>> i've got a fever of 101 he added just as quickly. that's too bad said the chaplain. yes, he said, yes, that is too bad. the chaplain fidgeted. is there anything i can do for you he asked after a while? no, the doctors are doing all what's humanly possible, i suppose. no, no the champion colored faintly, i didn't mean anything like that, i meant cigarettes or

books or toys. no, no, he said. thank you. i have everything i need, i suppose. everything but good health. that's too bad. yes, he said. yes, that is too bad. the chaplain stirred again. he looked from side-to-side a few times and then gazed up at the ceiling and then down at the floor he drew a deep breath. lieutenant nately sends his regards. he was sad they were sorry they had a mutual friend. it seemed there was a basis to their conversation after all. you know lieutenant nately, he asked regretfully. yes, i know lieutenant nately quite well. he's a bit loony, isn't he? the chaplain's smile was embarrassed. i'm afraid i don't think i know him that well. you can take my word for it. he's as goofy as they come.

the chaplain weighed the next silence and then shattered it with an abrupt question. you are the captain, aren't you? nately had a bad start. he came from a good family. please excuse me the chaplain proceeded. i may be committing a very grave error. are you the captain? yes, the captain confessed. i am the captain. of the 256th squad rin he replied. i didn't know there were any other captains. as far as i know i'm the only captain i know. but that's only as far as i know. i see, the chaplain said unhappily. that's two to the fighting to the eighth power if you're thinking about writing a symbolic poem. no, mumbled the chaplain. i'm not thinking of writing a

symbolic poem about your squadron. he straightened sharply when he spied the tiny silver cross on the other side of the chaplain's collar. he was thoroughly astonished for he never really talked with a chaplain before. you're a chaplain he exclaimed ecstatically. i didn't know you were a chaplain. well, yes, didn't you know i was a chaplain. well, no, i didn't know you were a chaplain. he stared at him with a big fascinated grin. i've never really seen a chaplain before. the chaplain flushed again and gazed down at his hands. he was a slight man of about 32 with tan hair and brown diffident eyes. his face was narrow and rather pale. an innocent nest of ancient pimple brick laid in the basement of each cheek. he wanted to help him. can i do anything at all to help you the chaplain asked?

he shook his head, still grinning, no. i'm sure. i have everything i need and i'm quite comfortable. in fact, i'm not even sick. [applause] >> that was wonderful. that just proves that we never stop loving to be read to. so as i heard the story, joseph heller wrote catch 18. and he wanted to get this published as catch 18 but leon came out with milla18 and as the story goes, don't tell me if there's anything wrong in the telling of the story -- [inaudible] >> so far. so mila 18 comes out and oops

the powers at be at simon & schuster say we cannot have the titles coming out at the same time with the number 18 coming out by two jewish writers. cannot be. so they call heller -- they say, have to change the number. and he doesn't want to change the number. and they said what's 14? catch 14? he says 14 isn't funny. [laughter] >> and so the bickering commenced. and went on and then in the end, as it turned out, 22 is a funny number. don't tell me if that's the story. it ended up 22 and i think it's very funny. don't you? yes. so i'm going to start with robert gottlieb on our panel who as we know edited catch-22.

on that front it was a real collaboration that as the story went, goes, you got the pages and various versions and spent quite a long time with joseph heller taking these pages and putting them together as a puzzle. is that true? what was the project of putting the book together like the collaboration? i have three questions for you. it's a 3-parter. so what was that collaboration like? what was he like as a writer to work with? was he difficult? did he give you a hard time? and as the pages came to you, really in a serial way, what did you think this book was about as it emerged? three parts. >> three parts. in that order? >> any order you choose. >> well, first of all, he was an extraordinary writer to work with. you know, some writers are anxious, some are rebellious, some are negative, some are overeager, some are

overgrateful, although, i don't know -- that's not easy to be with an editor. he was like no one i ever worked with and i worked with hundreds of writers. he saw his work completely intractable. he was completely disinterested. it was somebody else's work we were working with. so we would have a chapter in front of us and i would say, i don't think this is working, this paragraph is dull or it's too long or it's this or that. yeah, what if we'd do this and i would say, okay, but that -- and he would say great, we'll put this word there and i always describe it as two surgeons working on the same patient together. there wasn't a patient and a doctor or a doctor and a patient. there was a problem. he recognized it; i recognized it and whoever came up with the best solution -- it was always like that with him. he was completely -- it's not even easy. you don't want easier writers. he understood the problems because he had the mind of an

