Joseph Heller
(1923 – 1999) was an American satirical novelist, short story writer, and
playwright. Although he is remembered
primarily for Catch-22, his other works center on the lives of various members
of the middle class and remain examples of modern satire.
Early Years
Joseph Heller
was born in 1923 in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, the son of poor Jewish
parents from Russia. Even as a child, he loved to write; as a teenager, he
wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland and sent it to the New York
Daily News, which rejected it. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High
School in 1941, Heller spent the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice,
a messenger boy, and a filing clerk. In 1942, at age 19, he joined the U.S.
Army Air Corps. Two years later he was sent to the Italian Front, where he flew
60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. Heller later remembered the war as
"fun in the beginning ... You got the feeling that there was something
glorious about it." On his return home he "felt like a hero ...
People think it quite remarkable that I was in combat in an airplane and I flew
sixty missions even though I tell them that the missions were largely milk
runs" ("Milk runs" were combat missions, but mostly uneventful
due to a lack of intense opposition from enemy anti-aircraft artillery or
fighters).