field. he was in charge of, you know, overseeing capital cases, had to make sure the bureau of military justice was running properly, he was the head of the division of the war department and very close with lincoln's secretary of war, stanton, with whom he was very good friends. so he was a major, major figure. he dealt with thousands and thousands of court-martials and other cases every single year. >> you write a lot about lincoln's thoughts on holt. um, and holt's actions. how did you go about doing your research on this? ..

you could see how loyal he was. you could find documents where lincoln is thanking him for giving him policy advice and so on so all the evidence is right there. not that hard to find. it is in the library of congress available to anybody. >> thank you for your time today. >> the c-span campaign 2012 bus visits communities across the country. to follow the bus's troubles visit www. c-span.org. c-span.org/bus. >> now a panel discussion on joseph heller's number "catch-22" in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the book's publication. this is about an hour and a half.

>> it was love at first sight. first time yosarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. yosarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell short of being jaundice. the doctors were puzzled by the fact it wasn't quite jaundice. if it became jaundice they could treat it. if it didn't become jaundiced and went ways they could discharge him just being short of jaundice all-time confused them. each morning they came around these serious men with the efficient mouth and inefficient i rise. the company by brisk and sirius nurse ducat began one of the what nurses that didn't like yosarian. they read the chart and put it on the bed and ask patiently about the pain. they seemed irritated when he said it was exactly the same. still no movement? the full colonel demanded.

the doctors exchanged a look when he shifted his head. give him another pill. nurses point to made a note to give yosarian another kill and they move along to the next bed. none of the nurses like yosarian. actually the pain in his liver had gone away but yosarian didn't say anything and the doctors never suspected. they just suspected he had been moving his balls and not telling anyone. yosarian had everything he wanted in hospital. the food wasn't too bad and his meals were brought to him in bed. there were extra rations of fresh meat and during the hot part of the afternoon he and the others were served chilled food jews or chocolate milk. apart from the doctors and nurses no one disturbed him. for a little while in the morning he had censored letters but was free after that to spend each day lying around with if a clear conscience. he was comfortable in the hospital and was easy to stay on because he ran a temperature of

101. he was even more comfortable than dunbar who had to keep falling on his face in order to get his meal brought to him in bed. after he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in hospital yosarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying he was in the hospital but never mentioning wide. one day he had a better idea. everyone he knew he wrote he was going on a very dangerous mission. they asked for volunteers. it is very dangerous but someone has to do it. i will write you when i get back and he had not written anyone since. all the officer patients in the ward were forced to send letters written by the listed men patients who were kept in residents and boards of aaron. it was a monotonous job and yosarian was disappointed to learn the lives of the listed men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. after the first day he had no curiosity at all.

to break the monotony he said after wall modifiers. out of every letter that pass through his letters went every absurd and adjective. the next day he made war on articles. he reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything except a, and and the. that erected a more dynamic in for a linear tension he felt that in every case left a message far more universal. soon he was prescribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving the text untouched. one time he blacked out all but the salutations dear mary from the letter read at the bottom he wrote i yearn for you tragically, chaplain, u.s. army. h e chaplain was the group chaplain's name. when he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters he began attacking the names and

addresses on the envelops obliterating hole homes and streets, annihilating entire metropolises with careless flicks of his wrist as though he were god. catch-22 required each letter bear the sensory officer's name. most letters he didn't read all. on those he didn't read he wrote his own name. although he did read washington irving. when that grew monotonous he wrote irving washington. centering the envelops had serious repercussions. produced a ripple of anxiety on serial military echelon that florida see it man back to the war posing of the patient. they all knew he was a nazi idea man because he kept inquiring about of officer named irving or washington and because after his first day he would not censored letters. he found them too monotonous. it was a good war this time. one of the best he and dunbar had never enjoyed.

with him this time was the 24-year-old fighter pilot, capt. of the sparse golan mustache who had been shot into the adriatic sea in mid winter and not even caught a cold. now the summer was upon him the captain had not been shot down and said he had a grip. in the bet on yosarian's right still lying cameras we on his belly was the star of a captain with malaria in his blood and a mosquito bite on his ab. across the aisle was done bark and next to him was the artillery captain with whom yosarian had stopped playing chess. the captain was a good chess player and the games were always interesting. yosarian stopped playing chess with him because his games were so interesting they were foolish. then there was the educated texan from texas who looked like someone in technicolor and people of means, decent folk should be given more votes than drifters, criminals, degenerates, atheists and in decent folks, people without

means. yosarian was and springing rhythms and the letters the day they brought the texan in. it was another quiet, hot, untroubled day. the feet pressed heavily on the roof. dunbar was lying motionless on his back again with his eyes staring up at the ceiling like a doll's. he was working hard at increasing his life span. he did it by cultivating boredom. dunbar was working so hard increasing his life span that yosarian thought he was dead. they put the texan in a bed in the middle of the war. it wasn't long before he donated his views. done bar set up like a shot. that is it! he cried excitedly. there was something missing! all the time i knew there was something missing and i know what is! he banged his fist into his palm.

no patriotism, he declared. you are right, yosarian shouted back. you are right! you are right! you are right! the hot dog, brooklyn dodgers, mom's apple pie. that is what everyone is fighting for but who is fighting for the decent folk? who is fighting for more of votes for the decent folk? no patriotism. that is what it is. and no major did either. the warrant officer on yosarian's left was unimpressed. who gives a cit and turned over on his side to go to sleep. the texan turned out to the good-natured, generous and likable. in three days no one could stand him. he sent shudders of annoyance of ticklish spines and everyone fled from him. everybody but the soldier in white had no choice. the soldier in white was in gauge from head to toe in plaster and gauze and had two useless legs and two useless