editor more than any other writer i've ever worked with so it was like two editors working on the same thing. there was never in the many books i worked with of his, there was never a bad moment. so that's that. >> that has to be incredibly unusual for a writer. >> it was very unusual. >> he was proprietary -- >> and sensitive. and he may have been more sensitive than i knew but he certainly 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. so what was part 1? >> as the pages were coming in, what did you think the book was really about? >> well, i didn't ask myself that because it was about what it was. the point is that it was wonderful. and it was funny and then it stopped being very funny. i never saw it as particularly a funny book. i saw it as a sad and angry and upset book but, of course, it was hilarious, too. the stories about how we worked

dissecting this thing with 9 different versions, i don't know how it came from. michael corda in his memoirs -- i think he invented that. michael was the younger editor, a very close friend. was a fabulous and he called me and he said how could i have said those things. i said because you didn't checking everything. you just had a great story to tell. >> but as you know, in history, we're going to pick the best version so his version is pretty good. >> but it was a process. it was a very calm process. i don't remember nine different versions. joe wrote -- he prepared for writing on cards, file cards, and he had thousands and thousands of them and they stacked up and he would move them around, but he already had

the structure of his book in his head and nobody really talks about how brilliantly structured it is, how it's cyclic. and how things come in a little more and a little more. the main example of that, i guess, is the death of snowdan and then you get closer to it and as you get to the end of the book, there is a horrible horrible story and he knew just what he was doing and on top of that, he knew how good it was. >> and also in the new version you see this, incredible revisions and visions and visions -- there's a full page -- >> yes. >> reprinted of his handwriting. and he crossed out everything but three or four years. he's like -- >> censor. avenues good self-censor. he like editing, he liked being edited. it was a totally happy bhoook.

and i haven't read this book 50 years since it went to press and let me read the book to see if i still like it, i'm happy to report, although it's different before. although i don't do this with ordinary books that i read, i kept wanting to edit it. and i was thinking how did i let this go by? you know, but it's too late. the book is out there. (laughing.) >> he's gone. so -- but i'm very proud of it. and most important than me, it was all the success he finally hoped for and always knew he would have and he never doubted his genius. >> wow, i love that. it's a wonderful introduction and we'll delve into the book a little bit after we do a round. let's go to chris buckley next, who was a very close friend of

joe hellers later on in life, as i understand it from you that the two of you exchanged hundreds of letters on top of having many meetings in person. so tell us about joseph heller, the guy's guy, the man. i'd love to know if he was funny in person. >> well, we didn't go to girlie clubs together or anything. valerie heller, his widow is in the audience, so -- but i didn't just say that for her benefit. our coming together was odd for this reason. i reviewed for the new yorker the sequel to catch-22, a book called closing time which is a sort of mad jumble of a novel and it's all of it characters 40

years later. i couldn't resist in the -- in the opening sentence quoting the old line, the sequels aren't necessarily equals. i wrote a respectful equals because i was a great admirer of catch-22. it wasn't all admiring and i was very surprised about a week later a handwritten letter arrived and i looked at the upper left-hand corner and there it said joe heller, and i thought oh, my god. and i actually delayed opening it for a few hours. i got to open it. it's from joe heller. it was one of the sweetest letters i ever had. i think you understand my book better than i did and my wife

was in tears when she read the last paragraph and how could i not write back and very shortly -- do you remember fax machines. this was in the days of fax. i'm very glad this correspondence didn't take place in the age of email, you know, because these were letters, you know, we would type them and print them and fax them. but when he -- by the time he died four years later, i went to the file and there were 3 or 400 letters there, exchanges. and he was -- you know, this was not a particularly time of his life as some of you probably know in the -- it was in the early '80s, i think. he was stricken with something called gee on-barre syndrome which none of us want to get.

