When she asks him, Joe responds to his daughter, “What makes you think you’re interesting enough to write about?”
On the other hand, Erica has much of value to say of her father’s second novel:
"Men Did That"
Heller’s novel was packed with details of Bob Slocum’s philandering, though his unnamed wife seemed to be oblivious to it.
Erica reveals a time when Joe's extramarital affairs became obvious to the family:
Ironically, Erica was speaking of his appetite for food in the second paragraph.
In an interview with the Observer’s Lynn Barber, Joe Heller explains:
This certainly accords with the rationale of the fictitious Bob Slocum. Slocum screwed around, because everybody at work was doing it. It was expected of him. In order to climb the corporate ladder, he had to get his leg over.
Testing Whether the Key Still Works
Erica sees it as a side effect of her father’s charm:
Needless to say, it took its toll on Shirley, his wife and Erica’s mother.
Joe seemed to think that he could have both marriage and philandering:
"They Were Meshuggah!"
Speed Vogel, Joe’s best friend, elaborates:
Joe is quoted as saying to Shirley in a moment of self-doubt before a party, “You always worry about how you’ll look and you’re always the prettiest one there.”
Lou Ann, Speed’s wife, adds:
My Brain’s Inexorable Slide Projector
There are 60 chapters in the memoir, each of four to five pages average length. It’s very easy to read, but still perspicacious, even if it’s obvious how much Joe hurt those around him.
Amazingly, Erica's hurt started as young as four:
Erica describes her impressions as the product of “my brain’s inexorable slide projector,” which is also a good way to describe the form of the memoir.
The book ends with some quotations of correspondence with other writers, such as Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Christopher Buckley, the latter of whose comments are good assessments of Joe’s “nonornamental” style:
SOUNDTRACK:
When I started to read Erica Heller’s affectionate memoir of life with her father (and mother), I wondered what insights it would have into the fictional family of Bob Slocum in her father's novel, “Something Happened”.
Was the Slocum family Joe Heller’s own? Was the unnamed daughter based on Erica?
When she asks him, Joe responds to his daughter, “What makes you think you’re interesting enough to write about?”
On the other hand, Erica has much of value to say of her father’s second novel:
“The book was 569 pages of hilarious but mordant, caustically wrapped, smoldering rage. It was also superb, depressing, and, many claim (including the author himself), that it was Dad’s best work.
"There had been arguments for years between my parents over it, over the fact that it so closely detailed someone who so resembled him and told, in the first person and in such harrowing detail, such an angry tale of one man’s ennui, disgust, and scorching disappointment in, and dissatisfaction with, each member of his family, singularly and together, none of whom was named in the book.
“His depiction of marriage as a stifling, irredeemable purgatory that served as a home base for the protagonist’s many liaisons was indisputable. But it was also my mother’s concern for her children, I believe, that really precipitated the beginning of the end, the rupture rather than the rapture.
“There were years of verbatim conversations contained in it, and the dynamic between father and daughter - in all of its complicated, weary miscommunication and cutthroat struggle for the power that a father generally automatically holds - was strikingly familiar. The parental need, the perverse competition to ‘outfox’ the child - was that, I wondered, universal?”
"Men Did That"
Heller’s novel was packed with details of Bob Slocum’s philandering, though his unnamed wife seemed to be oblivious to it.
Erica reveals a time when Joe's extramarital affairs became obvious to the family:
“...my father’s decades of philandering had finally been brought to light...He began telling my mother then, according to her, about all of his affairs and indiscretions over the years with friends of hers, of theirs, students, writers, PR women, editors, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers...”
“At that point, my father was a man of, shall we say, robust and uncontrolled appetites. His intake was enormous.”
Ironically, Erica was speaking of his appetite for food in the second paragraph.
In an interview with the Observer’s Lynn Barber, Joe Heller explains:
“It was part of the male culture. It was not a sexual drive, it was just...I was in New York City working in an atmosphere where men did that, we’d have parties and a couple would go into a room together...He says his wife, Shirley, never accurately detected his affairs, but she knew he was unfaithful.”
This certainly accords with the rationale of the fictitious Bob Slocum. Slocum screwed around, because everybody at work was doing it. It was expected of him. In order to climb the corporate ladder, he had to get his leg over.
Testing Whether the Key Still Works
Erica sees it as a side effect of her father’s charm:
“To be fair, my father was an equal-opportunity flirt - old women, young women, the homely and the beautiful, it didn’t matter. He simply enjoyed the teasing, the bantering, the constant affirmation of his effect on people, like putting a key into a car to check whether the motor starts.”
Needless to say, it took its toll on Shirley, his wife and Erica’s mother.
Joe seemed to think that he could have both marriage and philandering:
“Our love was supposed to last a lifetime…”
"They Were Meshuggah!"
Speed Vogel, Joe’s best friend, elaborates:
“Your father has the luxury of having someone in the world who is more on his side than anybody else. Do you know what that’s worth? You may not realise how that alters the universe for someone and how much that means, but it means everything...”
“Your mother doesn’t get it, does she? Shirley doesn’t understand she is the love of Joe’s life? That she’s the best thing that ever happened to him? He has never not loved Shirley. You have to know that...They were meshuggah!”
Joe is quoted as saying to Shirley in a moment of self-doubt before a party, “You always worry about how you’ll look and you’re always the prettiest one there.”
Lou Ann, Speed’s wife, adds:
“Read his [later] books. It’s all there. Look at the way he wrote about Shirley after the divorce. He always regretted leaving her.”
My Brain’s Inexorable Slide Projector
There are 60 chapters in the memoir, each of four to five pages average length. It’s very easy to read, but still perspicacious, even if it’s obvious how much Joe hurt those around him.
Amazingly, Erica's hurt started as young as four:
“Suddenly it was open season; I had sailed from the gentle, protective cloak of my father's kindness over to the other side, the angry side filled with sharp-edged antagonism.”
Erica describes her impressions as the product of “my brain’s inexorable slide projector,” which is also a good way to describe the form of the memoir.
The book ends with some quotations of correspondence with other writers, such as Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Christopher Buckley, the latter of whose comments are good assessments of Joe’s “nonornamental” style:
“He did not strive to be witty or to dazzle. He was amused but mostly repelled by professional talking heads, those conveyor belts of forced insight...behind the warm smile, he had a switchblade-sharp mind, and his fraud detector...was as fine-tuned as a Predator drone.”
SOUNDTRACK:
December 14, 2011
This book should be required reading for anyone interested in Joseph Heller, memoir, New York City, recent history, and much else.
As the book’s title and subtitle suggest, this is a hybrid. A biopsy of the building, its history and residents, the real focus of Yossarian is Joseph Heller and his long-suffering wife Shirley, Erica’s mother. Erica plays a supporting role in the Hellers’ Bermuda Triangle; her younger brother Ted makes cameo apparences and remains an enigma. The bittersweet tale of this over-achieving, angst-ridden family’s rise in postwar Manhattan, its wrangling and tragicomic fall, is at turns laugh-aloud funny, brilliantly observed, somber, obsessive and depressing. If it were a movie, it could be co-directed by Mel Brooks and Alfred Hitchcock.
What keeps you turning the pages deep into the night is Erica’s skill at spinning the yarn. In her hands, the Heller family’s self-lacerating irony and wit is eau de vie, sending down a variety of horse pills.
Comic relief is welcome. After her parents’ acrimonious divorce, Erica visits her nonogenarian maternal grandmother. “I suddenly realized that every photograph containing my father, her ex-son-in-law, had been cut apart,” she writes. “And that in each one, instead of a head or a face, in its place was now stuck a cotton ball.”
What’s in a name?
Do not be daunted by the title: Yossarian might well win a National Book Award for the most cryptic, insiderish tag of 2011. Think Napoleon or Lord Byron, who famously slept everywhere. Then recall that Yossarian was Joe Heller’s doppelganger, the heroic antihero of Catch-22.
Before it became one of the most frequently misused expressions in modern English, Catch-22 was a bombshell novel about the random craziness of World War Two, among other things. It was published in 1961. If you missed the novel, you might remember the movie (1970). If you missed both, you are fortunate: read and view them now. They may well change your life, and also entice you to read Erica Heller’s memoir.
Both it and Catch-22 are bleakly hilarious. Yossarian is a testament to the destructiveness of narcissism; Catch-22 was deeply, riotious anti-war and joyously absurdist. The right book at the right time in the right place, as the 1960s progressed, Catch-22 became the literary talisman of anti-Vietnam youth. It sold millions, and is still in print.