arms. had been smuggled into the ward and had no idea he was among them until they welcome the morning and saw the two strange legs hoisted from the hip. the two strange arms entered up perpendicular. all four limbs in the air by lead weight suspended darkly above him so they never moved. sony into the bandages over the inside word zippered whips through which he was fed clear fluid from a clear jar. a silent type rose from the cement on his groin and coupled to a slim rubber hose carried away from his kidneys and tripped into a clear stoppard are on the floor. that are feeding his elbow was empty and the two were switched quickly. all they ever really start of the soldier in white was a brave black hole over his mouth. the soldier in white had been filed next to the texan and the

texans at sideways on his own bed and talked to him throughout the morning, afternoon and evening in a pleasant sympathetic drawl. the texan never minded that he got no reply. temperatures were taken twice a day in the ward. really each morning and late each afternoon nurse kramer entered with a jar full of thermometers and worked her way up one side of award and down the of the distributing a thermometer to each patient. she managed the soldier in white by inserting a thermometer into the hole over his mouth and leaving a balance on the lower rim. when she returned to the man in the first that she took of thermometer and recorded his temperature and moved on to the next bed and continued around the ward. one afternoon when she completed her first circuit of the ward and came a second time to the soldier in white she read his temperature and discovered he was dead. murder, dunbar said quietly. the texan looked up at him with an uncertain grin.

keller, yosarian said. what you talking about, the texan asked nervously. you murdered him, said dunbar. you kill him, said yosarian. the texan shrank back. you fellows are crazy. i didn't even touch him. you murdered him, said dunbar. i heard you kill him, said yosarian. you killed him because he was the nadir, don barr said. you fellows are crazy, the texan cried. they don't allow niggers in here. they got a thought special place for them. the sarge and smuggled him in. the communist sergeant, said yosarian. and you knew it. the warrant officer on yosarian's left was unimpressed by the entire incident of the soldier in white. the warrant officer was unimpressed by everything and never spoke at all unless it was

to show irritation. the day before yosarian met the chapel and the delay stove exploded in the mess hall and set fire to one side of the kitchen. intense heat flashed through the area. even in yosarian's awards almost 300 feet away they could hear the roar of the blaze and sharp cracks of flaming timber, smoke sped past the orange tinted windows. in 15 minutes the crash trucks from the airfield arrived to fight the fire. for a frantic half-hour it was touch and go and the firemen got the upper hand. suddenly there was the monotonous drone of bombers returning from a mission and firemen rolled up their hoses and went back to the fielding plays one of the planes crashed and caught fire. the plane landed safely. as soon as the last one was down the firemen wheel their trucks around and raced back up the hill to resume their fire at hospital. when they got there the blaze was out. it had died of its own accord,

expired completely without even an amber to be watered down and there was nothing for the discipline firemen to do but drink tepid coffee and hang around to screw the nurses. the chaplin arrived the day after the fire. yosarian was busy expurgate in all the romance words from the letters when the chaplains that down in a chair between the bed and asked him how he was feeling. he placed himself a bit to one side and the captain -- species interested guests that yosarian could see. yosarian had no idea who he was. just took for granted either another doctor or another madman. pretty good, he answered. i had a slight pain in my liver and haven't been the most regular fellow i guess but all in all i must admit that i feel pretty good. that is good, said the chaplain. that is good.

i meant to come around sooner, the chaplains at. but i really haven't been well. that is too bad, yosarian said. >> just a head called the chapel and added quickly. i got a fever of 101, yosarian added just as quickly. that is too bad, said the chaplain. yes, yosarian agreed. yes, that is too bad. the chaplain fidgeted. is there anything i can do for you? yes, after a while. no, no. yosarian side. the doctors are doing all that is humanly possible i suppose. no, no, the chaplain, it frankly. i didn't mean anything like that. i meant books or toys. no, no, yosarian said. thank you. i have everything i need. everything but good health. that is too bad.

yes, yosarian said. yes, that is too bad. the chapel and stirred again. he looked from side to side a few times and gave at the ceiling and down at the floor. he drew a deep breath. lieutenant nation sends his regards. yosarian was sorry to hear they had a mutual friend. it seemed there was a basis to their conversation after all. you know lieutenant namely? yes, regretfully. i know him quite well. he is a bit looney, isn't he? the chaplain's smile was embarrassing. i am afraid i couldn't say. i don't think i know that well. you can take my word for it, yosarian said. he is as goofy as they come. the chaplain weighed the silence heavily and shattered it with an abrupt question. you are captain yosarian, are you? make lee had a bad start.

he came from a good family. please excuse me, the chaplain persisted. i may be committing a grave error. are you capt. yosarian? yes, capt. yosarian said. i am captain yosarian. of the 256 squadron of the fighting 256th squadron, yosarian replied. i didn't know there were any other capt. yosarians. as far as i know i'm the only capt. yosarians i know but that is only as far as i know. i see, the chaplain said unhappily. that is the fighting eighth power if you're thinking of writing a symbolic poem about our squadron. no, mumbled the chaplain. i am not thinking of writing a symbolic homily about your squadron. yosarian strained sharply when he spied the tiny silver cross on the other side of the chaplain's caller. he was fairly astonished. he had never talked with the

chaplain before. you are a chaplain, exclaimed ecstatically. i didn't know you were a chaplain. y, yes, the chapel unanswered. didn't you know i was a chaplain? y, no, i didn't know you were a chaplain. yosarian stared at him with a big fascinated grin. i have never really seen a chaplain before. the chaplain flushed again and gazed down at his hand. he was a slight man of 32 with tan hair and brown eyes. his face was narrow and whether pale and an innocent test of ancient people pricks' at the base of each sheet. yosarian wanted to help him. can i do anything at all to help you, the chaplinesque. yosarian shook his head still grinning. no. are am sorry. i have everything i need and i am quite comfortable. i am not even sick.

