Joseph Heller: 13 Years From Catch-22 To Something Happened

Last Friday writer Joseph Heller was in town for the Boston Globe Annual Book Fair, and agreed to an interview with Crimson editors Seth Kupferberg and Greg Lawless. Heller came to The Crimson that afternoon with his wife, and they were both relaxed and very friendly. The soft-voiced author of Catch-22 and the just-released Something Happened was so responsive that on several occasions he began to talk before a question had been asked. Here follow some excerpts from the discussion.

Q: I don't know where to begin. We can start--

A: You don't have to begin at all. Whose idea was it to do an interview with me, the publisher's or yours? You don't have to worry. You ask the questions and if you don't get the picture let me know.

Q: In your new book, Something Happened, the style is radically different from Catch-22. Do you see any parallel between the two at all?

A: The only parallel there is the fact that each has a very conspicuous style which I felt was appropriate to the content of the book. With the subject matter in Catch-22 I tried very much to make the style part of the content--maybe you found that yourself--the method of telling being as important as what's being told. I think the same is true with Something Happened. What I want to tell in Something Happened is so much different in terms of emotions and viewpoint than Catch-22. The choice of style I think is very much different from the style used in Catch-22...and another thing, I certainly didn't want it to read like Catch-22... Now you shut the machine off if you're not going to ask me any questions. Otherwise the tape keeps going...

At this point in the interview Heller turned to speak to his wife, who expressed her desire to see Harvard Yard, despite his evident disinterest.

We can get somebody to drive you around Harvard Yard while...ah...this is going on...you want to go see a memorial to Kissinger, or McGeorge Bundy or Schlesinger? They've got statues for all of them: Galbraith Park, Schlesinger Square...

Q: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in his New York Times review the other day said that Something Happened would anticipate the seventies just as Catch-22 anticipated the rise of the military-industrial complex in the sixties. Do you believe that?

A: No. Catch-22 was written, not before you were born, but it was partly in outline before you were born. It was published in '61. And in '61...ah...Kennedy was president. [Heller verified that Kennedy was indeed president then, and that there was an election in 1960, and continued.] It did anticipate--in the sense that it came before the Vietnam war--everything the Vietnam war brought with it, which was--it's not a phrase that I ever use--the 'military-industrial complex.' But it was there and certainly it grew with the whole morality of deception practiced by the executive in dealing with the American people and other nations, which often involves lying and distortion. But what I have to say about the military in Catch-22: I don't recall it being characteristic of the military in World War II. It was characteristing of the military during the Korean War, during the Cold, War, and became manifest during the Vietnam War. It was just a perversion of all codes of honor that are being taught at Annapolis or in American military justice. Misuse of the FBI, the CIA, misuse of the courts, the attorney-general's office, and so forth. Political persecutions. Indictments would be started, trials would be carried out even though the chances of conviction were non-existent, or if convictions were achieved reversal was a certainty afterwards--I'm referring to the Spock trial, or the Ellsberg trial, the Ellsberg trial was a continuation of these things. All these cases are political. We all know that the Ellsberg trial was an attempt by the White House to discredit Ellsberg, or else to persecute him whether they got a conviction or not. Tying somebody up in a trial for two or three years is punishment, and it's a very great punishment. As I say, I don't recall Catch-22 being characteristic, it wasn't characteristic of the military in World War II.

Q: Why did you set the novel in World War II?

A: Because I know World War II. I set it toward the end of World War II, the last few months, when Germany was not a factor. The dangers of Catch-22 don't come from the enemy--they do as far as the flak goes--but the real dangers are the ones that continue after the war comes to an end. Yossarian's own superiors and their superiors are no different from the enemy. All right, Catch-22 is about a person being destroyed by the war, about from their own superiors from within the organizations of which they are a part. That is the truth of this country.

Q: What did Yossarian do after he took off?

A: I don't know. And I don't think that's really a bona fide question to ask about a book. My book ends with him taking off...ah...and I can live with the thing like that. I don't know about the reading public. I leave with him getting out of the hospital without being either captured or stabbed by Nately's whore.

Q: But supposing he got to Sweden?

A: That becomes a different book--

Q: What would he do when he got there?

A: He doesn't expect to get to Sweden, he makes that--I make that clear. He hopes to get to Rome and take his chances from there. What does he do when he gets there? That's not part of the book. He would probably have to go underground as a fugitive...wait for amnesty...or be captured and punished. As long as he's free, he's free. I saw his being free as perhaps inspiring in others a more critical attitude, an attitude of inspection. It's the same thing with the end of Something Happened, it ends where it ends. It's not like a nineteenth-century novel which in its last few pages tells what happens for the next fifty years in each of the characters' lives.

The last line of Something Happened is in a way very interesting: "Everyone seems pleased with the way I've taken command." And that's very interesting because it seems--if you know the character--he never feels secure in any situation. He has taken command, he's gotten promoted, he's doing very well. But his use of the word "seems" rather than "is pleased"" is an indication that he's insecure, he's not sure just how pleased everyone is.