Catch-22 certainly shaped the outlook of this reader. Like many of my generation I devoured it when I was attending high school. Might Joseph Heller be indirectly responsible for this blog? It would be impossible to calculate how many lives were shaped—in some cases warped—by Joseph Heller. He was much more than a consummate stylist. His world-view seemed to my adolescent mind to merge with a peculiarly American genius Dostoevsky, Conrad and Camus. His descriptions of World War Two also rang true: my father had fought in Italy in the same places as Yossarian-Heller, in eerily similar circumstances.
Curiously, Erica Heller reveals in this memoir that she has never read Catch-22. Whether she inherited her knack for pithy prose from her father is impossible to know without genetic testing and exhumation. They were both advertising copywriters and shared a mordant, irreverent, at times sardonic wit.
An unforgettable instance of this revolves around a family trip to Italy in the 1960s. Erica’s brother “opened his mouth to ask a question that I still love to recall: ‘So who’s the guy on the t in all the churches?’ After clarifying his question, my parents explained to him about Jesus Christ.”
Genetic science may one day tell us whether talent may be transmitted down the generations. More likely, Erica Heller’s skill and her personality were branded and bruised by the hammering and fire of her father’s forge. His was a relentless demand for perfection.
Students of Joseph Heller’s life will be well served: the memoir skillfully reveals countless details about him and his rituals, shedding light on the mechanics of how he wrote. He “dreamed and scratched and scrawled his slow and carefully chosen, spidery words onto index cards and yellow legal pads,” she notes. “He then typed them onto his rickety machine, hunting-and-pecking his way to more opulent times.”
Complex and troubling, Joseph Heller was clearly not your run-of-the-paternal-mill presence in the lives of his wife and children. Charm and literary skills aside, what comes through when reading this self-effacing and at times self-deprecating story is that Erica was spared the genes carrying her father’s less admirable traits.
A fantasist and philanderer, Joseph Heller appears in these pages as lusty, brash, funny, and sufficiently self absorbed to alienate even his most devoted friends and family members, including Erica. She loved and revered him but, “Suddenly it was open season,” she writes about the beginning of hostilities. “I had sailed from the gentle, protective cloak of my father’s kindness over to the other side, the angry side filled with sharp-edged antagonism.”
To her credit, she forgave him more than once for emotional injury, and out of her experience has crafted a heartfelt, moving memoir.
Highly recommended.
David D. Downie, www.davidddownie.com
As the book’s title and subtitle suggest, this is a hybrid. A biopsy of the building, its history and residents, the real focus of Yossarian is Joseph Heller and his long-suffering wife Shirley, Erica’s mother. Erica plays a supporting role in the Hellers’ Bermuda Triangle; her younger brother Ted makes cameo apparences and remains an enigma. The bittersweet tale of this over-achieving, angst-ridden family’s rise in postwar Manhattan, its wrangling and tragicomic fall, is at turns laugh-aloud funny, brilliantly observed, somber, obsessive and depressing. If it were a movie, it could be co-directed by Mel Brooks and Alfred Hitchcock.
What keeps you turning the pages deep into the night is Erica’s skill at spinning the yarn. In her hands, the Heller family’s self-lacerating irony and wit is eau de vie, sending down a variety of horse pills.
Comic relief is welcome. After her parents’ acrimonious divorce, Erica visits her nonogenarian maternal grandmother. “I suddenly realized that every photograph containing my father, her ex-son-in-law, had been cut apart,” she writes. “And that in each one, instead of a head or a face, in its place was now stuck a cotton ball.”
What’s in a name?
Do not be daunted by the title: Yossarian might well win a National Book Award for the most cryptic, insiderish tag of 2011. Think Napoleon or Lord Byron, who famously slept everywhere. Then recall that Yossarian was Joe Heller’s doppelganger, the heroic antihero of Catch-22.
Before it became one of the most frequently misused expressions in modern English, Catch-22 was a bombshell novel about the random craziness of World War Two, among other things. It was published in 1961. If you missed the novel, you might remember the movie (1970). If you missed both, you are fortunate: read and view them now. They may well change your life, and also entice you to read Erica Heller’s memoir.
Both it and Catch-22 are bleakly hilarious. Yossarian is a testament to the destructiveness of narcissism; Catch-22 was deeply, riotious anti-war and joyously absurdist. The right book at the right time in the right place, as the 1960s progressed, Catch-22 became the literary talisman of anti-Vietnam youth. It sold millions, and is still in print.
Catch-22 certainly shaped the outlook of this reader. Like many of my generation I devoured it when I was attending high school. Might Joseph Heller be indirectly responsible for this blog? It would be impossible to calculate how many lives were shaped—in some cases warped—by Joseph Heller. He was much more than a consummate stylist. His world-view seemed to my adolescent mind to merge with a peculiarly American genius Dostoevsky, Conrad and Camus. His descriptions of World War Two also rang true: my father had fought in Italy in the same places as Yossarian-Heller, in eerily similar circumstances.
Curiously, Erica Heller reveals in this memoir that she has never read Catch-22. Whether she inherited her knack for pithy prose from her father is impossible to know without genetic testing and exhumation. They were both advertising copywriters and shared a mordant, irreverent, at times sardonic wit.
An unforgettable instance of this revolves around a family trip to Italy in the 1960s. Erica’s brother “opened his mouth to ask a question that I still love to recall: ‘So who’s the guy on the t in all the churches?’ After clarifying his question, my parents explained to him about Jesus Christ.”
Genetic science may one day tell us whether talent may be transmitted down the generations. More likely, Erica Heller’s skill and her personality were branded and bruised by the hammering and fire of her father’s forge. His was a relentless demand for perfection.
Students of Joseph Heller’s life will be well served: the memoir skillfully reveals countless details about him and his rituals, shedding light on the mechanics of how he wrote. He “dreamed and scratched and scrawled his slow and carefully chosen, spidery words onto index cards and yellow legal pads,” she notes. “He then typed them onto his rickety machine, hunting-and-pecking his way to more opulent times.”
Complex and troubling, Joseph Heller was clearly not your run-of-the-paternal-mill presence in the lives of his wife and children. Charm and literary skills aside, what comes through when reading this self-effacing and at times self-deprecating story is that Erica was spared the genes carrying her father’s less admirable traits.
A fantasist and philanderer, Joseph Heller appears in these pages as lusty, brash, funny, and sufficiently self absorbed to alienate even his most devoted friends and family members, including Erica. She loved and revered him but, “Suddenly it was open season,” she writes about the beginning of hostilities. “I had sailed from the gentle, protective cloak of my father’s kindness over to the other side, the angry side filled with sharp-edged antagonism.”
To her credit, she forgave him more than once for emotional injury, and out of her experience has crafted a heartfelt, moving memoir.
Highly recommended.
David D. Downie, www.davidddownie.com
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November 13, 2011Witty and wonderfully written, this walk through the gates of the Apthorp and into the life of Joseph Heller and his family is a jewel of a book. I expected a portrait of the famous man, but was even more enthralled with her tale of growing up in a place and time that has now vanished, as though Eloise were given a life outside the Plaza, a career and a pen. She recaptures the details of a New York childhood with a family of characters right out of Central Casting, and unbelievably her sense of humor has remained intact. I can only marvel at her generosity of spirit in regards to her difficult but brilliant father, and loved this insider's view served with love and panache.
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November 14, 2011The memoir genre could have no better spokeswoman than Erica Heller. "Yossarian Slept Here is a dazzling book; witty, moving, perceptive and incredibly generous. Critics have remarked that Erica Heller has inherited her father, Joseph Heller's gift for storytelling but frankly I think it's all her own. She's a kinder writer though honest and without a shred of sentimentality. The story of what happens when success come to a family and it's outrageous father has been handled in these pages with the skill of an original literary winner. I sped through it compulsively and wished it would never end. I give it five stars. Phyllis Raphael
December 2, 2020
I can't begin to tell you how important "Catch-22" has been to my life; from the first moment I read it, it challenged the way that I looked at the world, at authority, at the military, at America, at life itself and what's really important versus what those in power say is important. "Catch-22" is so good that I've rarely dipped my toe into any of Joseph Heller's other books (the sequel "Closing Time" might be the only one I've read all the way through, though I'm tempted to attempt the others in due time). So imagine how shocked I was when Erica Heller, daughter of the writer of arguably my favorite book, admits that she's never read it.
But then again, after reading this memoir, I can understand why she's saving it for last, if ever.