[applause] >> that was wonderful. that just proves that we never stopped loving being read to. as i heard the story, joseph heller wrote catch 18 and he wanted to get this published as a catch 18, but leon yours came out with me lay 818 and has the story goes legal don't tell me there's anything wrong with the story because it is too good so far, me let 18 comes out by leon eurus and the powers that be have simon and schuster decide we cannot have two novel that the same time with the number 18 written by two jewish writers.

cannot be. so they called heller and they say you have to change the number. he doesn't want to change the number. they said what about 14? catch 14. he said 14 isn't funny. so the bickering commenced and when john and in the end as it turned out 22 is a very funny number. it ended of 22 and i think it is very funny. so i am going to start with robert buckley who edited "catch-22". as the story goes on that front it was a real collaboration. that as the story goes, you got the pages in various versions and spend quite a long time with

joseph heller taking these pages and putting them to get there as a puzzle. is that true? what was the project of putting the book together like the collaboration? three questions for you. what was that collaboration like? what was he like as a writer to work with? was difficult? did he give you a hard time? as the pages came in to you what did you think this book was about as it emerged? >> in that order? >> any order you choose. >> first of all, he was an extraordinary writer to work with. some writers are rebellious, some are negative and some are overat eager and some are overgrateful. not easy to be with an editor. he was like no one i ever worked with and worked with hundreds of writers which was he saw his own

work completely objectively. he was disinterested. it was somebody else's work we were working with. we would have a chapter in front of us and i would say i don't think this is working, this paragraph. too long. he said yes, what if we do this? are would say okay. we will put this there. i always described as two surgeons working on the same patient together. there wasn't a patient and a doctor or a doctor and patient. there was a problem that he recognized and i recognize that whoever came up with the best solution, was always like that. he was completely funny. you don't want easy riders. he understood the problems because he had the line of an editor more than any other writer i ever worked with. there was never a bad moment.

so that is that. >> that has to be incredibly unusual. >> it was very unusual. >> proprietary -- >> and sensitive. he may have been more sensitive than i knew but he wasn't going to show it because that wasn't going to get us anywhere. he wanted it to be as good as it could be. >> as the pages were coming in what did you think the book was about? >> i didn't ask myself that. it was about what it was. the point was it was wonderful. it was funny. i never saw it at a particularly funny book. it was sad and a grin and upset. but it is a hilarious too. the stories about how we worked with nine versions. i don't know where that came from. michael korda in his memoirs

invented that. he was a younger editor, very close friend and he is a wonderful writer but he is fabulous. a great deal of exaggeration. the book came out and our happened to review it, he called me the next day. how can i said those things? you didn't check anything. you just had a great story to tell. >> as you know in history we pick the best version. >> that is what we look for as publishers. it was a process. i don't remember nine different versions. jell-o prepared for rating on cards, file cards and had thousands of them and they stack up. he would move them around. but he already had the structure of the book in his head. nobody really talks about how brilliantly structured it is, how it is cyclical. things come in little and the little more and the little more.

to the main example of that is the death of soldan which is referred to constantly. you get closer and closer and at the end of the book there is few horrible story. he knew just what he was doing. on top of that he knew how good it was. >> in the new version you see if this. incredible revisions and revisions and revisions. he did a full page of reprinted of his handwriting and you crossed out everything but three words like yosarian -- >> he was a good self sensor but he liked editing. he liked editing himself and being edited. it was a totally happy experience. i hadn't read the book. it was years since i sent it to press. can i do this? i need to look and see if i still like it. i am happy to report i love it.

although somewhat differently than i did before. my problem now is also i don't do this with ordinary books, i kept wanting to edit it. i kept thinking how did i let this go by? but too late. the book is out there. he is gone. but i am very proud of it and most important for me, it was all the success he hoped for and really knew it was going to have. he never doubted its genius. >> i love that. that is a wonderful introduction. and we delve into the little book a little bit after we do a round. let's go to chris buckley next who was a very close friend of joseph heller later in life and as i understand it from you, the two of you exchanged hundreds of letters on top of having -- in

person. tell us about joseph heller the man. i would love to know if he was funny in person. >> we did go to burly clubs together or anything. valerie heller, his widow is in the audience. but i didn't just say that for her benefit. our coming together was odd for this reason. i reviewed for the new yorker a sequel to "catch-22". a book called closing time which is a sort of mad, jumble of a novel and it is yosarian and milo menderbinder 45 years

later. i couldn't resist in the opening sentence quoting the old line sequels are not necessarily equal. i wrote a respect for review because i am a great admirer of "catch-22" but it was by no means all that at miring. i was very surprised when about week later a hand written letter arrived and i looked at the upper left-hand corner, joseph heller. i thought oh my god. are actually delayed opening at for a few hours. it was one of the sweetest letters i ever had. he said i think you understand my book better than i did. my life was in tears when she read the last paragraph. how could i not right back? and i did. very shortly--remember fax machines?

the days of fax. i am glad this correspondence didn't take place in the age of e-mail because these were letters. we would fight them and print them and fax them. by the time he died four years later, i went to the file and there were 300 or 400 letters and this was not a particularly easy time of his life as some of you probably know. it was in the early 80s, he was stricken with something called the embrace syndrome which none of us want to get. it is an amusing exchange in the literature somewhere where a friend of his named george mandel calls mario puzo who was a great friend of joe's and said that you heard about joe?

mario puzo said no. he has got guillem barre. and he said that is great thing go he said no, that is the disease. oh, that is terrible. you know if they named it after two people it has got to be really terrible. joe was a very kindly guy. certainly in my dealings with him. but he was also -- he had a steel trap mind. a switchblade like intelligence. and what hemingway called the most necessary thing for a writer, first-class bullish it detector. he was this combination of the

warm and fuzzy and the inner steel. but he was for me very easy to love. we have a sort of mutual despairing society. at one point i got a very mixed review from one of my books from publishers weekly. i faxed it to him and he crossed out all the mixed stuff and fax it back to me and wrote at the bottom and said now it is a total rave. >> that is totally sweet. ok, mike nichols. we all want to know, did he come to you and say i want you to do the movie or did you go to him? how did the movie come out? >> we had nothing to do with each other. movies are made and decided by people in california that none of us know.