there's an exchange in the letter where a friend of his named george mandel calls mario puzzo who was a great friend of joe's and said, have you heard about joe? and mario puzzo says no, he's got this disease and puzzo goes, that's great. and mandel goes, no, it's a disease. and he goes oh, that's terrible. he said, well -- puzzo says you know if they named it after two people it's got to be really terrible. (laughing.) >> joe was a -- he was -- he was a very kindly guy. certainly in my dealings with him. but he was also -- you know, he had a steel trap mind. a switchblade-like intelligence. and what hemingway called the

most necessary thing for a writer, a first class bull shit detective. >> and let you know, i would assume. >> and he was the combination of the warm and fuzzy and with the inner steel. but he was -- for me he was very easy to love. we had sort of a mutual despairing society. and at one point i got a very mixed review for one of my books from publishers weekly, so i faxed it to him and he crossed out all the mixed stuff and faxed it back to me and wrote at the bottom, now it's a total rave. (laughing.) >> that is totally sweet. that is sweet. okay, mike nichols, the movie. we all want to know, did he come to you and say, i want you to do the movie? did you go to him? how did the movie come about?

>> we had nothing to do with each other at that point. movies are made and decided by people in california that none of us knows. (laughing.) >> in this case those we don't know were infiltrated by a very close friend of mine whom i'd known in new york, one that my partner and i were comedians and who mygrade to california roughly -- [laughter] >> you're fired. >> oh, my god. [cell phone ringing] >> thank my god you weren't in the audience. >> no, i've forgotten everything i was trying to -- >> joe heller, what's that book? something happened, right. >> so he was working for this

unfortunate person in california and they were making not good movi movies, but he was in hollywood, this old pal. and it was right after my second movie, it was right after the graduate. and he said if i bought catch-22, would you make it? and i said, i don't think so. it's too hard. i don't know how to make a huge serialisic movie that says war is madness, you know, and 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 then buck henry who had written the screen play for the graduate from a book and i started talking about catch-22. and there's something we did in the graduate that took us forever but we were rather

satisfied with it which was sort of going from place to place as though it were all in one moment. he gets out of the pool, he opens the door and he's in the hotel and mrs. robinson is waiting for him. and they start to make love and then he's watching tv and she's brushing her hair and he leaves in the same please we see him he's in his bedroom and so forth. we thought that really told the story of an obsession very well and on this kind of suicide. buck went off and he said let me try something and he played a little bit and he found it, of course, as you were saying -- its catch is circular. catch-22 is sickler with snowden with the spiral in the middle and we started to play with that spiral going around and around and around. always circling back to snowden

until it started to seem like a movie you could run in your head and then somehow more than any movie i had ever done it sort of decided -- i never decided to do it. but we went a little further and we talked about who would play it and tony perkins and he was a friend and he was such an ideal tapman and little by little we were making it and i was never happy or comfortable -- i was always worried. i never thought it would work. and many don't think it did work. it's 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 that thing we talked about which is the good robert altman came along with mash, light on its

feet, light, contemporary, just when we were hauling this thing around and it made us look like what we were, like a big thing. (laughing.) >> and there were these harder parts but as i was listening to it, i went back to see it and there was a moment where i can't -- anyway, buck and i decided that's the one we would go to see together with people and we had a wonderful time. i'm not mad. i like it. and it is as much as the poor thing could be as close to the book as a movie can be which is not all that good but we did our best. and i think it's okay. i think the joe aspect of it is really there. >> can we talk -- can you talk

and then bring it to bob this space, a border line between the humor and the horror that you dealt with, i thought, extremely well in the movie and why don't you talk about how, you know, it's supposed to be funny and then it's grotesque, how you balanced that and how you think joe did in the book because the book and the movie in both things. >> you mean did joe survive in the movie? >> did joe survive in the movie. i mean, how difficult it is for someone to balance a book with humor with the violence, the difficulty. >> to me who has seen many, many movies based on books and all too many movies based on books i edited and presumably knew pretty well, the hardest thing is dealing with the book of real quality because what makes it a real quality is the uniqueness of its voice.

whereas, if you have a second level novel that is be perfectly good. you can extract its setting with any book, you can't do it with catch-22, the latest version of jane ayre. it has everything except what charlotte bronte was about. it's a story about explosive moors. (laughing.) >> isn't there an industry saying that bad books make good movies and good books make good movies? >> i think it's a not untrue saying. i'm not saying what you ma call it. i don't think it's a bad book but i think it's a popular book. it's entertainment and god knows it was a great movie -- it made

