Yossarian Slept Here
When Joseph Heller was Dad and Life was a Catch-22
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'You're Joseph Heller's daughter? How terrific!'
But was there a catch?
Like his most famous work, Joseph Heller was a study in contradictions: eccentric, brilliant and voracious, but also mercurial, competitive, and stubborn, with a love of mischief that sometimes cut too close to the bone. Yossarian Slept Here is a daughter's darkly funny, poignant memoir about growing up a Heller - from her colourful family members and her parents' tumultuous marriage, to her father's celebrity friends and the family's eccentric neighbours.
This is a story about achieving a dream, about fame and its aftermath, about squandered opportunities, lasting love and family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In addition to his novels, short stories, plays, and, screenplays, Joseph Heller (1923 1999) wrote two memoirs. Now it's his daughter's turn, looking back at her youth when her father found fame. She begins in 1945 when her parents met in the Catskills ("the Jewish Alps"), married, and moved into a grand Upper West Side apartment building, the Apthorp, Erica's evocative memory dwells on her hot butterscotch sundaes among the ladies who lunched in the splendiferous Schrafft's. She recalls 1953, when her father began writing Catch-22, and how publication nine years later changed their lives. Among many homey revelations are Heller's terrible taste in clothes (his wife dressed him), and his comments on Erica's novel Splinters ("Not as bad as I expected"). With wit punctuating lambent nostalgia, she brings her father to life in an animated, absorbing fashion, documenting his quirky habits, celebrity, and "invisible, unfathomable inner cycle," but also her parents' divorce and Heller's suffering with Guillain-Barr syndrome. The total effect is akin to leafing through a bulging family scrapbook where one finds a few blurry images among many snapshots in sharp focus. Erica Heller has inherited her father's finely tuned flair with words. 31 b&w photos.
