One of the towering figures of twentieth century literature and the writer who gave the phrase Catch-22 to the English language has died. Joseph Heller suffered a heart attack at his home in East Hampton in New York state. He was 76.
His death brought tributes from admirers throughout the world. His book, Catch-22, initially published in 1961 to mixed reviews, only to become a cult success and eventually an international best-seller, is now part of the canon of American literature and has been credited with telling the world much about the post-war American psyche. It has sold more than 10m copies in the United States alone.
"This is a calamity for American letters," said his friend and fellow author Kurt Vonnegut on hearing the news.
Amanda Urban, Heller's agent, said the author had died at his home on Sunday night. His death was unexpected, although he had suffered for many years from the debilitating Guillain-Barre illness, better known in Britain as ME.
Latterly, Heller had lived in East Hampton with his wife, Valerie, whom he had met when she nursed him following his first bout of the illness in the eighties. He had previously lived in the ornate and imposing Apthorn apartment building on Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where he was a member of a lively and witty wise-cracking, cigar-smoking, card-playing crew which included Godfather author Mario Puzo and various film writers.
Although his illness had weakened him, friends said he still generously gave lectures and talks on his work.
Born on May Day 1923 on Coney Island to a delivery man father, who died when Heller was five, he had written very recently about how his father's death had affected him, saying that he had tried to block it out and even pretend that his father had never existed.
It was this dark existential approach which gave Catch-22 its extraordinary resonance. His source material had come from his time as a bomber with the United States Air Force in Italy during the second world war after he had been drafted - he had been working as a blacksmith's assistant - in 1942. He flew 60 missions, twice what was normal for bombers and he attributed much of the bleak humour in Catch-22 to that time.
He started writing the book in 1953 while working as a copywriter for an advertising agency and when it was eventually published in 1961 the publishers, not realising they had a best-seller on their hands, did not even bother sending their new author on a publicity tour. However, it perfectly captured a mood in the United States at a time when blind obedience to authority was starting to be questioned. As the Vietnam war progressed, the military insanities and cynicisms of the time seemed to be mirrored in the pages of the book. Heller cited as his influences Ernest Hemingway, John O'Hara and Irwin Shaw but in truth he was an original, as evidenced by the many attempts to imitate him since.
Catch-22, which became common parlance for a no-win situation, even among people who might never have heard of Heller, was originally to have been Catch-18. It was changed on the advice of a Heller's publishing house editor to avoid confusion with another book that had 18 in the title. It features in the Oxford Dictionary as "a dilemma which the victim cannot win." The protagonist, Yossarian, remains today a symbol of the sane man in an insane world.
The book became a successful film, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Alan Arkin, Orson Welles and Jon Voight. His next book did not appear until 1974. Something Happened was not warmly received by critics, one of whom described it as "nothing happened". It dealt with the dilemmas of a successful man suffering a breakdown.
Heller took rebuffs in good part. "He was a deeply ironic man," said a friend yesterday. To suggestions that he never again wrote anything quite as magical, original and good as Catch-22, his laconic response was "Who has?"
He did continue to write, however, and five novels eventually followed Catch-22. Good as Gold came out in 1979 to warmer reviews, God Knows in 1984 and Picture This in 1988. Closing Time in 1994 brought back some of the characters from Catch-22, including Yossarian, who was by now wealthy and being looked after by a nurse and Chaplain Tappman. It was seen as a bleak tale, although Heller said it was not meant to be read as a sequel to Catch-22.
"I tend to see my people as living in a vacuum," said Heller, "Not anarchy but living in a void of meaning. It seems inevitable and natural and there's no way to resist it."
He recognised that he would always be the man who wrote Catch-22, however brilliantly he subsequently wrote, but was content with that place in literary history for a man whose first story had been turned down by the New York Daily News.
The following extract is taken from Joseph Heller's Catch 22:
Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. "Is Orr crazy?"
"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.
"Can you ground him?"
"I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rules."
"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"
"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to."
"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"
"That's all. Let him ask me."
"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.
"No. Then I can't ground him."
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied.
"Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."