Joseph Heller: God Knows (1984)

Edition: Black Swan, 1985
Review number: 1235

Even for the most dedicated Heller fan, and the impact of Catch 22 created vast numbers of them, his second and third novels are frequently heavy going. But then eventually (over twenty years into his career, for he was never a particularly prolific novelist) came God Knows - immediately accessible, hilariously funny and wickedly subversive.

The idea behind God Knows is simple. David, King of Israel, author of the psalms, recounts his life while on his deathbed, in the voice of a twentieth century American Jewish patriarch. To work, this has to be done extremely well, as is it no easy thing to write a narration that convincingly comes across as being from the mind of a man recognised as one of the greatest poets in history.

Apart from the difficulty in matching up to his literary merit, David is an excellent choice for this type of novel. He has quite a lot of space devoted to him in the Bible, which records many fascinating events in his life but which also leaves room for Heller to expand on the characterisation of him and those around him (Heller's portrayal of Solomon is particularly amusing). The picture painted of him is neither black nor white in 2 Samuel in particular is neither black nor white morally, making him a more interesting subject for a novel than (say) the prophet Daniel. And there is his importance as an influence on history and an icon for Jewish culture - it is no accident that the star of David was made the symbol of the Zionist movement and now appears on the flag of the state of Israel. (As he asks out at one point, "Does Moses have a star?".)

A lot of the humour in God Knows stems from the use of anachronism in a way that reminds me of Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon. An example of the type of joke used is when David tells his generals to "send a wire", only to be reminded that telegrams haven't been invented yet (the joke being not only that they don't exist, but also that every one knows what they are). This kind of humour is one which quickly becomes wearing, so it's good that Heller doesn't use it to excess; it would have been easy to put jokes along these lines into every paragraph, and that would have killed the novel stone dead. He also makes most of its uses more subtle than the example I've given. Much more pervasive is the use of anachronism in a more indirect form, as Heller gives characters stereotypical Jewish roles from twentieth century America; this also introduces an element of satire.

David's life inclded a fair amount of personal unhappiness, so God Knows is not a sunny novel, even if the humour in it is not as bleak as that in Heller's earlier novels. It is part of the Jewish father stereotype to complain about his children, but David really had a lot of grief from his - the death of Bathsheba's first child, slain by God as punishment for David's sin in sleeping with another man's wife and sending her husband to his death; the rape of his daughter Tamar by his son Amnon; the rebellion of his son Absalom. (And Heller adds the stupidity and humourlessness of his son Solomon - "Schlomo, that schmuck".) However, to Heller, David's relationship with God was the most significant in his life, and though he makes David make light of it, it is clear that the character regrets the withdrawal of God's voice of guidance more than anything else (this was another consequence of his adultery with Bathsheba).

From a literary point of view, God Knows is one of the least significant of Heller's novels. On the other hand, it is among his most accessible and enjoyable - and it will make you laugh out loud.

Joseph Heller: Something Happened (1971)

Edition: Black Swan, 1990 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1180

It took a decade for Heller to produce his second novel, and it is one on which critical reception has been divided. It is the story of Bob Slocum, a successful executive (and even after 550 pages we still don't quite know exactly what he does or what the company he works for produces) in late sixties Connecticut. He isn't particularly happy at work despite his success, and he doesn't have a particularly happy home life (he has three children, a teenage daughter and two younger sons, one of whom is seriously brain damaged). As narrator, Bob spends much of the novel looking back on his past, in a way to me reminiscent of the Talking Heads' song Once in a Lifetime. His problem is that he ought to be happy - he has succeeded in everything that is part of the American Dream - but he isn't.

The American Dream gone sour is, in fact, what the novel is about. The emptiness of the idea plays the same role here as the evils of war do in Catch 22. This is obviously a less exciting subject, and despite the extra work Heller puts in it still leaves his second novel less successful than his first - less funny, less biting, less tragic, less gripping. Where it succeeds best is in atmosphere; in this, it inhabits the same claustrophobic, dysfunctional worlds as the much later films with similar backgrounds and purpose, The Ice Storm and American Beauty. (I actually watched the latter while reading the novel, and they are so close in tone, partly because the situation of the narrator is basically the same, that the one seems almost an adaptation of the other.)

There is irony in the novel's title because it is almost entirely reflection on how Bob got to his current situation; virtually nothing happens. Something Happened is a long novel, and it is quite repetitive, making it seem even longer. This can be a bit of a problem, and some parts are hard going (the section about how his able bodied son hates gym at school, in particular). But there are plenty of interesting and funny observations about human nature to encourage the reader to keep going to the end. This is a novel driven by character and by Heller's insights into middle class America, and it is mostly successful; it's problem is that it is not a classic on the scale of Catch 22.

Joseph Heller: Good as Gold (1979)

Edition: Black Swan, 1993 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1151

Heller's third novel reads almost as though it were the book of a Woody Allen film. It is about the Jewish experience in the US in the late seventies, and contains much of the same kind of bitter sweet humour so common in Allen's work. Good as Gold centres around a second generation American Jew, Bruce Gold, who is entering middle age and who is desperate to be taken seriously - as a writer, as a family member (particularly by his irascible father and brother), as someone who could make a mark in the world. Most of the story is about his desperate pursuit of a job in Washington, once he hears that the President was impressed by one of his essays. The question is, how much of his principles and his life is he prepared to sacrifice?

It is pretty familiar ground, and much of Good as Gold now comes over as dated. It naturally received the standard Joseph Heller review: someone described it as "his best since Catch 22". Other novels since have taken that title, but Good as Good is still funny and occasionally disturbing as a portrait of a man becoming overwhelmed by ambition.

