Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 4, 1994 TAG: 9410220019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAULA SPAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: EAST HAMPTON, N.Y LENGTH: Long
In the early '60s it was a slogan on a sticker, a graffito, a show of solidarity with the on-the-lam hero of Joseph Heller's ``Catch-22,'' already progressing from cult novel to contemporary classic.
Now, it's the simple truth. John Yossarian, the reluctant World War II bombardier who vowed ``to live forever or die in the attempt,'' is 68 and semi-retired. He avoids eating eggs and is prone to ``late-life depression.'' His creator has brought him back for an encore in ``Closing Time,'' billed as the sequel to ``Catch-22,'' and by definition a major publishing event.
His creator looks on this work - his sixth novel, anticipated for seven years, freighted with all the burdens of memory - and sees that it is good. Very good.
``It's a literary accomplishment,'' Heller says.
``There is a general feeling now that I've written three very significant novels: `Catch-22' and `Something Happened' [published in 1974] and ``Closing Time,' '' Heller further says.
And sometime later he declares himself ``secure now with my reputation as a novelist - it was shaky for a while - because of what I assume to be the quality of `Closing Time.' ''
He could be quite wrong about all of this. To date, most reviews of ``Closing Time'' have ranged from tepid to caustic, with Publishers Weekly finding it ``a tired, dispirited and dispiriting novel,'' and Newsweek scolding, ``Yossarian deserves better and so do we.'' So far, only the New York Times Book Review has been admiring. The Book-of-the-Month Club took a pass. Even friends and allies in publishing think a sequel to a book as cherished as ``Catch-22,'' which has sold more than 10 million copies, inevitably risks comparisons and disappointments.
But Heller, enjoying the warmth of a fall afternoon in the country, shifting his patio chair so that the fading sunlight can bathe his already ruddy face, exudes nothing but pleasure and anticipation. He's even looking forward to his book tour.
Critics' opinions? ``I don't think this particular novel will be affected very much by reviews.''
Is he worried about the reception awaiting ``Closing Time,'' which might be his last novel (he's 71), or is he as impervious to slings and arrows as he says? ``I don't think he knows himself,'' says his daughter Erica, also a novelist, who's given up trying to figure him out. ``He's very cryptic. At any given point during a day, probably one of those is true.''
But it's also true that this is the New and - friends say - Improved Heller, who genuinely feels more serene and secure after a harrowing struggle with an illness called Guillain-Barre syndrome. When he was stricken, in late 1981, he was unable for many weeks to chew food or turn himself over in his hospital bed. Now he seems almost pleased to point out his few lingering symptoms, because they are so minor that a visitor may not notice the tremor in one hand, the slight slurring of certain vowels.
``I think the worst that could happen to him happened. Afterwards, I don't think he worried much about what might happen,'' says Heller's longtime buddy, novelist Mario Puzo. As for ``Closing Time,'' says Puzo, ``He's satisfied with it. That's the thing.''
Catch-23
In good weather he works here by the pool, writing longhand on a pad - an older but not elderly looking guy who stays in shape, has retained an aureole of white hair and ignores warnings about ultraviolet rays.
Once the consummate New Yorker who hated to venture too far from newsstands and Chinese restaurants, Heller during his recuperation retreated to the shingled Colonial that had once been his summer home. He stayed, along with the nurse who helped him recover, who is now his second wife.
It was here that a sentence occurred to him about someone dreaming of his mother and knowing that he was about to die. All Heller's novels have germinated this way, from a single sentence. But the someone in this sentence was Yossarian.
When people struggle for a tactful way to ask Heller about never having written another book as successful (by any definition) as ``Catch-22,'' he has a stock reply: ``Who has?''
The antic, sardonic tale of a flier who thinks the enemy is anyone who's trying to kill you (notably including one's own stupid and/or corrupt officers), ``Catch-22'' got wildly mixed reviews when it was published in 1961. But it snowballed, becoming a campus favorite in paperback, benefiting from the looming backdrop of Vietnam. Its stinging irreverence captured the hearts and minds of a generation already learning to mistrust authority. ``I don't know if it influenced people or coincided with their views,'' its author says now. Either way, it's still selling.
Catch-22, a phrase that has infiltrated the language, refers to an absurd dilemma in which each option contains within it the impossibility of solving the problem. In the novel, Yossarian wants the company doctor to ground him, to spare him from flying further missions over enemy territory, because he's crazy. But as Doc Daneeka points out, ``anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.'' Catch-22.
It happens in real life too. ``I frankly don't like sequels; I don't have faith in them,'' Heller says. But in 1987 he got a pile of money from Putnam to write a sequel to ``Catch-22,'' roughly $2.5 million of a two-book, $4 million contract. Then he couldn't write it, because he was being paid so much money. Catch-you-know-what. ``I felt pressure on my mind: Will they like it? Is it good enough? And the answer was always no.''
It took several painful years, during which Heller withdrew from his contract and left his longtime agent for another, to put the novel back on track. The deal finally struck with Simon and Schuster involved a far smaller advance: less than $375,000, Heller says. And here the book is, with a hefty first printing of 200,000 copies.
``Closing Time'' is a very different book from ``Catch 22.'' Apart from Yossarian, its backbone is a straightforward account of the lives of two men unfamiliar from ``Catch-22.'' World War II vets who grew up in Brooklyn, married and raised families, they prospered in optimistic postwar America but now see the world falling apart. ``There is a sense of aggressive, almost inevitable decay,'' Heller says. He calls Lew and Sammy, based on men he has known, his ``truest characters.'' They're also, except for King David in 1984's ``God Knows,'' his most unashamedly Jewish characters.
``It seemed to my aesthetic judgment that it would be a good thing to do in this book,'' Heller says of their [and his] ethnicity, their rootedness in a time and place. ``Unconsciously, there could've been an autobiographical motive - that I saw myself at the end of my career and wanted to write about myself.''
His new book can't long turn away from thoughts of aging, loss and death. It includes a kind of casualty list, using the names of Heller's real friends, of this person who had cancer and that one who died on a golf course, of Puzo's triple bypass and ``Joey Heller's'' worries about the eventual effects of age on his already weakened muscles. Heller, in talking about some other issue, casually invokes the title himself: ``I'm in closing time now. I've lived longer than I thought I would, I've done better than I thought, than my parents would have thought.''
\ The Heller of old was famously impatient and judgmental, ``a very rough guy to get along with,'' says Marvin Winkler, who grew up in the same apartment building. Now, ``He's sweet,'' Winkler has noticed. ``It worries the devil out of me.''
``I'm sweeter to people it's easy to be with and much shorter of patience with people who have no sociability, amiability or humor,'' Heller retorts. But he acknowledges, as the sun lowers toward the treetops, feeling less fearful than he used to. ``I have a more cheerful outlook on life,'' he says, sounding almost embarrassed.
Sometimes he says he won't write another novel; sometimes he says he probably will. The people who care about him, pointing out that he has no hobbies to speak of beyond listening to Count Basie and Lester Young and eating well, are betting on the latter. ``If they charged him money to write, he'd come up with it,'' says lifelong friend Speed Vogel. ``Reluctantly.''
After a while, leisure will begin to grate on him. ``A year will pass and I'll decide it's time to write something and get - not an idea - but a sentence,'' Heller explains. ``And it suggests things.''
He will be waiting for the sentence.
by CNB