"Yossarian Slept Here" is the story of Joe and Shirley Heller's almost forty-year long marriage, the apartments they shared and fought over, the lies and pain that each caused in one another's lives, and the sensitive eldest daughter at the center of all this, documenting their love story and her own childhood as the daughter of "Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22" (or "The Book", as it was referred to by her father, because it literally changed their lives, and not always for the better). Erica, a fine writer in her own right, gives us the story of Joe and Shirley, of their extended family, and of everything that happened between the publication of "The Book" and the end of both Joe and Shirley, four years apart (Shirley in 1995, Joe in 1999).
This is an intimate memoir by someone very, very close to a literary lion, observing his life and documenting all the odd, endearing habits of Joe Heller, a kid from Coney Island who became a world-famous writer and gifted the world an expression that can mean so many things (but basically the moral of the title phrase is "you're fucked, royally"). Joe emerges as a cranky yet lovable man, with faults a-plenty but with a gift to share with the world. The real star of the show, though, is Joe's long-suffering wife (and Erica's mother) Shirley, who abandoned her dreams to be housewife to a genius, only realizing in the wake of their acrimonious divorce that she still had a chance to be an interior designer. Erica pulls no punches but makes it pretty clear that her parents had a great love story, even if it ended in pain.
Sometimes I have an intense curiosity about someone who created something that I love, and I want to know every facet of their lives. Other times, I'm good just appreciating the work, unsure if I really want to know how the sausage was made (and what, from their personal lives, is contained in that sausage). Erica Heller didn't set out to write a book tearing down Joseph Heller, but an honest account of her father, who was very, very human after all (like Yossarian, the protagonist of his greatest work). It's a beautiful, tender, funny, heartbreaking work, much like "The Book" itself (and for that, I can forgive Erica her not having read it, though I hope if she does that she'll love it as much as I did).
But then again, after reading this memoir, I can understand why she's saving it for last, if ever.
"Yossarian Slept Here" is the story of Joe and Shirley Heller's almost forty-year long marriage, the apartments they shared and fought over, the lies and pain that each caused in one another's lives, and the sensitive eldest daughter at the center of all this, documenting their love story and her own childhood as the daughter of "Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22" (or "The Book", as it was referred to by her father, because it literally changed their lives, and not always for the better). Erica, a fine writer in her own right, gives us the story of Joe and Shirley, of their extended family, and of everything that happened between the publication of "The Book" and the end of both Joe and Shirley, four years apart (Shirley in 1995, Joe in 1999).
This is an intimate memoir by someone very, very close to a literary lion, observing his life and documenting all the odd, endearing habits of Joe Heller, a kid from Coney Island who became a world-famous writer and gifted the world an expression that can mean so many things (but basically the moral of the title phrase is "you're fucked, royally"). Joe emerges as a cranky yet lovable man, with faults a-plenty but with a gift to share with the world. The real star of the show, though, is Joe's long-suffering wife (and Erica's mother) Shirley, who abandoned her dreams to be housewife to a genius, only realizing in the wake of their acrimonious divorce that she still had a chance to be an interior designer. Erica pulls no punches but makes it pretty clear that her parents had a great love story, even if it ended in pain.
Sometimes I have an intense curiosity about someone who created something that I love, and I want to know every facet of their lives. Other times, I'm good just appreciating the work, unsure if I really want to know how the sausage was made (and what, from their personal lives, is contained in that sausage). Erica Heller didn't set out to write a book tearing down Joseph Heller, but an honest account of her father, who was very, very human after all (like Yossarian, the protagonist of his greatest work). It's a beautiful, tender, funny, heartbreaking work, much like "The Book" itself (and for that, I can forgive Erica her not having read it, though I hope if she does that she'll love it as much as I did).
June 4, 2018
Yossarian durmió aquí
: ¡4 estrellas!
Joseph Heller fue un escritor que saltó a la fama con la publicación de su primera novela Catch-22 en la década del ’60, una crítica satírica al servicio militar de Estados Unidos. La trama de ese primer libro delata el ingenio único y el humor irónico del autor, que se evidencian también en sus personajes, especialmente en el protagonista, Yossarian. Pero hay otras facetas de Joseph Heller, como amigo, enemigo, esposo, amante y padre, que solamente sus allegados pudieron conocer. En esta suerte de memoria de una buena parte de su vida, a cargo de Erica, su hija, se puede llegar a conocer un poco mejor quién era y cómo era, sus virtudes, defectos y miserias. Un relato divertido que, aunque no se priva de contar secretos familiares y rencores, está lleno de emoción y ternura.
Este libro fue justo lo que necesitaba, era lo que estaba buscando y más. El relato de Erica es siempre muy ameno y divertido (claro, la manzana no puede caer muy lejos del árbol). La familia entera, con Joseph a la cabeza, es muy peculiar y graciosa.
Está dividido en cuatro partes y tiene capítulos muy cortos, cada uno con títulos implícitos y bastante curiosos. El relato repasa la vida de Heller y la de su mujer, cuando se conocieron, sobre la abuela Dottie, la infancia, adolescencia y juventud de Erica y su hermano, los viajes, las vacaciones, los trabajos, las fiestas, los amores, las peleas y las muertes. De alguna manera, incluso cuando no le incumbe o no debería aparecer, todo gira en torno a ese hombre, a veces de la manera más insólita. Cada vez que me sentaba a leer este libro, tenía la sensación de que una vieja y querida amiga se sentaba a mi lado y me empezaba a contar las anécdotas más entretenidas de su familia. Me sacó sonrisas varias veces y me emocionó otras tantas. La pasé muy bien.
Quiero aclarar que no es requisito haber leído Catch-22 o alguna otra de las obras de Heller (yo sólo leí Catch-22) para poder comprender esto, o algún guiño o referencia que se haga sobre ella. Si lo hiciste, quizá recuerdes alguna escena o percibas una analogía entre el autor y un personaje, o la forma de pensar, pero nada más. Si no lo leíste, eso sí, tal vez te den muchas ganas de hacerlo. O no (los que leyeron la confesión de Erica me van a entender).
Yossarian durmió aquí es la excusa perfecta para contarnos que Joseph Heller fue un gran escritor, una mente inteligente, y a su vez un hombre contradictorio y hasta infantil, que cometió errores como todos lo seguimos haciendo mientras estamos vivos. Erica es la responsable de acercarnos un poco más hacia ese costado humano de su padre, con todo lo que eso implica, donde el amor entre ellos aflora en cada broma o cada pelea que se repite como un ciclo. Heller fue todo un personaje en sí mismo, tanto para sus seres queridos como para aquellos que sólo llegaron a cruzar un par de palabras con él; y creo que, además, así lo seguirá siendo para quienes leamos este libro y descubramos a la persona detrás del famoso autor de una de las novelas más reconocidas de los últimos 60 años.
Joseph Heller fue un escritor que saltó a la fama con la publicación de su primera novela Catch-22 en la década del ’60, una crítica satírica al servicio militar de Estados Unidos. La trama de ese primer libro delata el ingenio único y el humor irónico del autor, que se evidencian también en sus personajes, especialmente en el protagonista, Yossarian. Pero hay otras facetas de Joseph Heller, como amigo, enemigo, esposo, amante y padre, que solamente sus allegados pudieron conocer. En esta suerte de memoria de una buena parte de su vida, a cargo de Erica, su hija, se puede llegar a conocer un poco mejor quién era y cómo era, sus virtudes, defectos y miserias. Un relato divertido que, aunque no se priva de contar secretos familiares y rencores, está lleno de emoción y ternura.
Este libro fue justo lo que necesitaba, era lo que estaba buscando y más. El relato de Erica es siempre muy ameno y divertido (claro, la manzana no puede caer muy lejos del árbol). La familia entera, con Joseph a la cabeza, es muy peculiar y graciosa.
Está dividido en cuatro partes y tiene capítulos muy cortos, cada uno con títulos implícitos y bastante curiosos. El relato repasa la vida de Heller y la de su mujer, cuando se conocieron, sobre la abuela Dottie, la infancia, adolescencia y juventud de Erica y su hermano, los viajes, las vacaciones, los trabajos, las fiestas, los amores, las peleas y las muertes. De alguna manera, incluso cuando no le incumbe o no debería aparecer, todo gira en torno a ese hombre, a veces de la manera más insólita. Cada vez que me sentaba a leer este libro, tenía la sensación de que una vieja y querida amiga se sentaba a mi lado y me empezaba a contar las anécdotas más entretenidas de su familia. Me sacó sonrisas varias veces y me emocionó otras tantas. La pasé muy bien.