as good a movie as a book i would say. and there's the kind of -- and then there's the joseph conrad movies that directors made out of great movies out of great book that can be done. i think every book is different and every writer is different. for instance, dickens is famously cinematic. and everyone who writes about dickens says the same boring thing and i'm saying it now. when you read it as a dickens movie you can see it as a movie but many of the novels are a movie like great expectations. >> let's go sideways. it took 30 years that the graduate was -- [inaudible] >> just like all of us is long time to the wizard of oz was ulysses. >> i still hadn't realized it. (laughing.) >> i like it. >> they always have the same

ending. the grail or the witch's broomstick. finally, almost dead from making the task, doing it. and the wiseman 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 also of an education, of course, that leading out from what you already know. and i think that there are myths that keep coming back that make fantastic -- phaerda is one you keep coming back. it's in other books. it's in the devil and the flesh. every time it comes back, wow, oh, boy, i think i'll forget that. it's already close to home. i'm not going to think about that. and when it comes around again,

it's always very compelling because it's very close to home. in some weird way, catch-22 is related to all the horrifying books like -- what's it in english? what's it called? >> all's quiet on the western front. >> all's quiet on the western front. all the great novels even from here to eternity, that they have a connection in the loss of just plain realty and things are all turned upside down and forgetting why you're there. at least of all with the second world war because it was the last war with good guys and bad guys, or so we thought. but these -- some things lend themselves to movies and some don't. i think catch-22 in some arcane way is in the middle.

>> now we're getting into what the book was about. chris? you and i had a conversation about what you thought the book was really about. so let's do a round. you start it. and then all three of you tell you get about when you first read it, what you thought it was about and changed your mind as the new edition has come out. >> it's a world war ii book that came out in 1961, just as we were getting involved in that great adventure called vietnam. joe was -- i'm going to sort of answer your question elliptically -- >> i know because you told me yesterday. >> you know, joe heller was n not -- i mean, he came out of world war ii justifiably proud of what -- of his service.

he flew 60 combat missions over italy. and he was in the thick of it. it was the korean war and the madness, if you will, of the cold war, that informed catch-22. so coming out when it did, it sort of caught this wave. by the time mike nichols movie came out in 1970, vietnam was very much a lost cause. so the book was bracketed by these two dates. if this is what you wanted me to get to, leslie, as i -- as i re-read it, i wondered if the book is seeking in a way to make

cowardice a virtue. now, i'm going to adduce a couple of sentences from this handsomely reissued book and i must say with an absolutely sterling introduction and there's an appendix in the back with some fascinating experts from essays and reviews about catch-22 and this is one by philip who was an englishman apparently the son of great historian arnold toyenby. it says if catch-22 has any continuous theme, highs in the tireless efforts of the asyrian american hero to evade combat duties. the book defends the right, indeed almost the moral obligation of man to be physical cowards. it is pointed out the brave, almost always involved others in

their senseless and unfeeling cooperation with the forces of war. the man who 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. i think it's sort of possible to look at the character as a kind of bartelby the scriv anywhere, you know, melville's character whose line was, i'd prefer not to. >> without looking at the wall. bob, do you think that the book is really about cowardice? is it about violence? is it just totally antiwar? >> it's about a lot of things, like all good books. just to comment on what you said, chris. it occurred to me when you're speaking, the real model for the character is odices which is the

elliott book the greatest book ever written except for catch-22. (laughing.) >> it's a story of a meaningless war for no reason and the survivor is the wiley character as he's always referred. >> yeah. and he gets away. but what do i think it's about? >> did joseph heller have that in his mind. >> i have no idea. (laughing.) >> tell us what you think it's about. >> i think it's on one subject and you heard me say before and i think it's on the same subject as his next book, something happened which is set in an office and a family as opposed to a war and an air base and that's subject i think what dominated joe's psychic life which is anxiety. see, he was scared. he was nervous. and something was going to happen. in the one book, the metaphor's

war and another 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, something is going to happen. is catch-22 is about making sure or trying to make sure it doesn't happen. and something happened is about knowing it's going to happen and then it happens. but that is his subject as far as i'm concerned and he found these brilliant brilliant metaphors and i don't mean this was conscious on his part but these were the internal pressures on him that led to these two books. >> mike, do you think this is his best book? >> for me, it's about even with something happened which i love as much. that's something that developed over the years. i can't forget something happened. i can't get over that scene with

him and his little girl and i can't even talk about it. they're very different but they have some things in common, for instance. he has 2.5 children, one of them is disturbed. he is a point on a graph as well as a human being and it's the same as what you said what catch-22 was about. you know, plays were about kings and queens and resources are resource peddling their things with their little and you could go to the next town and have an affair and nobody would know it, and then i think -- this is not the official thing. i think the novels came about the little guy and if one of the

