50 Fun Facts About Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller's best-known work, published in 1961, is which novel?

It was his debut, and its title became a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice.

In which Brooklyn neighbourhood was Heller born in 1923?

His 1998 memoir is titled Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here.

How many combat missions did Heller fly as a B-25 bombardier in World War II?

He later insisted most were milk runs, though people thought his service remarkable.

Heller joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942 at what age?

He had spent the year after high school as a blacksmith's apprentice, messenger boy and filing clerk.

From which university did Heller receive his M.A. in English in 1949?

He had graduated from NYU on the G.I. Bill a year earlier after starting at the University of Southern California.

Heller spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at which university?

He was at St Catherine's Society and returned there as a visiting Fellow in 1991.

Which future crime novelist worked alongside Heller at a small advertising agency?

He wrote at home after hours; his first published story ran in The Atlantic in 1948.

Which magazine first published Heller, running one of his short stories in 1948?

The story nearly won the magazine's 'Atlantic First' award.

In what year did Heller begin writing Catch-22?

The opening lines came to him one morning; he wrote the first chapter within a week and then planned for a year.

Under what title was the novel's opening chapter published in 1955?

It appeared in Issue 7 of New World Writing; 11, 14 and 17 were all considered and rejected later.

The title was changed from Catch-18 to avoid confusion with which Leon Uris novel?

Catch-11 then fell to Ocean's Eleven and Catch-17 to Stalag 17; the publisher thought 14 was not funny.

Which Simon & Schuster editor has been credited with coming up with the number 22?

He championed the book in-house and later confirmed the claim in the documentary Turn Every Page.

Who was Heller's literary agent, who sent Catch-22 to publishers when it was a third done?

Heller said he would not have finished it if nobody had been interested; Simon & Schuster paid $750 up front.

How much did Simon & Schuster pay Heller up front for Catch-22?

A matching sum was promised on delivery, which he missed by four or five years.

Roughly how many hardback copies did Catch-22 sell in the US in its first year?

In Britain it was number one within a week; the 1962 paperback later sold 10 million copies in the US.

What rank and role does Catch-22's protagonist John Yossarian hold?

He retreats to hospital with a liver condition that is almost jaundice to avoid flying.

Catch-22's squadron is based on which Mediterranean island?

The fictional 256th Squadron sits west of the Italian mainland; Heller's real unit flew from Corsica.

Heller took the name Yossarian from a wartime friend with what surname?

Francis Yohannan made the military his career and refused to discuss whether he was the real Yossarian.

Yossarian's background was changed from Jewish to what heritage before publication?

Closing Time later reveals this as a joke and makes him Armenian.

Which character introduces the term 'Catch-22' in the novel?

The army surgeon explains that asking to be grounded as insane proves you are sane.

Which Catch-22 character runs the profiteering syndicate M&M Enterprises?

His maxim echoes the GM president's 1953 line that what is good for General Motors is good for the country.

At the end of Catch-22, Orr is revealed to have rowed to which neutral country?

Yossarian pledges to follow him, which gives the dark final section its upbeat close.

Snowden's death is finally revealed in full in which numbered chapter?

The turret gunner's death haunts Yossarian in flashbacks throughout the book and the film.

Heller said Catch-22 had been influenced by Céline, Nabokov and which English novelist?

He also said the book's anti-government feeling came from the Korean War and McCarthyism, not World War II.

Where did the Modern Library's review panel rank Catch-22 among 20th-century novels?

The public poll put it 12th, and the BBC's Big Read ranked it 11th among Britain's best-loved books.

Which TV host printed 'YOSSARIAN LIVES' stickers and hid them around the NBC building?

He handed them to Heller over drinks after a 1962 Today show appearance.

Which studio bought the film rights to Catch-22 in 1962 for $100,000?

Heller grew dissatisfied and the rights were sold on to Filmways in 1967, which had already hired Mike Nichols.

Who directed the 1970 film of Catch-22?

Buck Henry wrote the screenplay and also appears in the cast.

Who played Yossarian in the 1970 film?

Voight played Milo, Garfunkel played Nately and Orson Welles played General Dreedle.

The 1970 film was shot at an airfield built near which Mexican town?

The site on the Gulf of California could only be reached by boat until a five-mile highway was built; it is now the local airport.

How many flyable B-25 Mitchells did the 1970 film's budget accommodate?

The film is credited with saving the B-25 type from possible extinction.

Which streaming service premiered the Catch-22 miniseries in May 2019?

George Clooney directed two episodes and played Scheisskopf; Christopher Abbott was Yossarian.

How many episodes did the 2019 Catch-22 miniseries run?

Clooney, Grant Heslov and Ellen Kuras each directed two.

Which actor played Colonel Cathcart in the 2019 miniseries?

Clooney was first announced in the role before switching to Scheisskopf; Laurie played Major de Coverley.

Heller's second novel, Something Happened, was published in which year?

Thirteen years after Catch-22; its hardcover and paperback both reached number one on the New York Times list.

Who narrates Something Happened?

The mid-level executive's employer is never named, though Kurt Vonnegut's review identified it as Time Inc.

Heller's 1967 anti-war play was titled We Bombed in which city?

He wrote it in six weeks; it was staged first at Yale with Stacy Keach and on Broadway with Jason Robards.

Heller's play We Bombed in New Haven delivered an anti-war message about which conflict?

It ran 85 performances on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre, where the play itself is set.

Heller's 1984 novel God Knows is narrated by which biblical figure?

It purports to be his deathbed memoirs, complete with jokes about Michelangelo's statue.

Heller's 1988 novel Picture This is built around a painting by which artist?

Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer links golden-age Athens, 17th-century Holland and modern America.

Heller's 1994 sequel to Catch-22 is titled what?

It follows an elderly Yossarian in 1990s New York alongside two Coney Island veterans.

In the 1994 sequel, how old is Yossarian, despite being 28 in 1944?

Asked about the arithmetic by the New York Times, Heller said: I know, but I decided to ignore it.

Which syndrome left Heller temporarily paralysed after a December 1981 diagnosis?

He later married Valerie Humphries, one of his nurses, in 1987.

Heller's account of his illness, No Laughing Matter, alternates chapters with which friend?

Brooks, Puzo and Dustin Hoffman appear in it as the friends who rallied round.

Heller's posthumous final novel plays on the title of a work by which author?

Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man follows Eugene Pota, whose name may abbreviate the title.

In which year did Heller die of a heart attack at his East Hampton home?

Kurt Vonnegut called it a calamity for American literature.

How many times was Heller nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature?

The nominations came in 1972 and 1975; he never won.

Which TV comedy eventually aired a script Heller wrote in the early 1960s?

He also finished the screenplay for the film of Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl.

Heller would not start a story until he had envisioned which two things?

He then worked a paragraph at a time, reworking three or four handwritten pages for hours.

In 1972 which school district removed Catch-22 and two Vonnegut books from its libraries?

Dallas and Snoqualmie challenged it later over its use of the word 'whores'.