Quiero aclarar que no es requisito haber leído Catch-22 o alguna otra de las obras de Heller (yo sólo leí Catch-22) para poder comprender esto, o algún guiño o referencia que se haga sobre ella. Si lo hiciste, quizá recuerdes alguna escena o percibas una analogía entre el autor y un personaje, o la forma de pensar, pero nada más. Si no lo leíste, eso sí, tal vez te den muchas ganas de hacerlo. O no (los que leyeron la confesión de Erica me van a entender).
Yossarian durmió aquí es la excusa perfecta para contarnos que Joseph Heller fue un gran escritor, una mente inteligente, y a su vez un hombre contradictorio y hasta infantil, que cometió errores como todos lo seguimos haciendo mientras estamos vivos. Erica es la responsable de acercarnos un poco más hacia ese costado humano de su padre, con todo lo que eso implica, donde el amor entre ellos aflora en cada broma o cada pelea que se repite como un ciclo. Heller fue todo un personaje en sí mismo, tanto para sus seres queridos como para aquellos que sólo llegaron a cruzar un par de palabras con él; y creo que, además, así lo seguirá siendo para quienes leamos este libro y descubramos a la persona detrás del famoso autor de una de las novelas más reconocidas de los últimos 60 años.
September 16, 2017
This is my cousin Erica Heller's s autobiography. It is funny, ( my cousin has always has a wicked sense of humor). It is sad and poignant, hilarious and lovely in turns. A beautifully written book!. (PS. The portrait she paints of our wild Grandmother is quite accurate.....believe it or not!)
January 25, 2023
Too much whingeing.
November 14, 2011
Imagine, as a visual image, balancing with one toe (the big one of course) on the head of a pin -- one arm reaching forward and the opposite leg extended backward in a perfect arabesque. That's the kind of balancing act Erica Heller has pulled off with Yossarian Slept Here, her insightful, totally honest memoir about her life as the daughter of renowned writer Joseph Heller and his wife Shirley. She makes sure you know that her father does love her, in spite of his insensitivity, frequently bordering on cruelty, and almost complete lack of parenting skills. As Blake Bailey points out, in her review of Yossarian Slept Here, (New York Times Book Review, Sunday, August 28, 2011), "The miracle of this memoir is that it never seems less than fair: Erica Heller's worst grievances are mentioned more in sorrow (or levity) than anger, and she's careful to give her own shortcomings their due."
She also writes with affection and empathy about the many other colorful members of her unique family.
Erica Heller has a powerful story to tell and the ability to make the reader want to hear it. She's a wonderful writer --- smart and funny (her analogies are hilarious). It would be great to hear more from her, in the form of a novel next time. She could probably write a great screenplay as well.
She also writes with affection and empathy about the many other colorful members of her unique family.
Erica Heller has a powerful story to tell and the ability to make the reader want to hear it. She's a wonderful writer --- smart and funny (her analogies are hilarious). It would be great to hear more from her, in the form of a novel next time. She could probably write a great screenplay as well.
December 31, 2011
Yossarian Slept Here makes interesting companion reading to Tracy Daugherty's recent Heller biography, Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller. The first third of this memoir, covering events before Erica was born and her too-young-to-remember years is in an entertaining chatty style. Once she reached events she participated in, she can't maintain that light touch. I wonder how much of the reporting is colored by her own emotional "baggage" and an understandable desire to leave out some of her own faults. She reports the guidance counselor in her private progressive New York City high school telling her and her parents that the only college they might be able to get her into was Itawamba Community College in Fulton, Mississippi. Though this memoir was written when Erica was fifty-something, she reports the encounter as if this really was the school she almost attended, not some idle threat that was made because she wasn't preforming as expected, even referring to it again in the last few pages of the book. While she clearly struggled in high school, one has to wonder what that struggle really was about.
One probably should take some events reported in this book with a grain of salt. However, it adds an emotional dimension to the longer professional Joseph Heller biography and is quite short, so worth reading if you are interested in Joseph Heller.
One probably should take some events reported in this book with a grain of salt. However, it adds an emotional dimension to the longer professional Joseph Heller biography and is quite short, so worth reading if you are interested in Joseph Heller.
July 16, 2020
My review from 2014
Yossarian is, or course, the paranoid protagonist of Catch-22, the book that gave Joseph Heller eternal fame. As a marketing gimmick, tagging Yossarian to the book’s title is a masterstroke by Erica Heller. Unfortunately, this book reads more like her autobiography and the story of Joseph Heller’s wife and mother-in-law. Anyone looking for an insight into the mind of an author who created memorable characters like Milo Minderbinder, Major Major Major Major, Orr, Lieutenant Scheisskopf, Major –de Coverley, General Dreedle (with his nurse), Chief White Halfoat, Doc Daneeka etc, will be sorely disappointed.
Sadly, according to his daughter, the author comes across as a nasty, egotistical (like Yossarian), gourmandizing, philandering and venal character. The photos in the story show a genial fellow rather than an ogre. I found the character of Erica to be flawed and not Joe Heller’s.
One would have liked to know how Catch 22 came to be written and how the story evolved. All one gathers from the book is that Heller too was a bombardier in the US Air Force and served in Italy during WW II. Another glimpse offered is a discussion about the numerals that would follow ‘Catch’. It could not have been the original 18 as Leon Uris’ Mila 18 had just been released. Other numbers that were bandies about were 27 and 539. Finally, the editor form Simon and Schuster came up with the nondescript 22, which, suffixed to Catch, would become a byword of our times. The economic benefits of the book are portrayed in detail by Erica Heller along with the favourable impact on their lives.
A redeeming feature is reminisces of interactions of authors like Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Christopher Hitchens (who, as a tribute, adopted the title Hitch 22: A Memoir for his memoirs) with Joseph Heller.
There is an unexpected and revealing twist at the end.
Yossarian is, or course, the paranoid protagonist of Catch-22, the book that gave Joseph Heller eternal fame. As a marketing gimmick, tagging Yossarian to the book’s title is a masterstroke by Erica Heller. Unfortunately, this book reads more like her autobiography and the story of Joseph Heller’s wife and mother-in-law. Anyone looking for an insight into the mind of an author who created memorable characters like Milo Minderbinder, Major Major Major Major, Orr, Lieutenant Scheisskopf, Major –de Coverley, General Dreedle (with his nurse), Chief White Halfoat, Doc Daneeka etc, will be sorely disappointed.
Sadly, according to his daughter, the author comes across as a nasty, egotistical (like Yossarian), gourmandizing, philandering and venal character. The photos in the story show a genial fellow rather than an ogre. I found the character of Erica to be flawed and not Joe Heller’s.
One would have liked to know how Catch 22 came to be written and how the story evolved. All one gathers from the book is that Heller too was a bombardier in the US Air Force and served in Italy during WW II. Another glimpse offered is a discussion about the numerals that would follow ‘Catch’. It could not have been the original 18 as Leon Uris’ Mila 18 had just been released. Other numbers that were bandies about were 27 and 539. Finally, the editor form Simon and Schuster came up with the nondescript 22, which, suffixed to Catch, would become a byword of our times. The economic benefits of the book are portrayed in detail by Erica Heller along with the favourable impact on their lives.
A redeeming feature is reminisces of interactions of authors like Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Christopher Hitchens (who, as a tribute, adopted the title Hitch 22: A Memoir for his memoirs) with Joseph Heller.
There is an unexpected and revealing twist at the end.
February 20, 2022
Parte de mi valoración se debe a que el libro no ha cumplido las expectativas. Sin haber leído "Catch 22" se que es considerado un clásico. Tomé el libro de su hija pensando que a través de él podría conocer algo del contexto histórico y creativo de Joe Heller o bien interesarme en leer la clasificada como "obra maestra".
La sucesión de anécdotas escritas en el estilo de documental homenaje me gustaron, pero tras las primeras 100 páginas me aburrieron. La idea de leer a alguien que vivió en un icónico edificio neuyorquino, el Apthorp, era la única emoción que me movía a seguir leyendo. Pero las anécdotas avanzaban como las décadas que cubrían sin que ello me sirviera para conocer mucho de lo que movía al escritor, ni lo que movía a su hija durante todo ese tiempo.
Hasta que ¡bum! sospechas que lo que estás leyendo es realmente un ajuste de cuentas con su padre el autor. Descubres que hay un libro (el segundo que escribió) llamado "Algo ha pasado" en que el famoso escritor hablaba de forma cruda de la familia, odiaba a su hija y la calificaba de persona hosca, infeliz y sin futuro, un "ataúd abierto". Un enemigo sería menos dañino.