many themes of catch-22 it's the hatred of the authority. the officers are the bastards, the most hated people in the book and it weirdly started to work on us. they are all our pals but the guys playing the officers, the felons sitting at different tables and not invited to things. >> come on. >> we hated them. they were officers. >> it's so great. >> but i think that joe -- when you think he did both catch-22 and something happened, that he was the opposite of what he appeared to be. he was a complex, sophisticated elegant man masquerading as an ordinary guy. in fact, they joke about him is that they thought they found the manuscript on a dead soldier because he didn't -- they couldn't see the person who had

written the book. but over time of course 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 -- before the book was finished and published. and he was not the guy you met or even the guy you met. first of all, he was working as an ad man. he was a man in the gray fallen suit -- just after that book came out for me as editor. his hair was short. and he was correct. he wasn't overflowing with fun and joy. and he was nervous. this was his first book. he was dealing -- now, i'm talking about with moe and my colleagues. he was dealing with them. it took a little while them became us. and, of course, you can't be in a proper editorial relationship

unless the two of us end up as an us. he was like the guy in something happened. you see, that's true, too. we all know he was in the air force. but we don't really realize that he was in something happened too. so it was very true to him and the change came when catch was published and was hailed by those who hailed it and became more and more of a success. and he blossomed. i've never known anyone, writer or not, who took more simple and wonderful joy in being a success. he just loved it. and he wasn't embarrassed about showing it. i'm the writer of catch-22. look. (laughing.) >> there's an anecdote that i can't resist telling. it's from tracy's daugherty's very fine biography published

about a month ago called just one catch. i think anything written about joe heller inevitably has to have the word "catch" in it. but joe had a -- the reach of this novel was, you know, truly universal even though it never hit -- it didn't hit the "new york times" bestseller list until mike nichols made it into a movie nine years later at which point it sold 1 million copies in six weeks. but among his many admirers was bertran russell, the ultimate i'm for peace, better read than dead, wasn't it? so joe is visiting england. and has been corresponding with russell and russell said by all means you must come out and visit me in the coxwalled,

wherever it is. and joe arrives and knocks on the door and announces himself. whereupon, bertran russell flies into a red faced rage and begins screaming at him and says, go away. get out of here. horrible man. get away. and joe fled and he was in the car trembling and looking for the gearshift when burton russell was somewhat elderly at this point and his butler came running out and said, oh, no, no, it's okay. he thought you were edward teller. (laughing.) >> oh, perfect. we're going to turn the questions to the audience in 1 minute. i have a final question from me and that is that when joe heller

wrote catch-22, i think this is correct, ken keysee was write one flew over the cuckoo's nest, and kurt vonnegut was writing the cat's cradle. what produced all this irreverence. we were the silent generation. we didn't protest but something was bubbling. what was -- >> a lot of it had to do with the war. >> but which war? take mine -- you mean the korean war? >> no, i think it had to do with the experience of world war ii and the holocaust, you know. how do you deal with all those stuff and how do you cope with it and one jewish way was through humor. not that they were all jewish. it was in the air, what we remembered plaque comedy. that was the style at the time

and there were many books in this vein and joe's was probably preimminent about them but they all lasted. >> but do you think his fear and his anxieties and what you were describing before came out of the holocaust? >> no. i think they came out of him. and his childhood and his life and if you -- >> his jewish neurosis. we're not neurotic, leslie. we're just accurate. (laughing.) >> all right. you know what? don't you want to see the audience? >> we do. >> can we have some lights to see how beautiful everybody is? >> wow! >> so we would like to invite you, if you'd like to, to raise your hand and shout out as loudly as you can because it's hard to hear.

>> how's this? i read the playboy interview with heller. i don't know when it came out. and the interviewer said something about realizing the lieutenant's last name in german was shit head and heller said, oh, yeah, that's one of two things in the novel that i kind of slipped in there. what's the other one? [laughter] >> don't ask me and i wouldn't buy that at face value either. (laughing.) >> i bought it. >> don't believe everything you read. you want to step up to the mic? >> mr. nichols, i was just wondering if you could tell some stories about working with allen arkin onset? >> arkin was always on the happy. [laughter] >> was he an actor? >> he was an actor. i could have just said that.

