He is also hard to judge on stylistic grounds. Personally, I have a soft spot for his third novel, Good as Gold (which his first wife's divorce lawyer described as 'The Mein Kampf of marriage'), but it is more conventional than the others.Īfter that, it is downhill all the way - his last novel, Closing Time (1994), got a $1 million advance on the strength of calling itself a sequel to Catch-22, but it was a mess.

Some cult! His second novel, Something Happened, though agreed by all critics to be his masterpiece, was far too dark to be popular. He is the hardest of all the Great American Novelists to place, partly because his oeuvre is so small (only six novels) and also because Catch-22 is that freakish and impossible thing a 'cult' novel that has sold more than 10 million copies. Actually I skipped Picture This, which even his publishers prefer to forget: it is no longer listed in the front of his paperbacks. He told me I was to correct his English when I quoted him (I won't, though) and he said, 'Can I take it that you've read all my novels?' I lied and said yes. His wife was on the phone upstairs so I didn't meet her until later we talked in the kitchen. I don't do children.' Then on to his house - a pretty and presumably very valuable bit of real estate, with a guest cottage in the garden where he writes. 'My wife likes the beach, she likes seeing all the children. Later, he decided he liked me and switched into flirtatious mode and even kept urging me to miss my jitney home, but I felt as you do with a dog that has once nipped you on the ankle 'Yeah? You wag your tail now, but I'm not fooled.' Anyway, he drove me back to his house on Long Island, with a short sightseeing detour to the rain-lashed beach. He is one of those loud-laughing, wisecracking, back-slapping, supposedly 'jovial' characters who always, in my experience, have a heart the size of a pea.

I think he thought it was a good joke to let me wait a while. He is full of apologies when he arrives 15 minutes later, but I'm not sure I'm sure I saw him drive past earlier. Eventually, I notice a Christmas tableau in the church garden and snuggle in between Mary and Joseph and the ox and the ass while the New York rain buckets down, and I curse Joseph Heller from the bottom of my heart. When I get there, it is pouring and there is no one to meet me and no shelter. He instructs me to take the jitney from Manhattan to Armagensett, Long Island, and he will meet me at the bus stop.

Joseph heller novels