in this case, those we don't know were infiltrated by a very close friend of mine who i knew in new york, my partner and i were comedians who migrated through california roughly around -- [cellphone music]] >> you are fired! are am glad you were not in the audience! i have forgotten everything i was saying. joe heller. something happened. >> tell us how the movie got made. >> he was working through this unfortunate person in california and they were making not good movies but he was in hollywood so we came in -- he said for me it was right after my second

movie was after the graduate. and he said if i bought catch-22 would you make it? us at i don't think so. it is too hard. i don't know how to make a huge surrealistic movie that says war is madness. think of the weapons, the planes. i don't want to do that. and he kept coming at me and i loved the book of course and we kept going at it and buck henry who had written the screenplay for the graduate from the book, and i started talking about "catch-22" and there was something we did in the graduate that took us forever but we were rafters satisfied with it which was going from place to place as though it were all in one moment. gets out of the full and open the door and is in the hotel and

waiting for him and start to make love and watching television and she is brushing her hair and leaves and the same place we have seen him me is in his bed room and so forth. we fought that really told the story of an obsession very well. this kind of suicide. and he went offensive let me try something and he found it of course as you were saying, "catch-22" is circular spiral in the middle. we started to play with exactly that spiral going around and around and around and always circling back until it began to seem like a movie you can run in your head. then somehow more than any movie i have ever done it sort of

decided. i never decided to do it. it went to little further, who would play it and tell any perkins was a friend and such an ideal tab and and -- capman and little by little we were making it. i was never happy or comfortable. i was always worried. i never thought it would work. many don't think it did work. is a very mixed, strange movie. as the years go by i like it more. i like the scary parts more than the funny parts because also of that thing we talked about which is good old robert altman came along with mashed --m*a-s*h and this made us look like what we were which was a big thing.

the harder parts but as i was listening to it and went back to see it. there were some movies of mine. anyway, we decided that is the one we would go to see together and we had a wonderful time. i like it. also that it is as much as it could be close to the book as a movie and be which is not all that close but we did our best. i think it is okay. i think the joe aspect of it is really fair. [talking over each other] >> can you bring to bob the borderline between the humor and the horror that you dealt with an extremely well in the movie and why don't you talk about it

is supposed to be funny and then it is grotesque and how you balance that and how you think joe did in the book? the book and the movie are both things. >> joe survived in the movie. >> how difficult it is for a director, anyone can see a book like this to balance the humor with the violence, the difficulty. >> to me who has seen many movies based on books and too many movies based on books i edited and presumably knew pretty well, the hardest thing is dealing with a book of real quality because what makes it of real quality is the uniqueness of its voice whereas if you have a second level novel that is perfectly good or wonderful you can extract its characters and settings and you have the book. you can't do that with castaway

ii very easily or the latest version of jane air. to everything except what charlotte broad there was about. >> isn't there a -- an industry saying that bad books make good movies and the good books make bad movies? >> i think it is a knock and true saying. i don't mean last night i dreamed i went back to rebecca. i don't think it is a bad book but it is a popular book. it is entertainment. >> almost -- as good a movie as the book, let's say. then there is the joseph conrad movies that certain directors made into great movies out of great books. it can be done.

every book is different. every writer is different. charles dickens is famously cinematic. everyone who writes about dickens says the same boring thing and i am saying it now. when you read a dickens novel you can see it and many of the movies are wonderful. like great expectations. here is what i far. slipping sideways amended it took me 30 years to realize that the graduate -- it took all of us a long time to realize the wizard of oz -- >> i still haven't realized that. >> think of -- >> always have the same ending. the grail or the which's broomstick, finally almost dead

from making the task and the wise man always says the same thing. you already know it. there's no place like home. that is the story of the search for knowledge or of an education. beating out from what you already know. there are myths that keep coming back that make fantastic movies. the red and black -- other books. the devil in the flesh. every time it comes back i think i will get that. here is again. i am not going to think about that. when it comes around again it is always compelling to get close to home. in some weird way "catch-22" is

related to all the horrifying books -- what is it called? >> all quiet on the western front. >> that all the great war novels even from here to be eternity, they have a connection in the loss of reality and things are turned upside down and forgetting what you are there, least of all with the second world war because it was the last war with good guys and bad guys or so we thought. these things lend themselves to movies and some don't. catch 22 is right in the middle. >> now we get into what the book was about. you and i had a conversation about what you thought the book was really about. let's do a round to start it and all three have you tell us when

you first read it and what you thought it was about and if you changed your mind as the new edition has come out. >> it is a world war ii book that came out in 1961 just as we were getting involved in that great adventure called vietnam's. joe -- i will answer your question elliptically. >> i already know -- >> i am going to do that. joe heller -- he came out of world war ii justifiably proud of his service. he flew 60 combat missions over italy. he was in the thick of it. it was the korean war and the

madness of the cold war that informed "catch-22". son coming out when it did it sort of caught this wave. by the time nichols's movie came out in 1970, vietnam was very much a lost cause. so the book was bracketed by these two days. if this is what you wanted me to get to, as i reread it i wondered if the book is seeking in a way to make cowardice a virtue. i am going to redos a couple sentences from this handsomely reissued book and i must say a

sterling introduction. there is an appendix in the back with some fascinating excerpts about "catch-22" and this is one by f. philip twinkie, and englishmen who is the son of a great historian arnold plenty. he says if catch-22 has any continuous seam it lies in the tireless efforts of yosarian, the assyrian american hero to you they'd come back. the book defend the right, almost a moral obligation of men to be physical cowards. pointed out that the brave almost always involve others in their senseless and unfeeling cooperation with the forces of war. the man has the courage of his physical cowardice is the only kind of man who will eventually

make war impossible by refusing to play any part in it at all. it is possible to look at yosarian as a kind of -- melville's famous character whose line was i prefer not to. >> looking at the wall. do you think that the book is really about cowardice? is it about violence? is it totally anti-war? >> just to comment on what you said, occurred to me when you were speaking them the real model of yosarian is odysseus and the iliad which is the greatest book ever written except for "catch-22". it is a story of a meaningless war for no reason and the

