The Catching of Two Joseph Hellers

By JANET MASLIN - New York Times - Published: July 27, 2011

JUST ONE CATCH - A Biography of Joseph Heller

By Tracy Daugherty

Illustrated. 548 pages. St. Martin’s Press. $35.

YOSSARIAN SLEPT HERE

When Joseph Heller Was Dad, the Apthorp Was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22

By Erica Heller

 One Catch” is a soup-to-nuts chronicle of the life of Joseph Heller. It is by Tracy Daugherty, who should not be confused with Mr. Heller’s daughter. Erica Heller’s own book about her father is “Yossarian Slept Here,” and there are many places where Heller’s daughter and Mr. Daugherty overlap. This situation is so jarring that it has driven Christopher Buckley, not ordinarily known for cornball silliness, to two giddy attacks of wordplay. About the biography he blurbs, “A major achievement, or should I say major major major?” in honor of Major Major, a major character in Heller’s “Catch-22.” His blurb for Ms. Heller: “I think this is going to be one hell(er) of a memoir.”

Photo - Vic DeLucia/The New York Times -Joseph Heller at his home in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1994.

So the combined effects of these two books can be dizzying, even though the authors’ vantage points and attitudes are very different. Mr. Daugherty writes in a thoroughgoing academic style, cherry-picks an unconscionable amount of material from Heller’s own memoirs, paraphrases dreadfully (with ... shock[ingly] heavy use of ... b[rackets] and ellipses ... and parentheses) and does not show signs of assurance until he has occasion to analyze Heller’s writing career — at which point “Just One Catch” gets a lot better. And it is the first important biography to arrive about Heller, who died in 1999.  Full reviews here.