Y ahí es donde entiendes que quizá ella está intentando usar el estilo del padre al contar historias brutalmente verdaderas. Y por eso hay paradojas al estilo de una situación "trampa 22": quiere pero no quiere al padre, busca emularle como escritor de historias honestas pero no lo hace, quiere cambios pero no tiene energía para manejar su vida, etc. No sabe si conocía a sus padres, a pesar de que vivió con ellos muchos años, pero pregunta incesantemente a grandes nombres y amigos (la lista marea) si sus padres se querían o no.
Intuyo que Joe Heller era un tipo bastante borde y narcisista. Cruel cuando hacía de él. Alguien que usaba esas mismas salidas de tono con sus personajes y que sus muchos lectores buscaban porque el humor era genial. No se si me apetece leer "Catch 22".
La sucesión de anécdotas escritas en el estilo de documental homenaje me gustaron, pero tras las primeras 100 páginas me aburrieron. La idea de leer a alguien que vivió en un icónico edificio neuyorquino, el Apthorp, era la única emoción que me movía a seguir leyendo. Pero las anécdotas avanzaban como las décadas que cubrían sin que ello me sirviera para conocer mucho de lo que movía al escritor, ni lo que movía a su hija durante todo ese tiempo.
Hasta que ¡bum! sospechas que lo que estás leyendo es realmente un ajuste de cuentas con su padre el autor. Descubres que hay un libro (el segundo que escribió) llamado "Algo ha pasado" en que el famoso escritor hablaba de forma cruda de la familia, odiaba a su hija y la calificaba de persona hosca, infeliz y sin futuro, un "ataúd abierto". Un enemigo sería menos dañino.
Y ahí es donde entiendes que quizá ella está intentando usar el estilo del padre al contar historias brutalmente verdaderas. Y por eso hay paradojas al estilo de una situación "trampa 22": quiere pero no quiere al padre, busca emularle como escritor de historias honestas pero no lo hace, quiere cambios pero no tiene energía para manejar su vida, etc. No sabe si conocía a sus padres, a pesar de que vivió con ellos muchos años, pero pregunta incesantemente a grandes nombres y amigos (la lista marea) si sus padres se querían o no.
Intuyo que Joe Heller era un tipo bastante borde y narcisista. Cruel cuando hacía de él. Alguien que usaba esas mismas salidas de tono con sus personajes y que sus muchos lectores buscaban porque el humor era genial. No se si me apetece leer "Catch 22".
July 3, 2017
What is it like to grow up the daughter of one of the great American novelists? I suspect that the answer would be a variation of Tolstoy’s opening sentence of his epic story of Anna Karenina: each famous author’s family is weird in its own way. Erica Heller does a wonderful job in this eminently readable and entertaining memoir of telling us what it was like growing up as the daughter of Joseph Heller, the author of at least one of the great American novels, “Catch-22”. So what was “Dad” like? Funny, blunt, self-centered, full of life, irascible, childlike, full of flaws, hearty of appetites, contradictory, human – oh, wait, in other words he was like a lot of other guys – the one big difference between him and just about all those other guys out there being that Joe was also a great writer. I love “Catch-22”, I’ve read it twice, and, from what we learn about Joe Heller in Erica’s book, his great novel was basically “Joe Heller’s brain”. No one else could have written it, and Joe Heller could not have written any other sort of first novel. Ms. Heller’s book is written with love, but with a clear and unsentimental eye, and a great sense of humor: the good, the bad, the weird – a family different from any other family in the world, but when you get right down to it not that different. I loved this book, and now I am finally ready to read some other stuff by Joe Heller, and I have ordered his second novel, “Something Happened.”
February 19, 2024
This morning I finished reading YOSSARIAN SLEPT HERE, a biography of Joseph Heller by his daughter Erica Heller. Joseph Heller wrote CATCH-22, one of the best books of the ‘60s which neither I nor his daughter have ever read. Instead she centers her memoir around the four different apartments the Heller Family inhabited in one gigantic New York apartment building.
Erica Heller describes her father as a cold, flawed man with an often sadistic sense of humor and enormous, unfailing appetite.
Sometimes he was an extraordinary father but not always. He saved snowballs in the freezer to hurl at his kids on summer afternoons; he learned to play piano and flute just so he could astonish, secretly duet with or defeat his daughter as she took lessons. On the other hand he lied for years about his mistresses and feuded viciously with Erica’s mother for the last 20 years of her life. YOSSARIAN SLEPT HERE made me burst out in open laughter at least three times in public so I must recommend it even if Erica Heller is a somewhat cranky narrator (a chip off the old block, perhaps) and she has a rather fluid feel for time (I think she fudges timelines). Overall, a rewarding read.
Sometimes he was an extraordinary father but not always. He saved snowballs in the freezer to hurl at his kids on summer afternoons; he learned to play piano and flute just so he could astonish, secretly duet with or defeat his daughter as she took lessons. On the other hand he lied for years about his mistresses and feuded viciously with Erica’s mother for the last 20 years of her life. YOSSARIAN SLEPT HERE made me burst out in open laughter at least three times in public so I must recommend it even if Erica Heller is a somewhat cranky narrator (a chip off the old block, perhaps) and she has a rather fluid feel for time (I think she fudges timelines). Overall, a rewarding read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 14, 2017
I loved this book. That is pretty much all I need to say here in four words. I loved this book. I frigging love this book, for added emphasis. Which doesn't even have anything to do with Joseph Heller, funnily enough, despite being the subject of said book and Erica Heller's father. The only work of his I've read was Catch 22, years back, and while I enjoyed the humour, the pathos, the credulity of his many, distinctive, varied characters I never felt a strong urge to chase down his other fiction. Yossarian Slept Here hasn't necessarily made me tear my hair out at all of these Joseph Heller-less years, gone and lost forever and now don't I feel silly, so much as made me wish I'd gotten around to this very memoir earlier. Coming out of the last pages it was straight into a fuzzy glow enabled googling session of Erica, not Joe, of the Hellers I launched. For a few days I wanted to keep it going by reading what I could of interviews or essays or reviews I came across. Like I said, I loved this book.
Erica Heller writes her own life, and that of her wider family and friends, in anecdote sized chapters which gives the impression of recalled memories, made vivid, comic, lyrical, heartbreaking, delightful at turns. The memoir is often too brisk and eager to move on to the next scene, the next location, the next argument to become sentimental. It doesn't linger long enough to become sentimental, which was for me a huge strength of the book. It's also a sign of how rich and complicated the lives of the Heller's could be, made painful and confused at times by their entirely understandable foibles.
One of my persistent complaints about autobiographies or plain bio's is the focus on the big picture moments to the detriment of the everyday. Too often the smaller stuff of real life is jettisoned to satisfy the Gods of the page count. Sure, I understand it; sometimes a person's life has so much ground to cover, so many highlights and stories and monuments to whatever it was made them so famous or celebrated, so worthy of a biography in the first place, that fitting it all in without requiring a wheelbarrow to carry it around means there are gonna be cuts. And the more common stuff is easily excised out compared to the really big hits. I love the small moments though. I love the everyday moments we all have, no matter how famous and rich.
Fantastically for me, then, Yossarian Slept Here has plenty of the mundane existence of the Heller family. Erica eats ice cream with her mother Shirley, post an awkward and uncomfortable chat with the school principal, worry etched on Shirley's face. Erica's brother Ted is given the new name of Zelmo by a friend, to the consternation of Shirley. Joe comes home with a goofy grin and the kind of terrible shirts he was forever proud of, and his wife less so. Joe badgering a woman for a chicken salad recipe and then never speaking to her again after she refuses to share. Food especially is a typical staple of many chapters, emerging as a central focus of their lives, but most clearly the famous author himself, who clearly loved his cuisine. It works because how many of us would say food is a central ritual and pleasure of our lives beyond the purely necessary. Details like that would probably only earn a passing reference in many another biography, but the evocative power of Yossarian Slept Here is built on this stuff.
I would also argue that a person's life cannot be solely summarised in the achievements and accomplishments which tend to get the focus but is so often hidden away in the everyday. Seeing the family eating burgers in their car and the myriad other such moments makes the breakdown in Joe and Shirley's relationship all the more painful to read. There is more of a sense of the immediate in this memoir, despite the recall of many events being decades done, that is more novelistic and full of feeling than it is strictly retrospective.
Likewise Erica addresses the complexity of her own relationship to her father, who emerges as a difficult, brilliant, uncompromising man easily admired but who I imagine would have been hard to be around, unless you were a close friend. And even then it could be dicey.