survivor is the wily odysseus and he gets away. what do i think it is about? >> did joseph heller have that in mind? >> i haven't the faintest idea. >> tell us what you think. >> i think it is on one subject. i think it is on the same subject as his next book which is an office and a family as opposed to a war and on that subject, what dominated joe's thinking was anxiety. he was scared. something was going to happen. in one book the metaphor, in the other book the metaphor is normal man's working life and home life but the tone, what they're about is exactly the same. he knows something terrible is

going to happen. "catch-22" is about making sure or trying to make sure it doesn't happen. and something happened. it is about knowing it is going to happen and then it happens. but that is his subject as far as i am concerned. he found these brilliant metaphors. i don't mean this was conscious but put internal pressures on him that led to these two books. >> do you think this is his best book? >> for me it is either that or something happened which i love just as much. that is something that developed over the years. i can't get over that seen of him and his little girl. i can't even talk about it. they are very different but they have some things in common.

he has 2.5 children. one of them is disturbed. he is mowing down the grass as well as a human being. that is what you said about what is "catch-22" about? when you think -- novels are about peddling the only resource families have which is they're pretty girls and when they invented the train novels are about adultery because you could go to the next town and have an affair and nobody would know it. and then -- this is not an official thing. novels came about the little guy. if anything -- one of the many themes of "catch-22" is the hatred of authority. officers, officers are bastards, the most hated people in the book.

weirdly it started to work on us. all our spouse. the guys playing the officers found themselves sitting at different tables, not invited to things. we hated them. they were officers. >> that is so great! >> when you think joe did "catch-22" and something happened he was the opposite of what he appeared to be. he was a complex, sophisticated, elegant man masquerading as an ordinary guy. you joke about all those things he thought he found the manuscript of a dead soldier because they could see the person who had written the book. but over time, there was only the person who had written the book. >> he was different things at different times. i first met him in 1958 which

was three years before the book was finished and published. and he was not the guy you met. in first of all he was working as an ad man. he was a man -- before that book or just after that book came out. [inaudible] he wasn't overflowing and he was nervous. this was his first book. i am talking about me and my colleagues. he was dealing with them. it took a middle while before they became us. of course you can't be in that relationship unless the two of the end up in us. he was like the guy had something happened. that is true too. we know he was in the air force

but we don't realize he was in something happened too. of course the change came when "catch-22" was published and hailed by those who hailed it and became more and more of a success and he blossomed. i had never known anyone, writer or not the rich and who took more simple and wonderful july in being a success. he just loved it and he wasn't embarrassed about showing a. i am writer of "catch-22"! looked! >> there's an anecdote i can't resist telling. it is from tracy doherty's fun biography that was published a month ago called just one catch. anything written about joseph heller inevitably has to have the word catch in it.

jell-o -- for breach -- joe, the reach of this novel was truly universal. even though it never hit the new york times best-seller list until mike nichols made it into a movie nine years later at which point it sold 1 million copies in six weeks. among his many admirers was bertrand russell, the british philosopher and ultimate i am for peace guy, better read than dead. joe is visiting england and corresponding with russell and russell said by all means you must visit me. joe arrives and knocks on the door and announces himself whereupon bertrand russell flies

into a red-faced rage and begins screaming at him saying go away! get out of here! horrible man! get away! joe fled. he was in the car trembling, looking for the gear shift when bertrand russell who was somewhat elderly at this point -- his butler came running out and said no, no, he thought you were edward teller. >> perfect. we are going to turn questions to the audience in one minute. a final question for me. when joseph heller wrote "catch-22," i think this is correct to. can tv was riding one flew over the coup to's next and kurt

vonnegut was writing cat's cradle. this was in the 80s. produced all this year reference. eisenhower was president. we were the silent generation. we didn't protest but something was bubbling. >> allotted had to do with the war. >> but which war? take mine. you mean the korean war? >> it had experience of world war ii and the holocaust. how do you deal with all this stuff? how do you cope with it? when do jewish way is through tumor. not that they were all jewish but it was in the air. it was the style of the time. there were many books in this

vein. joe's was preeminent and it has lasted. >> did it come out of the holocaust? >> it came out of him. if you read -- >> jewish neurosis. >> we are not neurotic, lesley. we are just accurate. [laughter] >> perfect. all right. you know what? don't you want to see the audience? can we have some lights so we can see how beautiful everybody is? we would like to invite you, if you like, to raise your hand and shout out as loudly as you can. >> you have a mike? of the ones behind you can. >> i read the playboy interview with heller when it came out and the interviewer said something

about realizing that potential i cough's last name in german was shithead and heller said that is one of two things in the novel that i slept in. what was the other one? >> don't ask me. >> i bought it. >> don't believe everything you read. step up to the mike. >> i was wondering if you could tell some stories about working with alan arkin on set. >> he was always unhappy. he was an actor. i could have just said that. we have a very difficult schedule because we depended entirely on backlights. we had genius director of

photography, david watkins and he decided we would always only shoot into the light which basically meant we could shoot from 2:00 to 4:30 every day. we could get ready but if we were going to have our signature look weak and will issue -- this was in the days thought of as a very expensive movie that cost $11 million. that is what was expensive in those days. that meant we were in mexico for what seems like years. no actor could go away because we didn't go when the weather would be just right to do his or her scene. so some people stayed there for months waiting for their seen. and alan arkin always stayed because he was in every scene and he did nothing but bitch.

and he thought he was terrible. after i saw it i wrote him a letter and said you have no idea how good you are. he said that is right, i don't. i said let me send it to you. look at it. you are great. he wrote me a nice letter afterwards. she couldn't see himself way i do but he sees what i mean about the whole thing. >> how did you get that cast? i don't think there was a terrific actor alive that wasn't in that movie. >> it was weird. they all wanted to be in it. everybody loved "catch-22". i had done virginia woolf and a graduate. we were it for those 15 minutes. stay with the 15 minutes in which we started casting "catch-22".

