The Road to Catch-22

Abstract

Joseph Heller was born on May 1st 1923 to a family of Jewish immigrants living in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. His father Isaac was a socialist refugee from Tsarist Russia who came to America in 1913. By a previous marriage he had had two children Lee and Sylvia who were reared by Joseph’s mother as if they were her own. It was not until he was 15 that Heller discovered they were in fact his half-brother and half-sister. Heller’s father had secured a job driving a delivery truck for Messinger’s local bakery, but died when Heller was only five as a result of a botched operation. The subsequent funeral meal was more like a party than the occasion of a bereavement, and Heller’s friend the journalist and biographer Barbara Gelb has argued that the true impact of this event was hidden from the young Heller, thereby causing a psychic wound which affected his whole personality. Heller himself seems to confirm this view when he admits, ‘I didn’t realize then how traumatized I was’¹