Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (Vintage) [Paperback]

Joseph Heller (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vintage | Publication Date: January 26, 1999

From the author of two of our most legendary novels, Catch-22 and Something
Happened, comes a slyly funny, vastly revelatory memoir that is at once a loving
evocation of a lost America and an exploration of the frontier where life turns
into literature.

Now and Then follows Joseph Heller from his fatherless childhood on the
boardwalks of Depression-era Coney Island, where he grew up amid the rumble of
the Cyclone and the tantalizing aroma of Mrs. Shatzkin's knishes. It offers a
dizzying bombardier's-eye view of the sky over wartime Italy, where Heller
encountered the characters and incidents he would later translate into Catch-22.
It depicts a writer coming to terms with both rejection and celebrity. Here, in
short, is a life filled with incident and insight, recollected with  subversive
humor, exquisite timing, and a fine appreciation for the absurd.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Catch-18 was the intended title of Joseph Heller's most famous novel, Catch-22, which the author renamed to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's bestseller Mila 18. It's hard now to imagine anyone ever mistaking a single line written by Heller for the work of someone else; his atmospheric new memoir grabs readers' attention with the same plain, powerful prose; blunt, but oddly tender, humor; and striking ability to recreate a particular time and place that distinguishes all his fiction.

The brief, haunting section on his air force service confirms that Heller drew on his own experiences for Catch-22. But it's his boyhood home, Brooklyn's Coney Island in the 1920s and '30s, that prompts Now and Then's best pages. You can practically taste the cheap ice cream and hot knishes, hear the shrieks of kids on the amusement park's hurtling rides, see the facades of long-demolished apartment buildings, and smell the sand-and-salt odor wafting from the beach. The dignity and emotional reticence of Heller's widowed mother, the security he felt in an impoverished but safe immigrant neighborhood, come to life just as vividly.

Scattered anecdotes about famous friends (including Irwin Shaw and James Jones) are also evocative, and occasional comments about his novels' themes reveal Heller to be a better self-critic than most writers. But it's his affectionate tribute to a vanished New York that most clearly displays this popular author's narrative skills and engaging personality. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

From his scrappy beginnings to life in the Hamptons.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Ed edition (January 26, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375700552
• ISBN-13: 978-0375700552
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.2 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,309,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923. In 1961, he published Catch-22, which became a bestseller and, in 1970, a film. He went on to write such novels as Good as Gold, God Knows, Picture This, Closing Time (the sequel to Catch-22), and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. Heller died in December 1999.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Representation of Heller's Psychology and Style, June 12, 2001

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (Vintage) (Paperback)

If you are like me, you are tempted by autobiographies of writers whose work you love. You hope to get that extra bit of insight that will expand your appreciation of their writing. Usually, these hints come from long passages about writing and inspiration concerning those works. In Now and Then, Mr. Heller is more laconic about that sort of information than many writers are. On the other hand, he is very generous in explaining his personal psychology, demons, work habits, and writing blocks. You will come to appreciate that Mr. Heller is a man beset by some important demons who overcomes them with wry wit that delights almost everyone. The book's weakness is that you will perhaps get more knowledge about Coney Island in the 1930s than you had counted on. If you are from Coney Island, on the other hand, you will revel in all of the myriad details and will want to give this book more than five stars.

Mr. Heller takes great pleasure in his success, his career, his recognition, and his accomplishments. He takes equal delight in his ability to use language with precision and erudition. The autobiography allows him plenty of opportunities to focus on all of these pleasing elements. To make this self-indulgence more palatable to the reader, he pokes a bit of fun at himself with gentle irony.

But all of this seeming self-indulgence is really procrastination to delay dealing with the painful parts of his life story. His father's death while he was young, and later exposure to the horrors of war in World War II left a deep stamp on his emotional make-up. The book describes an important catharsis as Mr. Heller identifies what he learned from psychoanalysis and the pscyhological testing that his employers applied. His self-descriptions perfectly mirror his characterization of what happened in a typical psychoanalysis session. He would tell witty stories, jokes, and did everything possible to please the analyst . . . so he would not have to focus on the problems that faced him that day. And so the book does the same.

I came away with a new appreciation for Mr. Heller after coming to see how much of his great writing and humor serve as his defense against deep emotional wounds. I hope that we can all learn how to cope as well.

After you finish this book, think about where you procrastinate. What is it that you are trying to avoid facing about yourself?

Tell the truth . . . and make it interesting if you want to help others! You may also help youself.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Memoir With A Catch, December 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (Vintage) (Paperback)

Marguerite Oswald, the loquacious and vaguely lunatic mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, once announced her intention to write a memoir with the title "This and That," a title suggestive of the scattered contents of her always-busy mind.

Now, Joseph Heller is no Mother Oswald -- thank heaven for that -- but reading his memoir, "Now and Then," I couldn't help thinking that he should have filched Oswald's unused title for his own. For Heller, the author of the bitterly funny "Catch-22" and several other less winsome novels, has filled the pages of this somewhat disorderly memoir with a collection of remembrances that have no more logic to them than a dream.

Still, Heller is Heller, and even the most jumbled segments of this generally affable memoir have their share of insightful observations and amusing asides. Heller's memories of his Coney Island childhood are laced with sardonic humor and bathed in a warm glow of nostalgia. He tells of his first (and last) ride on the Cyclone at Luna Park (as a returning Air Force airman with 60 missions under his belt); of street games of "punchball" (a sort of stickball without the stick); of swims out to the bell buoy at Coney Island Beach -- which he only now recognizes were exceedingly dangerous ventures.

Most of this memoir deals with Heller's childhood, his stint in the Air Force and his years as a young adult. Aside from relating his early struggles to get into print (one of which involved a story called "Did You Ever Fall In Love With a Midget Weighing Thirty-eight Pounds?"), Heller provides few insights into his career as a writer.

But the crumbs he gives are intriguing enough. He notes that over the years his memories of wartime incidents have gotten so intermingled with his fictional versions of them he can't always tell them apart. But there are some things he'll never forget. Like most writers, Heller is unable to forgive a bad review, including one rather unkindly review of "Catch-22" from the New Yorker, which declared that the novel didn't "even seem to have been written; instead, it gives the impression of having been shouted onto paper." Heller restrains himself from gloating over the book's triumph over its early critics, but, as he notes with blunt honesty, "What restrains me is the knowledge that the lashings still smart, even after so many years, and if I ever pretend to be a good sport about them, I am only pretending."

An eclectically myriad view of and by the author of Catch-22.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful retrospective about a fairytale time., March 22, 2001

By 

Terry S. Young (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (Vintage) (Paperback)

As a person who also grew up in Coney Island all be it some thirty years after Mr. Heller did, I found this book to be a delight. It was really something to read about some of the people that I knew and some that my parents had told me about, as well. I totally disagree with the premise of some of the other reviewers about Heller not giving insight into how he came about to write such a classic as, "Catch 22". Actually it is in fact the environment, ethnicity and characters of Coney Island of that era that gave him his wonderful wit. I should know I have plenty of them in my immediate family. It was also nice to know that I am not the only one who felt the way that he did about swimming out to the bell buoy. All that aside, the book is very interesting and profound, and definately gives us all an insight into the heart, mind and life experiences of one of Americas great satirical authors.