i remember if there was this sort of strange little guy who came to audition. i had seen him in one play and a little hard to hear him but i thought as he read one or two character is of interest we have a great actor here. when he was through i said you can have any part you want. you want to be yosarian? it was al pacino. he said that is wonderful. let me get back to you. never got back. could have been a star. that little twist of fate. i asked many years later. we did a lot together. we did a ten year movie together and -- it seems like -- why did you -- he said i was so busy trying not to go crazy. i could never have played a part in "catch-22" which is exactly

what marlon brando said. what did it feel like when you were the king and first came to hollywood? how do i know? i spent all my time trying not to go crazy. and there it is. every one of the actors became a dear friend. perkins was a dear friend. richard benjamin. we stayed friends for the rest of our lives. sort of like being in camp together. ..

>> capturing that kind of psychological experience. >> i'm going to interject one thing, and then maybe you can answer this. do you know that they -- i'm not sure it's required reading, but it's on the reading list at the air force academy. >> no. >> yeah. >> i don't really know. maybe you do, mike. i've -- chris, did he ever talk to you about that? >> no. um, he, he didn't. but let me, may i gloss a little bit on jim webb's in this, in the marvelous introduction to this reissue? [laughter] i remember at the time reading a few days later an appreciation of joe heller shortly after he died. and it was written by jim webb, now the u.s. senator from virginia.

he was a, they were the two most highly decorated marine platoon leaders in vietnam were jim webb and ollie north. and he, jim, wrote a novel that is still thought of as one of the great war novels, very different cup of tea if that's quite the right expression from "catch-32," a book, called "fields of fire." and jim wrote this appreciation in "wall street journal", and it's quoted at some length in the introduction, and he recounts being in, really, the ninth circle of hell, he and his platoon had been taking terrible casualties, he said we were, our inside were crawling with hook

worm from bad water we had been drinking. and in the midst of this, you know, blood and misery and death, one -- he hears this someone shouting in his foxhole and saying, you've got to read this. you've got to read this. and a tattered copy of "catch-23." -- "catch-22." and webb had read the book growing up as an air force brat in nebraska, but he said he devoured it. his men were passing it around. and he said, it didn't matter the me at all that that i was reading a book that, and this is, these are his words, that was protesting the very war i was fighting. this book that had been written in 1961, we're now in probably, you know, '66, '67. but he said, but what mattered

was that i had found a soul mate, someone who understood. and it -- now, jim webb is a very, very tough customer, pretty right wing. well, that's actually unfair. but a book that can reach jim webb and bertrand russell, maybe that partly explains why it sold ten million copies since 1961, although mike nichols can take credit, as we know, for at least a million of those. [laughter] >> you know, i just want to add one thing to our discussions, everybody's discussions. we all talk about it as if enemy is war. but let's also remember that this is a very seriously anti-capitalist book, and a lot of this satire -- [inaudible] this is not about war. this is about the system, no

question. >> oh, dear. [applause] >> what? okay. go ahead. >> can i tell a little anecdote about joe heller? >> right into the mic. >> my name is dr. richard bader, i had the honor to take care of -- [inaudible] which is a neuroright rarely seen by most doctors, and fortunately, rarely experienced by many patients. first i want to make one comment. i think there was -- [inaudible] about jewish neurosis. but i met joe heller one day at a beach on fire eyeland. and having met him -- island. and having met him, i commented i had read his book and so forth. he said, you're a doctor, can

you help me? by the way, he hated doctors because his father died because of a screwed-up operation by a doctor. and he said my wife has a skin lesion on her breast, can you examine it? so four people got up and held up beach towels making some sort of a kind of little alcove where i was able to lower the lady's suit and examine the breast which had a ringworm on it. and then the next day he appeared on the beach with a copy of "catch-22" because he said what is your fee, and i said, just give me a copy of your book. inscribed in the book is to dr. richard bader for full medical services rendered on such and such a date. [laughter] and i still, i have the copy of the book presently at my daughter's home in

massachusetts. but the second thing is i'm responsible, partly, for him meeting his second wife because she was the nurse that took care of him where he was paralyzed and appeared in my mother's apartment one weekend morning unable to bend down and tie his shoes, unable to practically talk or swallow. and my mother said, you have gee yam beret syndrome. and i just thought i would tell you how i met joseph heller. [applause] >> lovely. chris, were you friends with him when he was suffering from the disease? it was -- can you tell us a bit about that that? >> no, no, i wasn't. valerie could tell us, she was there. i was with him when he was suffering through life.

[laughter] >> just life. >> but he, you know, what was extraordinary to me about joe was here's a guy who was, who he was no stranger to tragedy. dr. bader's just told us about, you know, how he lost his father. there was another death, i think, perhaps a beloved sibling. he, he flies 60 combat missions in world war ii, sees lots of his friends get killed. he then -- >> he knew bad things were going to happen, and they did. >> he has a devastating illness. it was not clear, i think, that he would survive this, but he was, basically, in some kind of iron lung for nearly a year. and then he had a very, you know, an anguished and somewhat public divorce. this was a guy who knew, what

was it winston churchill said, if you're going through hell, keep going. joe kept going. and he, what was surprising to me was what a joyous personality he was. i mean, he loved life. he loved food and drink, especially when you were paying for it. [laughter] he had an awful lot of joy in him, you know? for a guy who'd seen all this, all this stuff. >> terrific. can we go to the next question? >> this is probably a question for mr. gottlieb or anyone else who, you know, has an opinion on it. but i was wondering why do you think it was that there was such an almost famously long period of time after publishing "catch-22" before something happened, the next book came out? and then after something happened came out, it seemed like he was bringing out books with some frequency. >> well, there are many possible answers to that, and i don't