Q: In Something Happened, how come you never named the company for which Slocum worked or either the daughter or the son?

A: Or the wife. I don't know. The main reason is that I felt in this book, it would be better if they were not named. I didn't,t even say what they do. In Catch-22, where Yossarian has a first name, it's only used twice in the thing--his nickname is used more often. He's never described physically--Yossarian--other than being suntanned, and kind of large in build. I don't know why it's that way. I think that in the books I write I tend to lean away from action-packed kind of literal realism.

Also, in terms of the character's mental operations--he, like many men, when they think of certain members of their family never think of them by name, or almost never think of them by name. The only one who does have a name is the brain-damaged kid, and Slocum doesn't think of him as a member of his family. That's why I decided to give him a name.

Q: why did you choose this particular portrait of Robert Slocum, of all the different ideas you might have had for a second novel?

A: Well, listen: you don't get that many ideas. Sometimes you have to tell people who want to be writers, who ask the question, "How come you don't write one or two novels a year?", the answer is that novelist just don't get that many ideas. If they get lucky they might get one that can be developed into a novel. Writers don't have choices. Unless you're writing for a newspaper, the you're assigned to write theater or book reviews, or you interview a writer. Playwrights don't, novelists don't really have a choice of what it is they're going to do. Different kinds of writers might, you know--like Irving Wallace--if they can choose from among current events like sex, or campus radicals.

I have to get an idea I can write. If I were going to class here, and I were writing for a grade, which would mean my writing a novel, the I would pick two or three things if they satisfied the instructor, and write the best I were able to. But when you're on your own, when a writer's on his own, he's lucky if he can get one good idea. He writes only for himself, he's no longer writing for the faculty of a university. It takes a long time. It takes me longer than most, but most novelists spend at least a year or two on a book.

I wrote this book because I thought it would make a good book, and I thought Catch-22 would make a good book too. It looks like I was right in the first case and it looks like I'm going to be right in the second case. I could've been wrong. Imagine having spent, in my case, really five years of hard work experimenting with ideas, with an idea in which you have no confidence. I wouldn't be able to do anything about that. If I didn't feel very strongly about what I was doing, or I was doing it badly... I would give it up. The book wouldn't be very important to me.

I'm constantly testing out what I do in each section with my agent and with my editor, and they give me advice. It's never happened before that any book that I submitted was rejected or needed major editing. If they did reject it, I guess I would stop, because they'd probably be right.

Q: Here's a catch-22 for writers: the more time you spend writing a book to satisfy yourself, the greater the anticipation on the part of your reading audience, and the greater their expectations.

A: It worked that way with me but it probably won't work that way with most novels. It worked that way with me because Catch-22 enjoys a remarkable longevity. There aren't many books that are so widely read after so many years. I can think of only two others that date from the same period that are still read by people with enjoyment, rather than any courses they might have to read them for. The other two are Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. I cannot think of any others. Pynchon readers, I think, come mostly from courses studying contemporary literature.

Q: Did you like the movie, Catch-22?

A: I liked the movie very much. If you ask me if I liked it as an interpretation of the book then I would say that I think that's an invalid question. The movie was as good an American movie as I've seen. I was able to see the movie as it was in the making, and I didn't expect it to be that good. It's amazing what they've done with camera lenses.

Q: Do you ever anticipate Something Happened going into film? Would you want it to go into film?

A; No. I've made no effort to sell it. My agent has been told not to contact me about it at all until he has a very impressive offer he thinks I'll accept.

Q: Where are you going from here? Any strong ideas?

A: No. Not until I'm a little less busy, and I will be very busy for the next couple weeks. It's a very good feeling, as I've explained to you, it's nice. You really don't believe it's ever going to get printed on time, and them published, and then distributed, then to see it's out in the bookstores, in New York and here, and they're reviewing it. So many things could go wrong: there could be a strike, there could be a war. [He looked at his wife in mock surprise.] What? You're not worried about any of this?

Mrs. Heller: I still can't believe it's finally out.

A: You really don't believe me. With Catch-22 there was a paper strike, there was a copy-editor who misunderstood her instructions and rewrote whole paragraphs and changed the names, and made corrections. She missed the whole style. She'd edited--and very well--William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. She was very good at that. Well, she took Catch-22 and began making it historically correct; putting in dates where I didn't want dates. So all that happened during the four weeks she was working on it, all that was useless. Not only useless, but then I had to take out all her "corrections" and then send it back to somebody else--we wasted a week or two doing that. And then there was a strike after that.

But everything seems to hve gone perfectly with this new book. And you can see that you've caught me in a mood of great emotional elevation: it's going to be successful, I feel I deserve it, and I love it!

After Catch-22 was published I was down to a couple of parties, and some people complained about me to my editors, saying that I seemed to be enjoying my success too much. They had an idea that I was supposed to look like Thomas Wolfe, with this aura of suicidal melancholy.

Q: I'm curious about the autobiography in Something Happened. I understand you spent a couple of years in advertising--how much of Something Happened is taken from your advertising career?