There is another touchstone to the book, a recurring narrative I was entirely unaware of before starting. That being the family's continued connection to the Apthorp, the apartment building they lived in for many years. The changing history of the Apthorp and the often famous residents who called it home proved a fascinating recurring bit player running alongside and intertwined with the tumultuous lives of the Hellers.
Finally, one more cute, but minor detail to enthuse about. Each part of the memoir is broken down according to which apartment they lived in at a particular time, which is about as fitting a way to portion out a person's life as I can think of, capped with hand drawn layouts of the apartment in question. The years we spend in any one place do feel like self contained units almost when we are packing away our belongings and shipping out to a new house or flat. It's a more human way of looking at a life, one defined by a metric of memories rather than accomplishments achieved, or by a certain number of years, which can be clinical and detached.
Yossarian is anything but clinical and detached. Its full of the joys and pains of a family who happen to have a famous author as a father.
Erica Heller writes her own life, and that of her wider family and friends, in anecdote sized chapters which gives the impression of recalled memories, made vivid, comic, lyrical, heartbreaking, delightful at turns. The memoir is often too brisk and eager to move on to the next scene, the next location, the next argument to become sentimental. It doesn't linger long enough to become sentimental, which was for me a huge strength of the book. It's also a sign of how rich and complicated the lives of the Heller's could be, made painful and confused at times by their entirely understandable foibles.
One of my persistent complaints about autobiographies or plain bio's is the focus on the big picture moments to the detriment of the everyday. Too often the smaller stuff of real life is jettisoned to satisfy the Gods of the page count. Sure, I understand it; sometimes a person's life has so much ground to cover, so many highlights and stories and monuments to whatever it was made them so famous or celebrated, so worthy of a biography in the first place, that fitting it all in without requiring a wheelbarrow to carry it around means there are gonna be cuts. And the more common stuff is easily excised out compared to the really big hits. I love the small moments though. I love the everyday moments we all have, no matter how famous and rich.
Fantastically for me, then, Yossarian Slept Here has plenty of the mundane existence of the Heller family. Erica eats ice cream with her mother Shirley, post an awkward and uncomfortable chat with the school principal, worry etched on Shirley's face. Erica's brother Ted is given the new name of Zelmo by a friend, to the consternation of Shirley. Joe comes home with a goofy grin and the kind of terrible shirts he was forever proud of, and his wife less so. Joe badgering a woman for a chicken salad recipe and then never speaking to her again after she refuses to share. Food especially is a typical staple of many chapters, emerging as a central focus of their lives, but most clearly the famous author himself, who clearly loved his cuisine. It works because how many of us would say food is a central ritual and pleasure of our lives beyond the purely necessary. Details like that would probably only earn a passing reference in many another biography, but the evocative power of Yossarian Slept Here is built on this stuff.
I would also argue that a person's life cannot be solely summarised in the achievements and accomplishments which tend to get the focus but is so often hidden away in the everyday. Seeing the family eating burgers in their car and the myriad other such moments makes the breakdown in Joe and Shirley's relationship all the more painful to read. There is more of a sense of the immediate in this memoir, despite the recall of many events being decades done, that is more novelistic and full of feeling than it is strictly retrospective.
Likewise Erica addresses the complexity of her own relationship to her father, who emerges as a difficult, brilliant, uncompromising man easily admired but who I imagine would have been hard to be around, unless you were a close friend. And even then it could be dicey.
There is another touchstone to the book, a recurring narrative I was entirely unaware of before starting. That being the family's continued connection to the Apthorp, the apartment building they lived in for many years. The changing history of the Apthorp and the often famous residents who called it home proved a fascinating recurring bit player running alongside and intertwined with the tumultuous lives of the Hellers.
Finally, one more cute, but minor detail to enthuse about. Each part of the memoir is broken down according to which apartment they lived in at a particular time, which is about as fitting a way to portion out a person's life as I can think of, capped with hand drawn layouts of the apartment in question. The years we spend in any one place do feel like self contained units almost when we are packing away our belongings and shipping out to a new house or flat. It's a more human way of looking at a life, one defined by a metric of memories rather than accomplishments achieved, or by a certain number of years, which can be clinical and detached.
Yossarian is anything but clinical and detached. Its full of the joys and pains of a family who happen to have a famous author as a father.
December 19, 2017
Erica Heller is neither particularly interesting nor intelligent. I read this book for the same reason everyone else did, which is to learn more about Joseph Heller, and that I did achieve.
June 13, 2016
More often than you'd think, people engage in dialogues that expose what they say to having a meaning different than they intended. The keen observer will be able to figure it out. Writing family memoirs, for instance, turns out to have been one such, ah, catch-22 for Erica Heller.
This is Heller's perspective on her family, which included author Joseph Heller, famous for the book Catch-22. You probably knew that already, if you decided to read this. With all due apologies to Erica Heller, it wasn't to read about her life (skimpily explored) and it certainly wasn't because we wanted an ode to the Apthorp. While she struggles to build a strong case against the impression readers will have of her father, as a brilliant writer, she details with incredible precision specific moments in her family's life. Great memory, you'll say. Almost too great...
The beginning of the memoir leaves the unmistakable impression that Erica Heller means for this to be a character assassination of her father, describing a hapless episode involving the end of her mother's life. Her parents had been divorced for years, and the daughter meant for this book to be a vindication for everything Shirley suffered when the marriage ended, and about the gross excesses that came before and after the publication of Catch-22.
How Erica became a horrible student is little pondered (about as scarce a topic as her brother, actually). She never analyzes anything, really; this is an emotional impression of the family's experiences above all else, one that seems to present a balanced portrait, but fails miserably at it. When Erica confesses to have never read Catch-22, at the end of the memoir, it should come as no surprise. She never wanted to know her father anymore than she ever did, and she betrays both him and her mother in the process.
(Here's a little conjecture, based on the available evidence from this book: Joseph Heller is born into a poor family. He goes to war, ends up feeling like a hero. He returns home, is courted by Shirley's mother. Shirley loves Joseph. Shirley and Joseph have kids, including Erica. Joseph writes a book. The book becomes wildly successful. Erica grows up hero-worshipping her father, to a certain extent. She loves the lifestyle his success gives her, at any rate. She's resentful that he spends more time in his writing career than paying attention to her. She begins to identify with Shirley's growing suspicion that Joseph's life really is about his career. Joseph cheats on Shirley. Erica believes Joseph. Joseph and Shirley divorce. Erica becomes an adult. Erica believes Shirley. Joseph determines that Shirley really was the love of his life. Shirley dies. Joseph dies. Erica writes a book about the family. She paints Joseph as the villain. She gives everyone the secret recipe. Peace at last! Right?)
Now, based on this memoir, I couldn't possibly tell you what Joseph and Shirley's marriage was like, and neither can Erica. She acts as witness, and then judge, and then jury and executioner. All this is to say, I hope one day she views all this with a little more nuance. Readers, of this book, of Catch-22, deserve better. I'm not criticizing Erica Heller as a person, but as a memoirist, she proves less than ideal. It's easy to complain. It's much harder to understand why things happened the way they did. This was a chance for her to do that. Clearly she passed on the opportunity, or never even considered it. I'm not sure which is sadder.
This is Heller's perspective on her family, which included author Joseph Heller, famous for the book Catch-22. You probably knew that already, if you decided to read this. With all due apologies to Erica Heller, it wasn't to read about her life (skimpily explored) and it certainly wasn't because we wanted an ode to the Apthorp. While she struggles to build a strong case against the impression readers will have of her father, as a brilliant writer, she details with incredible precision specific moments in her family's life. Great memory, you'll say. Almost too great...
The beginning of the memoir leaves the unmistakable impression that Erica Heller means for this to be a character assassination of her father, describing a hapless episode involving the end of her mother's life. Her parents had been divorced for years, and the daughter meant for this book to be a vindication for everything Shirley suffered when the marriage ended, and about the gross excesses that came before and after the publication of Catch-22.
How Erica became a horrible student is little pondered (about as scarce a topic as her brother, actually). She never analyzes anything, really; this is an emotional impression of the family's experiences above all else, one that seems to present a balanced portrait, but fails miserably at it. When Erica confesses to have never read Catch-22, at the end of the memoir, it should come as no surprise. She never wanted to know her father anymore than she ever did, and she betrays both him and her mother in the process.
