Publication Order of Catch-22 Books
| Catch-22 | 1961 |
| Closing Time | 1994 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Something Happened | 1974 |
| Good as Gold | 1979 |
| God Knows | 1984 |
| Picture This | 1988 |
| Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man | 2000 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Catch as Catch Can: The Collected Stories and Other Writings | 2003 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| No Laughing Matter (With: Speed Vogel) | 1986 |
| Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here | 1998 |
About Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller (1923 to 1999) was an American novelist best known for “Catch-22” (1961), a satire on war and bureaucracy whose title became a standard term for a dilemma with no easy way out. He wrote seven novels, along with plays, screenplays, short stories and two volumes of autobiography.
Heller was born on 1 May 1923 in Coney Island, Brooklyn, the son of Jewish parents from Russia. He joined the US Army Air Corps in 1942, aged 19, and flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier on the Italian Front. After the war he studied English at the University of Southern California and New York University on the G.I. Bill, took an MA at Columbia in 1949 and spent a year at Oxford as a Fulbright scholar. He taught English composition at Pennsylvania State University for two years and then worked as an advertising copywriter, writing at home.
He began “Catch-22” in 1953, and its first chapter was published in 1955 as “Catch-18”. The title was changed shortly before publication to avoid confusion with Leon Uris’s “Mila 18”. The novel follows Captain John Yossarian, an Army Air Corps airman who keeps looking for ways to avoid combat missions and is defeated each time by military bureaucracy. Reviews were mixed and the hardback sold only 30,000 copies in the United States in its first year, but after the paperback appeared in 1962 the book went on to sell 10 million copies there. Mike Nichols directed the film version, released in 1970 with Alan Arkin.
His second novel, “Something Happened” (1974), narrated by a businessman called Bob Slocum, reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. “Good as Gold” (1979), “God Knows” (1984) and “Picture This” (1988) followed. In December 1981 Heller was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, which left him temporarily paralysed. He described the illness and his recovery in “No Laughing Matter” (1986), written in alternating chapters with his friend Speed Vogel. “Closing Time” (1994) is a sequel to “Catch-22” that returns to Yossarian and other characters in 1990s New York.
Heller published a memoir, “Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here”, in 1998. He died of a heart attack at his home in East Hampton, Long Island, on 12 December 1999, shortly after finishing “Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man”, which was published in 2000. “Catch as Catch Can”, a collection of his stories and other writings, appeared in 2003.
Photo: Thomas R. Koeniges, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).