know that i have any definitive one. first of all, at the beginning, he was just having too much fun being the author of "catch-22," you know? he was not one of those people who was unhappy if he wasn't working. [laughter] i am one, so i know what i'm talking about. he was having a great time. but more seriously, this was very, very, very painful material for him, both of the first two books. and i think it was very difficult, it took him many, many years to rewrite "catch-22" as we know, it was six or seven years in all, and that was about the same for "something happened." and then as i said before, i think those helped him move beyond his anxieties and freed him to play around. and among his later books --

some are better than others, not unusual -- but there was no book that took it out of him the way those two did. >> well, and don't forget he was working during the day. >> well, early -- >> the first one. >> "catch-22," yeah. you know, he had to go on writing because he had to make money, and it was the thing he did. but i remember him saying to me, you know, you want me to write "something happened" again or "catch-22" again, i can't do it. i've written them. and then it was a question of his books became what i call notional. he got a notion, and he filled it. he fulfilled it. these two books were not notional. they came right up out of him, and it was a struggle. >> well, can you talk for one second about how "catch-22" came to him almost in a vision? it's been written about many times. >> i don't know.

i never heard that from him, which tells me it isn't true. >> he wrote it, he wrote it that one night he was thinking, he was in bed dreaming, and the first paragraph came to him. >> are yeah. >> and by the next morning the entire book was mapped out in his head. >> yeah. well, it had been, presumably, simmering -- this material -- in him. >> yeah. >> but we didn't talk about things like that because we were too busy either making jokes about other people, or -- [laughter] or saying, you know, this paragraph isn't any good, or let's put it there. you know, it was hands-on work. it was not conceptual. >> and what's more fun? >> nothing. >> nothing. i know. >> mr. buckley, you spoke about jim webb's response to reading the book while he was in combat. um, i read about six weeks before my 17th birthday, and about three days afterwards, i enlisted. and i volunteered for aviation, and i flew about 70 combat missions in vietnam as a

crewman. and i had it, the dark, bitter, despairing view of the war at the same time that i was motivated to be in it. and when i look back on it now, i find myself really puzzling how it was that that book motivated me to serve at the same time that it made me so profoundly skeptical about serving. and nobody's talked about there's an undercurrent in there. you talked about the cowardice, but there's also an undercurrent of service and bravery and heroism that motivated some of us to go do this bizarre thing. and i wonder if anybody can unpack that. [applause] >> first of all, thank you for your service to our country. i'm sorry joe heller -- [applause] is not here. he would -- only joe could

address the question that you have raised. i'm -- let me ask you, did the people you served with, did they know the book? was this a book that was making the rounds? it was certainly adopted, if you will, or co-opted even by the anti-war movement back here. what -- was it being read? >> [inaudible] >> you know something? can i interrupt for one sec? i must say you've said the thing that has surprised me the most tonight. because i don't understand why that book would motivate anybody. to go into the service. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> are there any psychiatrists here? [laughter] >> you know, i want to say one thing about that, referring to something i said before.

it's called being human. and if you really want to understand it best, go back and reread "the iliad." it's all there. everything is there. it's like everything is in king lear. if you read those two things, you don't have to read anything else. [laughter] >> as a matter of fact, bob, i remember having this discussion with joe, "the iliad" was his paris book. yeah. and he read it by age 10. so fascinating that you bring this up. >> no surprise. >> i had forgotten that. >> and let's remember joe taught english literature. i mean, he was a teacher and liked it. >> this is a minor thing, but let's talk for a minute about the b-25 and what it was to crawl from one end of it to the other which is what you had to do to get into your position. never mind flying in it and never mind the battles. we were cut, bruised, battered

simply from trying to get around in these met alma chiens. there was nothing soft, and there were no round edges. we all had cut on us and band-aids, and they were shooting at them. you had to be a god damn hero to fly in a b-25. and you had to be physically at the very, very top of your life. these guys were athletes, and they were heros. 60 missions in one of those things. i barely made it from one end to the other five times. >> at the same time, you know, we had to do stuff like hanging out of them, you know, to do shots, but we were in helicopters. we were all comfortable. they were always injured when we did flying, it seems. it was, it was a monstrous weapon, and it was a monstrous thing to operate. so these guys were like baseball

players. they were athletes, and they were heros. >> you know, one of the essays in the book in the new edition says that a lot of people think the book is about humor, but the about violence and the feelings of the soldiers in war being buried alive. and i thought you captured some of that in the movie actually, i did. >> we sure spent a lot of time thinking about it and about the actual hell of it. we lieu up the whole -- we blew up the whole base. we actually blew it up that one night. we did it all in one night, and it was a big stone farmhouse, and we blew it up. and you had to be alert, you had to be there. we had dozens of cameras, we only did it once. and they had it every night over and over. and, of course, big bullets counted. i think the heroism which is

sort of not mentioned very much, i think that -- they were heros. he was a hero. and he spoke and he wrote as a disillusioned hero. >> i went to a writers' conference in key west, and the subject was war and literature, and just about everyone on these panels had, was a combat veteran. philip caputo, wrote "a rumor of war," tim o'brien. and joe was on the panel, and he was utterly dismissive of his own he roarism -- heroism. i can't forget, i can't remember his exact words, but he almost besparaged what he did. and you had robert stone and philip caputo staring at him and saying, but you flew 60 combat missions in world war ii.

and joe said, ah, you know, the guys on the ground had it much worse. the guys who were at the battle of the bulge and being driven over by tanks and stuff. i was stunned. >> in five year of lunches, drinks, dinners, i don't think joe brought up world war ii once. but he was, that was that generation. that's one of the reasons they call it the greatest generation. they didn't really talk about it. but he wrote a book about it. >> i'll tell you what, we're going to run out of time, so these will be the last three, okay? and we'll go one, two, three. so towards the end of the book when yosarian's walking around rome, he has this realization, oh, what a lousy earth, that's that's -- it's not just the war, but the whole world, and horrible things can happen to

someone anywhere. so at the end of the book he escapes, but we don't know what happens to him after the escape. it just ends with, and he was off. in the movie the ending is perplexing in that he's in this tiny little lifeboat, the cameras panning out to the big ocean. there's music playing, is he going to make it or isn't he? and i wonder what you all think the tone is of the end of the book and the end of the movie. [laughter] >> i see you in a tiny life raft. [laughter] >> me too. [laughter] >> i see me in a tiny life raft. i have no answer for that. i think the image speaks for itself, and either it suggests something, or it doesn't.

