“The morning after the opening sentence took shape, Heller “arrived at work”—at the Merrill Anderson Company—“with my pastry and container of coffee and a mind brimming with ideas, and immediately in longhand put down on a pad the first chapter of an intended novel.” The handwritten manuscript totaled about 20 pages. He titled it Catch-18. The year was 1953.” Happy Birthday Joseph Heller, author of the anti-war classic Catch-22, born this day in 1923 in Coney Island, New York.
Happy Birthday, Joseph Heller
The Long Littleness
A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life.
See the poet (in later life) here; and the poet-soldier about whom she wrote, here.
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The Women Warriors
"As I read her words, I experienced a feeling previously unknown to me: recognition. I had always turned to books for pleasure, as portals to other places. Reading The Woman Warrior, for the first time I saw myself on every page and in every word." For Catapult, Alexis Cheung writes about representation, being an Asian-American writer, and reading and interviewing Maxine Hong Kingston. From our archives: Kingston's work was featured in Alexander Chee's 2015 Year in Reading.
Historical Fiction Focuses on the 20th Century
The Walter Scott prize did an analysis of prize submissions since its eight years of existence-with 650 novels submitted-and found that "38% of its submissions were set in the 20th century, while 19% were set in the Victorian era, between 1837 and 1901." They also found many of the submissions focus on World Wars II and II and that the number of women historical fiction writers submitting their work has gone up."The [Walter Scott] Prize celebrates quality, innovation and longevity of writing in the English language, and is open to books first published in the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth," the breakdown is fascinating.
Tom Stoppard’s Pink Floyd Play
“Sir Tom Stoppard has written a play for BBC Radio 2 to mark the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon featuring Bill Nighy and Rufus Sewell.” Huh, so it looks like Stoppard still isn’t slowing down.
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Writerly Relations
In an interview with Big Think back in 2008, David Remnick said of Philip Roth that the writer “would have been my father had Philip Roth not been a literary intellectual but rather an orthodontist in North Jersey.” At The New Yorker’s website, Remnick eulogizes Roth's work upon his retirement. (Keith Meatto did the same thing for us.)
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The anticipations of a Most Anticipated book
Not every worthy book finds the audience it deserves as quickly as Edan Lepucki's California. John Warner writes about the long aftermath of finding his debut, The Funny Man, featured in our 2011 Most Anticipated Book Preview: "I wondered, what if? Maybe this was going to be the next phase of my life, and when people asked me what I did, I’d say that I wrote novels." His new collection of short stories is Tough Day for the Army.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Doerr; Galchen; Cunningham; Barry; Gay; D’Erasmo; Heller; Deuel
New this week: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; American Innovations by Rivka Galchen; The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham; The Temporary Gentleman by Sebastian Barry; An Untamed State by Rumpus editor and Year in Reading alum Roxane Gay; Wonderland by Stacey D’Erasmo; The Painter by Peter Heller; and Friday Was the Bomb by Millions contributor Nathan Deuel.
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