(Here's a little conjecture, based on the available evidence from this book: Joseph Heller is born into a poor family. He goes to war, ends up feeling like a hero. He returns home, is courted by Shirley's mother. Shirley loves Joseph. Shirley and Joseph have kids, including Erica. Joseph writes a book. The book becomes wildly successful. Erica grows up hero-worshipping her father, to a certain extent. She loves the lifestyle his success gives her, at any rate. She's resentful that he spends more time in his writing career than paying attention to her. She begins to identify with Shirley's growing suspicion that Joseph's life really is about his career. Joseph cheats on Shirley. Erica believes Joseph. Joseph and Shirley divorce. Erica becomes an adult. Erica believes Shirley. Joseph determines that Shirley really was the love of his life. Shirley dies. Joseph dies. Erica writes a book about the family. She paints Joseph as the villain. She gives everyone the secret recipe. Peace at last! Right?)
Now, based on this memoir, I couldn't possibly tell you what Joseph and Shirley's marriage was like, and neither can Erica. She acts as witness, and then judge, and then jury and executioner. All this is to say, I hope one day she views all this with a little more nuance. Readers, of this book, of Catch-22, deserve better. I'm not criticizing Erica Heller as a person, but as a memoirist, she proves less than ideal. It's easy to complain. It's much harder to understand why things happened the way they did. This was a chance for her to do that. Clearly she passed on the opportunity, or never even considered it. I'm not sure which is sadder.
September 2, 2012
Erica Heller (b. 1952) is the daughter of Joseph Heller. Her autobiography is incomplete (years are missing, some of her illnesses and relationships get referred to but not always in detail), and her biography of Heller has gaps, though it is a monument to his psychological, as well as verbal, meanness. Her brother Ted gets the best line (it would be a shame to say it here), but is otherwise rarely in the book. Shirley Heller, their mother, seems to have been treated very poorly by Heller (and by Erica, though less so), while the maternal grandparents look to have been good candidates for Gamblers Anonymous. There is much here that's not said, or known only later, and many incidents where Heller's treatment of Erica (and many others) strikes me as chilling and dreadful.
If the book was better written, the content would come out in a more remarkable way; if Erica could open up about her own faults more, as quickly and as easily as she blames others for theirs (such as Valerie Humphries, Heller's second wife, who never gets named, which is either erring on the side of legal caution or plain rudeness), then this would seem a more compelling document, and she might appear as a more sympathetic individual. Her own moroseness as a young teen, and her often mentioned inability to study at school, go unexamined, but they do bring up vital questions: did she have a learning disability, or something that prevented her from concentrating? Was she nervous at home thanks to Heller's tongue (or wit, as some would call it, she included), or because of the undercurrents of dissatisfaction her parents felt as time went on? For some other reason? There are important topics she doesn't engage with. Instead she provides mini-biographies on Mario Puzo and Speed Vogel, and many remarks on the apartments her family lived in. Erica's short-lived marriage to Pieter van Pan is barely discussed, and not at all within the context of a child of divorced parents going through a divorce herself.
It doesn't help that she jumps around from date to date, often without good reason (when she supplies dates), and from person to person. Hopefully Tracy Daugherty's biography will supply more context. But for anyone who wants to be reassured that writers can be lousy parents, and spouses, this book is proof.
If the book was better written, the content would come out in a more remarkable way; if Erica could open up about her own faults more, as quickly and as easily as she blames others for theirs (such as Valerie Humphries, Heller's second wife, who never gets named, which is either erring on the side of legal caution or plain rudeness), then this would seem a more compelling document, and she might appear as a more sympathetic individual. Her own moroseness as a young teen, and her often mentioned inability to study at school, go unexamined, but they do bring up vital questions: did she have a learning disability, or something that prevented her from concentrating? Was she nervous at home thanks to Heller's tongue (or wit, as some would call it, she included), or because of the undercurrents of dissatisfaction her parents felt as time went on? For some other reason? There are important topics she doesn't engage with. Instead she provides mini-biographies on Mario Puzo and Speed Vogel, and many remarks on the apartments her family lived in. Erica's short-lived marriage to Pieter van Pan is barely discussed, and not at all within the context of a child of divorced parents going through a divorce herself.
It doesn't help that she jumps around from date to date, often without good reason (when she supplies dates), and from person to person. Hopefully Tracy Daugherty's biography will supply more context. But for anyone who wants to be reassured that writers can be lousy parents, and spouses, this book is proof.
October 24, 2015
I've never seen a book published by a major press in greater need of an editor. It wasn't just the patchwork-quilt factor, jumping back and forth in time between chapters and sometimes between paragraphs. It was the sentence construction. Examples (all sic):
"Meanwhile, the previous year..."
"Of course, at some point in the near future, private copiers came along..."
"It was also superb, depressing, and, many claim (including the author himself), that it was Dad's best work."
"'My Shirley,' written by a man who might literally take years to craft a sentence and certainly didn't use any, certainly not these words, lightly."
I was reading less for the story than to see what the next mistake would be. As to the story, it's interesting learning more about Joseph Heller; I liked seeing how he always seemed to answer a question with another question, for example, and the anecdotes from friends were always fun (though they tended to be paragraph-long excerpts from letters that sound like responses to "Could you share your memories of Dad for my book?" requests).
By the end, I got a good sense of what kind of father Joseph Heller was to Erica Heller and what kind of husband he was to his first wife (answer to both: complicated). I wondered what kind of father he was to his son Ted, who's mostly absent from this narrative, and I wondered how his publications and the reactions to them affected him, if at all. Erica Heller's chapter on Something Happened mostly concerns her feelings at being the subject of the chapter "My Daughter is Unhappy," and understandably so - but she also calls it "hilarious but mordant, caustically wrapped, smoldering rage," making me wanting her to delve into what she thought of this and others of his books.
Overall, the book conveys that Joseph Heller is a remarkable man, and his daughter had a remarkable life under his caustic eye, and that the Apthorp is a remarkable apartment building. But it's remarkable how much better the book could have been.
"Meanwhile, the previous year..."
"Of course, at some point in the near future, private copiers came along..."
"It was also superb, depressing, and, many claim (including the author himself), that it was Dad's best work."
"'My Shirley,' written by a man who might literally take years to craft a sentence and certainly didn't use any, certainly not these words, lightly."
I was reading less for the story than to see what the next mistake would be. As to the story, it's interesting learning more about Joseph Heller; I liked seeing how he always seemed to answer a question with another question, for example, and the anecdotes from friends were always fun (though they tended to be paragraph-long excerpts from letters that sound like responses to "Could you share your memories of Dad for my book?" requests).
By the end, I got a good sense of what kind of father Joseph Heller was to Erica Heller and what kind of husband he was to his first wife (answer to both: complicated). I wondered what kind of father he was to his son Ted, who's mostly absent from this narrative, and I wondered how his publications and the reactions to them affected him, if at all. Erica Heller's chapter on Something Happened mostly concerns her feelings at being the subject of the chapter "My Daughter is Unhappy," and understandably so - but she also calls it "hilarious but mordant, caustically wrapped, smoldering rage," making me wanting her to delve into what she thought of this and others of his books.
Overall, the book conveys that Joseph Heller is a remarkable man, and his daughter had a remarkable life under his caustic eye, and that the Apthorp is a remarkable apartment building. But it's remarkable how much better the book could have been.
December 21, 2011
Erica Heller, daughter of Catch-22 author Joseph Heller, throws open the doors on her family's history and skeletons in this funny, heartbreaking memoir. Given that there are two memoirs by Heller himself, a biography by Tracy Daugherty (Just One Catch) and many interviews Heller gave throughout his life, readers might wonder if Erica Heller will have anything new to say about her famous father.
The answer is: absolutely. While the book touches on well-known details of Joseph Heller's life, such as his friendship with celebrities like Mel Brooks and Mario Puzo, Erica Heller provides insight into life with her mercurial father. Rather than focus on his genius, she fleshes out his personality and their relationship, giving us a man who secretly follows his daughter to her new school to make sure she arrives safely but also disparages her through a thinly veiled fictional version of Erica in a published work.
While her father is the star attraction, Erica Heller's own story is the true focus of this book. Her childhood is peopled with unforgettable characters: her indomitable grandmother who refused to let poverty stop her from spending sprees; her mother, Shirley Heller, whose once-happy marriage to Joseph ended in a hostile divorce; a slew of quirky family friends; and the Apthorp, an apartment building so full of history, personality and community that it becomes a character itself. While most of our parents are mere mortals, Heller's tale of trying to meet parental expectations while finding her own path will resonate with readers everywhere.