Joseph Heller: Portrait of an Artist, As an Old Man (2000)

Edition: Scribner, 2000
Review number: 832

Heller's final novel, published posthumously, is about an American author in his seventies, struggling to get started on what he expects to be his final novel. He wants to create something by which he will be remembered, rather than something which will be compared disparagingly to his famous first novel, as all his subsequent fiction has been. (As he says, though, you can only burst triumphantly onto the scene once.)

Like the novel to which it makes clear reference, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, there are obviously many autobiographical elements to Heller's tale of Eugene Pota (POTA - Portrait Of The Artist). It is perhaps not intended to be such a general depiction of the nature of the artist (note the title changing "the" to "an"). After all, people in old age are more individual than children and teenagers, simply because they have had more time for their experiences to differentiate them.

The inevitable thing that the reader does is to compare Heller's last novel with his earlier work, precisely what Eugene Pota complains about. It seems to me to be gentler than the earlier novels that I have read, much more resigned to the world even than Closing Time. It is humourous, particularly in the false starts Pota makes toward his final novel, and it is full of ironic references to Heller (at one point Pota complains that he is stuck in a Catch-22, for example). It reads rather like a John Barth novel rather than a Joseph Heller one, and it is certainly much more self-consciously literary in character (which is of course because it is about writing a novel and is part of the joke).

I like Portrait of an Artist, As an Old Man. It may lack the fire of Catch-22, the sense that what you're reading is one of the great novels, but it is clever and enjoyable, gentle, funny and accepting old age with dignity and wry sadness. It is probably Heller's most original novel, with (as always) the exception of his first.

Joseph Heller: Closing Time (1994)

Edition: Pocket Books, 1995
Review number: 367

Almost thirty five years after finally finding a publisher for Catch 22, Heller wrote a sequel. Through this period, every book he has produced has suffered from comparison with his first novel. He has never managed to combine the elements of farce and tragedy so well as was made possible by his theme of helplessness in the face of official stupidity.

Many elements from Catch 22 are present, transformed, in Closing Time. In Pianosa, the characters were terrified of being killed in the war. Back in the States fifty years later, they are terrified of dying of cancer. Sudden death from illness replaces sudden death from warfare as the driving force in the background. This is a fear which it is easier for most readers today to identify with, I suspect.

Using these characters from the past makes Closing Time an unusual novel in at least one respect. Few novels have all the main characters in their sixties and seventies; adolescence is probably the most common age for a protagonist.

There is a different emphasis, too, in the attitude towards official stupidity and duplicity. The anger of Catch 22 is replaced with resignation. "This is how the world is, and nothing we can do will change it" is a viewpoint more appropriate for the seventy year old. There is less energy in Closing Time; it does not grab you in the same way that Catch 22 does.

One result of this is that you read three quarters of the book feeling that it is not as good as Catch 22. Then Heller suddenly pulls out the rug from under your feet, and its then a rollercoaster ride to the end. You are too gripped to distance yourself from the book, even just far enough to consider its quality. But, after finishing it, I was not convinced that it was up to Catch 22's standard. The tragic is not so tragic - the death or nearness to death of a seventy year old is difficult to make so affecting as that of the same character at twenty - and the comic is not so comic - this is the lack of energy again. Perhaps the best thing Heller has written since Catch 22 (though I have an affection for God Knows, because I like the idea behind it), Closing Time is not quite its equal.

Joseph Heller: Catch 22 (1961)

Edition: Corgi
Review number: 236

Joseph Heller's best known novel is probably the greatest work of literature to be based around the experiences of World War II. It manages to be both hilariously funny and terribly sad. Heller makes each of the man in the USAAF flight based at Pianosa a believable individual, each of the front-line fliers responding to the stresses of the war in the air in different ways, and each of those who are in the army bureaucracy behind the lines wrapped up in the totally unimportant in their own different ways.

While the war itself provides most of the tragedy, it is the clash between the bureaucracy and the fliers that provides the comedy. This clash is exemplified by the famous Catch 22 itself, described as "the best catch there is". The medics can ground anyone who is crazy, provided that they request it; but (as fear in the face of danger is a normal human reaction), anyone who requests grounding is not crazy, so they cannot be grounded. (From a logical standpoint, it depends on an error: sanity does not purely consist of fear of danger, so it should not be the only criterion used to determine madness.)

This sort of crazy logic pervades the whole novel, so that Milo Minderbinder can make a profit selling eggs for a loss, Major Major will only see people in his office when he's out, ex-PFC Wintergreen becomes the most powerful man in Mediterranean Operations because he controls the mimeograph machine, and the pattern made by the bomb craters on the aerial photograph taken after the mission is of more concern than the military effectiveness of the bombing.

Heller manipulates the craziness of the atmosphere through the way he plays around with chronology. The events catalogued in the book are arranged in an order which makes them seem to both follow the chronology and ignore it. For example, statements in the account of event x like "this was the most fun Orr had had since y" imply that y occurred before x even though x is described first. On the other hand, the commanding officer keeps raising the number of missions a man has to fly before becoming eligible for leave back to the US, and this number increases in the order in which events are described in the book, so that it might be 45 during x and 60 during y - implying that x occurs before y.

Tragic events tend to recur, as they take an important place in the minds of the fliers - Snowden bleeding to death, the men on the raft, and so on. The absurdity with which they are surrounded makes them even more telling, and has been frequently imitated (notably in MASH).