Understanding Joseph Heller

by Sandford Pinsker

Overview

To add a significant phrase to our language is no easy feat, but that is precisely what Joseph Heller (1923-1999) did with "catch-22," the principle of absurdist logic and bureaucratic foul-up that energized his debut novel, Catch-22, in 1961. In this revised edition of Understanding Joseph Heller, Sanford Pinsker explores the idiosyncratic vision that permeates Heller's complete body of work, as he maps the dark terrain Heller carved out, novel by novel, with considerable verbal dazzle and the uncompromising outrage of the classical satirist.

This updated edition includes new chapters on Closing Time, the sequel to Catch-22; Now and Then, Heller's memoir of growing up in Brooklyn; Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man, his posthumously published novel; and Catch as Catch Can, a collection of assorted short stories and sketches.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781570038402
Publisher:	University of South Carolina Press
Publication date:	01/11/2012
Series:	Understanding Contemporary American Literature Series
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Sanford Pinsker is an emeritus professor of humanities at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he taught courses in American literature and creative writing for nearly forty years. He has published books on the Jewish American novel as well as studies of Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, and Joseph Heller.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Preface ix

Chapter 1 Understanding Joseph Heller 1

Chapter 2 Catch-22 15

Chapter 3 Something Happened 40

Chapter 4 Good as Gold 64

Chapter 5 God Knows 86

Chapter 6 No Laughing Matter 103

Chapter 7 Picture This 125

Chapter 8 Closing Time 140

Chapter 9 Now and Then and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man 155

Coda: Catch as Catch Can 164

Notes 167

Bibliography 171

Index 177

Editorial Reviews

"Nicely balancing description with discovery, Pinsker's lively and wide-ranging study not only examines the themes and rhetorical strategies through which Heller projects his satiric vision but also locates them within the cultural context that both shapes our literature and determines, in part, what it is capable of."—Modern Fiction Studies

From the Publisher