***This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness Readers Edition. Sign up for this free and awesome newsletter at http://www.shelf-awareness.com for the latest news and reviews! This review refers to an ARC provided by Shelf Awareness.***
The answer is: absolutely. While the book touches on well-known details of Joseph Heller's life, such as his friendship with celebrities like Mel Brooks and Mario Puzo, Erica Heller provides insight into life with her mercurial father. Rather than focus on his genius, she fleshes out his personality and their relationship, giving us a man who secretly follows his daughter to her new school to make sure she arrives safely but also disparages her through a thinly veiled fictional version of Erica in a published work.
While her father is the star attraction, Erica Heller's own story is the true focus of this book. Her childhood is peopled with unforgettable characters: her indomitable grandmother who refused to let poverty stop her from spending sprees; her mother, Shirley Heller, whose once-happy marriage to Joseph ended in a hostile divorce; a slew of quirky family friends; and the Apthorp, an apartment building so full of history, personality and community that it becomes a character itself. While most of our parents are mere mortals, Heller's tale of trying to meet parental expectations while finding her own path will resonate with readers everywhere.
***This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness Readers Edition. Sign up for this free and awesome newsletter at http://www.shelf-awareness.com for the latest news and reviews! This review refers to an ARC provided by Shelf Awareness.***
November 25, 2011
Yossarian Slept Here is a moving memoir of how family dynamics and the overbearing narcissism of a father can wound and damage lives. It is a book that shows the destructive side of love. The father’s self-love is so overwhelming that it consumes and obliterates the love he has for his wife and daughter. The father needs to write and does so knowing that many of his sentences are cruel and will leave scars. The family time-line is marked by emotional duels fought between the father and daughter where wounds are inflicted but nothing is ever resolved. The father is a better shot. And the mother watches on the sidelines not having the ability to influence her overbearing husband. The daughter resists the destructive love of her father and has the capacity to forgive. She also has her father’s gift with words and she unflinchingly tells her family story with verve and wit. The daughter is Erica Heller. The setting is New York (the Apthrop) with trips to the East Hamptons, Hollywood and Europe. The father is Joseph Heller author of Catch 22. And the storyline flows with evocative vignettes of New York, the literary scene and Joseph Heller’s creative process. Erica Heller’s voice is vibrant and humour abounds leaving you laughing and crying as you turn the pages. I highly recommend this captivating and beautifully written memoir.
January 16, 2013
Erica Heller has had a passably interesting life, and has published a book about that by virtue of her famous father. This is not a book about Joseph Heller's art. It's a book, mostly, about which New York restaurants Erica likes to go to. Catch-22 is mentioned in terms of the money which it brought her family - and the opportunities for holidays, ice-creams and new restaurants this brought about. Heller's later books are only discussed for their relevance to Erica's parents' then-deteriorating marriage. Contributions to the closing pages from Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie highlight how flat Erica's own anecdotes and analysis are. For a chronicle of a moneyed upbringing and a failing marriage played out across New York eateries, read this by all means. But don't expect Yossarian to feature anywhere outside the title.
October 21, 2017
I liked this book a lot. I think it is a worthy addition to the Heller family canon. That's a joke, because all the other books in the canon were written by Joseph. I have read four of Joseph's novels and become quite an aficionado of his, so when I saw that his daughter had written a book about her and her father I was intrigued.
Erica turns out to be a very skilled writer in her own right, capturing many touching and telling and sad moments in the history of her family with considerable clarity and wit.
There is one fairly stunning revelation about her father's novels, which is that much of Something Happened was factually based. Erica claims, in fact, that some of the exchanges between Bob Slocum and his unhappy daughter in the book were verbatim transcriptions of exchanges between herself and her father.
Erica turns out to be a very skilled writer in her own right, capturing many touching and telling and sad moments in the history of her family with considerable clarity and wit.
There is one fairly stunning revelation about her father's novels, which is that much of Something Happened was factually based. Erica claims, in fact, that some of the exchanges between Bob Slocum and his unhappy daughter in the book were verbatim transcriptions of exchanges between herself and her father.
November 21, 2011
Why did Joseph Heller meet his mother-in-law before he met his wife?
Why did 6 year old Joey Heller think a funeral was a happy occasion?
Why did Joe Heller secretly follow his daughter to school?
How did the Hellers celebrate the success of Catch-22? How did the
Hellers get a 7 thousand dollar Hamptons rental for half the price?
How did Joseph Heller satisfy his enormous love of food? When did
Shirley Heller get the gift of Germany?
Is this book worth reading, or what? Absolutely!
There's much humanity revealed about this literary legend who is
celebrated by Erica Heller with words deftly arranged to move the
reader to laugh and cry and not regret a moment spent reading her
Yossarian Slept Here.
Maija Veide, New York
Why did 6 year old Joey Heller think a funeral was a happy occasion?
Why did Joe Heller secretly follow his daughter to school?
How did the Hellers celebrate the success of Catch-22? How did the
Hellers get a 7 thousand dollar Hamptons rental for half the price?
How did Joseph Heller satisfy his enormous love of food? When did
Shirley Heller get the gift of Germany?
Is this book worth reading, or what? Absolutely!
There's much humanity revealed about this literary legend who is
celebrated by Erica Heller with words deftly arranged to move the
reader to laugh and cry and not regret a moment spent reading her
Yossarian Slept Here.
Maija Veide, New York
May 8, 2012
Since Catch 22 is my all time favorite novel this book has to rate very high with me. Last week, May 2, 2012, Marge, Ellen and I were in New York. Ellen was having brain surgery to insert a brain stimulation device to lower her spasticity. As we walked up Broadway Marge insistently called to me to look at a building. When I finally turned to look I was immediately taken aback by the castle like appearance, absent only a moat, of the building. As we turned back to continue our walk I saw the name the Apthorpe on a plague above the gate. The name tickled a memory that this must be the former home of Joseph Heller. We walked into the grounds of the building and I asked the doorman if Joseph Heller ever lived there. He said he had and that we had just missed seeing his daughter Erica.
February 17, 2013
A well written and heartfelt memoir by the daughter of the author of Catch-22 describing life as it was with her father and family. In a twist which I find endearing she describes at one point a final college exam in which her Russian teacher of literature accuses her of plagiarizing a line from Tolstoy- (the preface to Anna Karenina,) "happy families are all alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.""Now how could I have come up with something like THAT?" she asks. The story of Joe and Shirley Heller's marriage is an incredibly sad one in which none concerned were left without remarkable and searing scars in its wake. She is herself a brave and courageous individual, and it shows.
September 7, 2011
Adult nonfiction; biographical essays. Joseph's daughter is a good writer, but the book is better if you read it as a collection of essays (as in, pick selections but don't bother to read straight through) rather than a narrative biography. I ended up skipping a bunch of "chapters" towards the end because the thing just went on and on, seemingly without any sort of direction. Perhaps it would be better if read a chapter or so at a time, as if Erica is sharing one anecdote at a time over the course of many, many, many conversations, rather than a whole pile of anecdotes digested over 3 or four sittings.
August 11, 2012
Lesson learned: Don't read biographies of your heroes unless you are prepared to be very let down. If you think that Catch-22 was perhaps the best book ever written, do not read this.
This book was very well written and I wish Erica Heller would write more. However, I can't say that I enjoyed reading about how the author of a book that changed the way I look at fiction mistreated his wife and children and friends -- actually, nearly everyone he came in contact with. I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing about his huge ego and massive immaturity.
This book was very well written and I wish Erica Heller would write more. However, I can't say that I enjoyed reading about how the author of a book that changed the way I look at fiction mistreated his wife and children and friends -- actually, nearly everyone he came in contact with. I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing about his huge ego and massive immaturity.
November 13, 2011
I had read "Splinters", Erica Heller's first novel a number of years ago. Since then, her writing has developed, it seems she has mellowed and grown at peace with a complicated upbringing. As opposed to the rage that many of these types of biographies portray, Heller accepts her father and even appreciates who he was. Many wonderful family anecdotes about an Upper West Side Jewish family who come into some fortune and fame. But no matter how famous or "important" Joseph Heller becomes, Grandma still has power in the potroast recipe.
November 14, 2011
Erica Heller's tale of life with her father, Catch-22 author Joseph Heller, is a fascinating and entertaining read. Fans of Catch-22 may be disappointed in the lack of extended discussion of that book, but there are so many interesting and insightful stories about the family Heller that you barely notice. Fans of Joseph Heller, New York City, or the written word will not be dissapointed at all. Written with humor in Erica Heller's wry, acerbic, yet loving voice, the book is at times laugh-out-loud funny and at others touchingly poignant. Recommended highly!
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