i can't attack it or defend it. i do want to tell the too oft-told true story of joe who somebody was sitting near him at a party, and they were sort of both out of talk, and everybody else was relatively out of talk, and the guy next to him said still you've never written anything as good as "catch-22." and joe said, who has? [laughter] >> perfection. let's go here. >> my question is, actually, kind of on that point. what do you think about joseph heller's last novel? and one of the things i thought was most poignant in it is just this notion of a novelist struggling with the fact that his first novel may have been his best. >> yeah. to mr. gottlieb. [laughter] >> oh, i have to be heard? that's not fair, leslie.

i have to say i was in no way an admirer of his last novel. in fact, i wasn't the editor or the publisher. but he wanted me to read it. and i didn't i didn't think he d publish it really, and he needed to, which i totally understood. but i thought it was very inferior. >> you know, trollop once said, and i'm going to mangle it, but he said one of the great misfortunes that can happen to someone is success, especially if it happens early. >> he knew. he knew. he knew everything. there was no getting -- he was unbelievably. shrewd, he had all bases covered up in his head, and he knew that he was at the end of his talent. and yet he needed to publish this book for various reasons, including financial ones. and there it was. it didn't have to be explicit because we knew each other very well. i knew just what he thought. so i thought it was unfortunate, but also, hey, his life, his career, his book, it's not for us or me or anyone to come along and say, don't do this.

but he knew. >> could you name me three artists, writers, anybodies who just got better and better? >> yes, yes. >> who? >> yes, yes, yes. but they -- >> name me one. >> they have to live a long time. second of all, they have to be true geniuses. >> name them, name them. >> william shakespeare. >> oh, please. [laughter] >> wait a minute. >> that was too easy. >> that's the point. the greatest geniuses continue to evolve. and those people have so much -- [inaudible] is another in my world. they have so much to give, they could do 40 more masterpieces if they had more time. >> there were two, one in a generation. >> if that. >> if that. >> one in a century. that's the point. the greatest geniuses, i think, continue to evolve. and other people have their

thing to do, and it's wonderful. and then they've done it. and either fate steps in, or they erode. look at -- as wonderful a writer as joseph conrad, his last books are terrible. that's the way it is. >> but we talked a little bit about this sort of unconscious creativeness with writers and, actually, scientists as well where it percolates somewhere in the unconscious, and sometimes it pops out unformed. and it can take years and years, and meanwhile if you are an established writer, you feel a compulsion to write without that. >> because it's what you do. and the thing is, given life or breath we keep going. it's about breathing too. it's the same thing. >> final question. >> so the academic take on "catch-22" is that whatever it

says about war and whatever it says about capitalism, that it's about, that it's, in fact, a parable about the loss of faith in god. it, does this academic conceit have any basis in reality to your knowledge? >> me? [laughter] >> you're our expert. >> no. apparently about what? apparently parable about what? >> i happen to have written down my favorite passage in this book which goes to that point which i will read. we'll sum up this way. and i think it's an answer to your question. good god, how much reverence can we have for a supreme being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as fellow and tooth decay in his devine system of creation? [laughter] i'll go on. i think that answers your question though. what in the world was running through that warped, evil mind

of his when he robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? why in the world did he or create pain -- did he ever create pain? answer. do you remember when he wrote that? okay. well, i think this has been a spectacular night. how lucky have we all been to have a panel like this? [applause] thank you. >> thanks. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org. or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. every weekend on american history tv the people and events that document the american story. >> i guess it was 10 or 11:00 in the morning before i stopped and said, hey, we're at war. then i got scared.

>> this guy walks up to me and says, help me, combs. and i helped him to the boat and got him down in the boat, and he died on the way to the ford island. and i found out later who he was, he was my best friend. >> it's just as tough to go out there to the arizona memorial as it was then, as the day when i saw it burning. when i go out there and read those names out there, i'm still -- i'm done, i'm finished. >> c-span3 marks the 70th anniversary of the attack on pearl harbor from eyewitness accounts of veterans and survivors sunday at 3 p.m. eastern. and next weekend on american history tv, more programs about pearl harbor as historians join us to take your phone calls beginning at 11 a.m. eastern. >> well, on your screen is well known historian stanley weintraub whose most recent book is called "pearl harbor christmas: a world at war,

december 1941." mr. weintraub, that was 70 years ago at this time. what was christmas 1941 like in this country? >> christmas 1941 was a very quiet time. people were stunned by what had happened at pearl harbor. and this was the first christmas after the event, and so i wrote about the aftermath worldwide, what it was like around the country, what it was like around the world. it was still the time when people would light their christmas trees, there was an official blackout, but nobody paid attention. rationing hadn't been yet. so -- hadn't begun yet. so the seriousness of the war hadn't really sunk in in the united states. >> what was washington like at that time? were they gearing up? >> washington was gearing up, but in a very strange way. there weren't really enough

anti-aircraft guns available in washington, although we never did have an air raid. but there were wooden mock aircraft guns up on the roofs of buildings. so people would feel that they were being protected. it was a strange christmas. >> had a draft started? >> the draft was started in 1940 before the war began, and president roosevelt had a very difficult time in october 1941 renewing the draft. because there were so many isolationists in the country. the draft passed by one vote because general marshall, the chief of staff, came to congress and pleaded with them. he said, it's essential to be prepared. and they were prepared by one vote. >> stanley weintraub, what was president roosevelt's christmas like? >> president roosevelt had a visitor from england, prime minister churchill. he