(laughing.) >> but we had a very difficult schedule because we depended entirely on back-light. we had a genius d.p., director of photography, david watkin, he decided we would always shoot into the light which meant basically that we would shoot from 2:00 to 4:30 every day. we could get ready but if we were going to have our signature look, we couldn't shoot anytime except from 2:30 to 4:00. this was in the days when it was thought as a very expensive movie, it cost $11 million -- 11 million. that's what was expensive in those days. but which meant that we were in mexico for what seemed like years. and no actor could go away because we didn't know when the weather would be just right to do his or her scene.

so some people stayed there for months waiting for their scene. and arkin always stayed there because he was in every scene. and he did nothing but bitch. (laughing.) >> and he thought he was terrible. i wrote him a letter, you have no idea how good you are in this. and he said, that's right. i don't. (laughing.) >> i said, well, let me send it to you. there's a new dvd. look at it for christ's sake. you're great. and he wrote me a very nice letter afterwards. and he couldn't quite see the way i do but he sees what i mean by 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.

everyone loved catch-22 and everyone was hot because i had done virginia woolf and the graduate and we were it for the 15 minutes and he were with the 15 minutes when we started casting for catch-22. i remember there was this strange little guy who came to audition and i had seen him in one little play and it was a little hard to hear him but i thought as he read one or two characters, i thought this is interesting. we have a great actor here and when he was through, i said actually you can have any part you want to be. it was al pacino. (laughing.) >> and he said, oh, that's wonderful. let me get back to you. never got back. (laughing.) >> he could have been a star. [laughter] >> it's that little twist of fate -- i asked him a little later. we did a 10-year movie together,

it seemed like, i said, what -- why didn't you -- i was so busy trying not to go crazy. i could never have done a part in catch-22, which by the way which is exactly marlon brando said what it feels like when you were the king in first came to hollywood. how do i know. i spent all my time trying to 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 all stayed friends for the rest of our lives. it was sort of like encamped -- well, camped together. >> prison camp together. (laughing.) >> prison camp. >> prison camp. >> hi. i have been thinking about the sort of collidescopic structure -- >> can you go closer to the mic. >> i've been thinking of the collidescopic structure of the book and the cyclical and how

it's quite like the psyche of a person at war and i was reading after reading some of the back-matter in the book and jim webb talked about how it affected them and the soldiers in the bunkers. i wondered if soldiers reached out to heller to thank him for perhaps capturing that sort 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? >> i don't really know. maybe you do, mike. chris, did he ever talk to you about it? >> no, he didn't. let me -- may i gloss a little bit on jim webb in the marvelous introduction to this reissue.

(laughing.) >> i remembered 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 -- there 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-22, a book called fields of fire. and jim wrote this appreciation in the "wall street journal" and it's quoted at some length in the introduction. and he recounts being in really,

you know, the ninth circle of hell, he and his platoon have been taking terrible casualties. he said we were there -- are in the sides. we're crawling hook room from bad water we had been drinking and in the midst of, you know, this blood and misery and death, one, he hears this -- someone shouting in a his foxhole and saying, you got to read this. you got to read this. and it's a tattered copy of catch-22. and webb had written the book growing up as an air force brat on an air force base in nebraska. and he said he devoured it. his men were passing it around. he said it didn't matter to me at all that i was reading a book -- and this is -- these are

his words, there was protesting the very war i was fighting, this book that had been written in 1961 and we're now probably '66, '67, but he said what mattered was that i had found a soulmate, someone who understood. 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 bertram russell -- maybe that partly explains why it sold 10 million copies since 1961, although mike nichols can take credit as we know for at least a million of those. >> you know, i just want to add one thing to our discussions of -- everyone's discussions. we all talk about it as if the enemy in it is war.

