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Joseph Heller was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is his debut novel Catch-22 (1961), a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twice, in 1972 and 1975.
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culture · American writer (1923–1999) · writer · screenwriter · novelist · playwright · journalist · prose writer · autobiographer · also Joseph Heller, Heller
Born 1 May 1923 · Died 12 December 1999 · Q208101
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I detest it. I oppose it. I think we should stop and get out--using rear guard action. We
87%The New York TimesSource
“that in good conscience I had to get involved. I gave him money and I made speeches and signed my name. I gave very good speeches. He lost because of the nature of American politics. I don”
“I detest it. I oppose it. I think we should stop and get out--using rear guard action. We”
“Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably.... It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.”
“Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.”
“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.”
“Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb!”
“They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.”
“You know, that might be the answer — to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.”
“But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don't make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.”
“Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. And Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action.”
“How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?”
“If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?”
“The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?”
The Guardian: Reading group: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Died 1999-12-12.
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“Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts — and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?”
“Yossarian zawdzięczał zdrowie ćwiczeniom fizycznym na świeżym powietrzu, pracy zespołowej i duchowi sportowemu, gdyż uciekając przed tym wszystkim odkrył po raz pierwszy szpital.”
“Yossarian kochał się w pokojówce w cytrynowych majtkach, ponieważ była chyba jedyną kobietą, z którą mógł się kochać nie ryzykując, że się w niej zakocha.”
“Generał był przeciwny małżeństwu swojej córki z pułkownikiem Moodusem, ponieważ nie lubił chodzić na śluby.”
“Martwię się o Yossariana – zasępił się Milo – Nie jestem pewien, czy mu ufam. Obawiam się, że nadal jeszcze jest uczciwy.”
“Czy nie chciałbym poinformować cię, gdyby było inaczej?– Ale czy poinformowałbyś?– To by zależało.– Od czego?– Od tego, czy mógłbym powiedzieć ci prawdę.– A powiesz mi prawdę?– Czy ja wiem co to jest prawda?– Czy mógłbyś mnie okłamać?– Tylko gdybym znał prawdę.– Widzę, że jesteś ze mną szczery– Wymaga tego mój ojciec.”
“Postać: Dawid w powieści: Bóg wie”
“When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, "Who has?”
“Do czego to podobne, żeby człowiek w jego wieku narażał tę resztkę życia, jaka mu pozostała, dla czegoś tak absurdalnego jak ojczyzna.”
“Aarfy był autorytetem w sprawie prawdziwej miłości, ponieważ pokochał prawdziwą miłością ojca Nately’ego i perspektywę pracy u niego po wojnie na dobrym stanowisku w nagrodę za przyjaźń z Natelym.”
“Z dziewczynami, jak ze wszystkim innym, nawet w wojsku, jest tak, że kiedy dasz ludziom do zrozumienia, czego chcesz, i naprawdę się przy tym upierasz, prawdopodobnie ci na to pozwolą.”
“Opis: M2 jako przedstawiciel korporacji M i M, należącej do jego ojca, Milo Minderbindera.”
“Nie potrafił zrozumieć, że cała przyjemność polegała dla mnie na czarowaniu kobiety, a nie otrzymaniu jej w prezencie.Claire wszystkiego się domyśliła.– Nie, Lew, tylko nie to – powiedziała, kiedy znaleźliśmy się w samochodzie – Nigdy więcej. nie na moich oczach.Przyjąłem to do wiadomości i z tego co wiem, nigdy więcej nie działo się to na jej oczach.”
“Zdrowie to coś, czego nigdy nie można być pewnym przez dłuższy okres czasu.”
Released a memoir, Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here, in which he relived his childhood as the son of a deliveryman and offered some details about the inspirations for Catch-22
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“Joseph Heller - Closing Time”
Heller told The Times "[w]hen I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has
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“[w]hen I read something saying I”
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And was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the college
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Married Valerie Humphries, formerly one of his nurses when he had Guillain–Barré syndrome
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Awarded Prix Médicis étranger (1985).
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Heller wrote a play called We Bombed in New Haven
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And, combined with his royalties, made Heller a millionaire
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“My book came out in 1961[;] I find it funny that nobody else has noticed any similarities, including Falstein himself, who died just last year”
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To mixed reviews, with the Chicago Sun-Times calling it "the best American novel in years", while other critics derided it as "disorganized, unreadable, and crass"
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The novel's title was changed to Catch-22 to avoid confusion with Leon Uris' new novel, Mila 18
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As "Catch-18", in Issue 7 of New World Writing
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Heller thought of the lines, "It was love at first sight
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“Both have central characters who are using their wits to escape the aerial carnage; both are haunted by an omnipresent injured airman, invisible inside a white body cast”
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When The Atlantic ran one of his short stories
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Heller spent the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, a messenger boy, and a filing clerk
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In Coney Island in Brooklyn, the son of poor Jewish parents, Lena and Isaac Donald Heller from Russia
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Born 1923-05-01.
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Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably.... It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.
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