Jospeh Heller author page

Joseph Heller biography

Joseph Heller (1923–1999) was an American novelist, short story writer, playwright and screenwriter whose satirical vision shaped postwar literature. His debut novel, Catch-22 (1961), a dark comedy of military bureaucracy set in the Second World War, coined a term that entered everyday language to describe a no-win predicament.

Heller studied at New York University and Columbia University before working in advertising and teaching. The first chapter of his novel appeared in 1955 under the working title “Catch-18”; the book’s final title was adopted to avoid confusion with another contemporary work. A film adaptation of Catch-22 appeared in 1970.

He followed his breakthrough with a series of major novels, including Something Happened (1974), Good as Gold (1979), God Knows (1984), Picture This (1988) and the sequel Closing Time (1994). His plays include We Bombed in New Haven (1967), and his nonfiction features the memoir Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here (1998). A posthumous novel, Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man, was published in 2000.

Catch-22 was nominated for the National Book Award in 1962, and Heller died in 1999.