A: It's less than was taken from my war experiences for Catch-22. What I got from that experience was some sense of the corporate operation. It was not mine--I enjoyed my job very much, I didn't stay nearly as long as Slocum does. I never aspired to as much as he does. I was not his age as when he's there. If I had one of my jobs and knew I was going to stay there for twenty or thirty years I might have gotten very depressed over it. But I was writing Catch-22 and knew it was going to be published, and felt I'd get out of there when it was doing pretty food. So it's not autobiographical, but I was able to observe a good many people.

Q: Is that where a lot of the characters come from?

A: No, I wouldn't say that. I don't think any of my characters are based on anyone I knew . . . well, one character in Catch-22 is based on somebody I knew. Hungry Joe is based on a guy who was named Joe Crenkow. But, otherwise characters--they tend to be general types. I tried to get a caricature, especially in the portraits of Catch-22, where you're give as predominant characteristics something that would be recognizable to the audience so they could see that person as being like someone they knew. It's one of the reasons I don't describe anybody too much physically in Catch-22. I tend to give them one or two or three outstanding, peculiar ironies. Then I hope that the reader will be able to fill in the rest of the picture. They were able to do that in Catch-22. I think it's pretty much the same thing for Something Happened. It doesn't attempt to be a complete history--it's not literal realism. If anything, it's psychological realism, and most everything is perceived or determined through Slocum's reaction to them. There's a high degree of what can only be called surrealism in this book; things that you know he's thinking but could not be literally true, even when presented to you literally. Even though he picks up the man-nerisms of the people he's with, it's far-fetched to believe that he'd pick up the limp of a guy he work with and not be aware of what he's doing. So twice he walks into the house and his wife says "You've been with Kagle today." (Kagle is Slocum's limping co-worker). And he says, "How do you know?" So he didn't know he's picking up a limp. Now that, I think, is surrealistic. I think a person might develop a strut or a swagger, that of somebody else with whom he associates, but certainly not a limp. whom he associates, but certainly not a limp.

Q: There's a strange sense of identity in your character. For example, when he picks up a friend's stutter. There's one passage where he's described as four different people.

A: He imagines there's a person living inside his head, then another person who's watching those two, right?

Q: Yet. And one unknown--

A: "I know there's one more I don't even know about." That's what he says. This last one never sleeps, and watches all three of us." What's your question? I have--

Q: The idea of a quadrephenic personality.

A: Well later on in the book. These are signs that I believe, are clinical symptoms of psychosis or schizophrenia. And what I have done by setting up another person in his head--which is the one that wants to kick Kagle, it's not him--it's almost suggesting the idea of a split personality, although it's not. But he, himself is tending to somewhat because he's saying, "There's somebody inside me who wants to do these things that I'm ashamed of I'm too nice a guy to do this." Then he has to create a third one, to supervise the other two. The a fourth one that's watching everything--he never sleeps, never lets anything go too far. What I'm trying to do is set up again a process of alienation from oneself: "depersonalization," that's another clinical term.

And later in the book he has two passages in which he talks about how he's got a universe in his head, maybe three times, where he imagines multitudes of people lurking around in his head and, I think, some he knows and some he doesn't. They're the people he thinks about, the people who infest his dreams. Sometimes he thinks he wants to get them all out in the open, like a policeman and line them up to see who they are. That's the kind of thing, I think, a schizophrenic would have. Except Slocum never is a schizophrenic; it's a schizoid formation, which normal people have, it's about being schizophrenic. And I'm using that deliberately.

Q: What are you driving at with that kind of schizophrenic portrait?

A: I don't know. I mean I can't say now. What I'm dealing with is a disorganized personality, a personality that can't be integrated in a way that the healthiest of personalities should be, the way more and more people I know about, people having trouble integrating their personality so solidly that there's never any anxiety, never any doubt or irrational feelings of inadequacy, never these kids that they can't understand. It's becoming harder and harder for people to achieve in their work, for a personal senses of identify or integration of personality.

Q: William Faulkner talked about modern novelists in his Nobel speech and how they have to deal with conflicts of the heart, with pride, and love, and lust. And it seems here in Something Happened you're dealing with nothing more than a kind of middle-class angst.

A: Well, it's not different from what I think Faulkner was talking about if we can understand what he meant. Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech is not really very intelligible to people now. At the time he made it the newspapers loved it because it had this language of sentiment and antiquity. I would think the Slocum is dealing very strongly in the same way that Faulkner's characters were. But I would not like to measure Something Happened against Faulkner's statement, in Faulkner's terms. You see, Faulkner is speaking romantically; we no longer speak romantically. We know that the only conflict the heart has is whether it keeps beating or not; if the artery gets a clot. We don't have conflicts of the heart, we have conflicts of the head. That's what I mean by his speech being romantic. What he means by conflicts of the heart can now be interpretted as conflicts of the mind, about the emotions. He was talking as if the heart were the center of the emotions, which was a great thing for song-writers of the thirties and forties.

And when Faulkner said at the end of his Noble Prize speech that man would endure I don't think anybody today would take him seriously. Of course not writers, which isn't saying that it doesn't bother me. But I think it was poetic expression