but let's also remember that this is a very seriously anticapitalist book. and a lot of this satire -- this is not about war. this is about the system. >> no question. [applause] >> 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 during his illness, which is a polyneuritis rarely seen by most doctors that is experienced by many patients but first i want to make one comment and there's a talk about george's neurosis

and i met joe heller on a sudden beach in fire island. and having met him, i commented i read his book and so forth. and he said, could you help me, you're a doctor. and by the way, i never realized that he hated doctors because of his father died of a screwed up operation by a doctor. i don't know whether you know that. his father drove a bakery truck or something like that in coney island. and he said, my wife has a mark on her breast. could you examine it and tell me what you think. and people said fine, four people held up beach towels making some little -- left brese and she had a ring worm and the next day he arrived on the beach and he asked me and he said what is your fee and he said gave me a copy of the book and inscribed in the book to dr. richard bader

on full payment on such and such date. (laughing.) >> and i have the copy of the book presently in my daughter's home in massachusetts. but the second thing is, i'm responsible partly for his meeting his second wife because she was the nurse that took care of him during his desperate with his syndrome where he was paralyzed and appeared at my brother's apartment unable to bend down and tie his shoes or talk. and he had never seen a case before and he called up a neurologist who also agreed and he was admitted and it was a long story but i just thought you how i met joseph heller. >> that was lovely. >> chris, chris, were you

friends with him when he was suffering from his disease? can you tell us about that? >> no, i wasn't. valerie could tell us. she was there. i was -- i was with him when he was suffering through life. >> just life. >> but he -- what was -- what was extraordinary to me about joe is here's a guy who was -- who he was no stranger to tragedy. the doctor just told us how he lost his father. there was another death perhaps of a loved sibling. he flied 60 combat combinations and his friends were dead. he has a devastating illness and it was not clear 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 what was surprising to me what a joyous personality he was. i mean, he loved life. he loved food and drink especially when you were paying for it. (laughing.) >> he had an awful lot of joy in him too far guy who had seen all this stuff. >> terrific. shall 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 up books with some frequency? >> well, there are many possibilities to that. i don't know if i have any definitive one. first of all, 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. i think it was very difficult. it took him many, many years for him to write catch-22 six or

seven years and that was the same for something happened. and 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 that he was working during the day. >> well, the catch-22. you know, he had to go on writing because he had to make money. and it was the thing he did. but i remember saying 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 are what i call notional. he got a notion and he filled

it. he fulfilled it. these two books were not notion. they came right out of him and it was a struggle. >> 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 doesn't mean it isn't true. >> he wrote it -- he wrote it that one night and the paragraph came to him and by the next morning the entire book was mapped out in his head. >> well, it had been presumably simmering this material in there but we didn't talk about things like that because we were too busy either making jokes about other people or saying, no, this paragraph isn't any good. well, let's put it there. you know, it was hands-on work. it was not conceptual. >> and what's more fun? >> nothing. >> i know. >> mr. buckley, you spoke about jim webb's response to reading the book while he was in combat.

i read it about six weeks before my 17th birthday and about three days later i eplisted and i volunteered for aviation and then i flew about 70 combat missions in vietnam as a crewman and i had 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 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 serving. and nobody 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'm wondering 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. let me ask you, did the people you served with, did they know the book? was this a book that was -- was making the rounds because it was certainly adopted, if you will, or co-oped by the antiwar movement here. was it being read? [inaudible] >> everybody knew what it was at the time -- [inaudible] >> you know something? can i interrupt for one sec? i may say you have 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. >> that's why i asked the question. [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 read the illiad. it's all there. everything is this. it's like everything is in king lear. if you read those two things, you don't have to read anything else. (laughing.) >> as a matter of fact, bob, i remember having this discussion with joe, the illiad was his favorite book. yeah. and he read it by age 10 it's fascinating that you bring this up. 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 metal machines. ..

>> these guys were like, like baseball players. they were athletes. they were heroes. >> one of the essays in the book, in the new edition, says that a lot of people think the book is really about humor, but this person thought it was about violence and about the feeling of soldiers in war being buried alive. and i thought you captured some of that in the movie actually. >> we sure spent a lot of time thinking about it, and about the actual hell of it. we blew up the whole base. we actually blew it up that one night. we did it all in one night. there was a big stone farmhouse and we blew it up. you had to be alert and 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 the first big bullets counted. i think the heroism, which is sort of not mentioned very much, i think that they were heroes. he was a he wrote, and he spoke and he wrote as a disillusioned hero. joe was very, i went to a writers conference in key west, and the subject was war and literature, and just about everyone on this panel was a combat veteran. philip who wrote a rumor of war, tim o'brian. and show was on the panel and he was utterly dismissive of heroism, to, i can't remember his exact words but he almost disparaged what he did. and yet robert stone staring at

them and saying, you flew 60 combat missions in world war ii. and joe said, yes, you know. the guys on the ground had much worse, the guys at the battle of the bulge. i was stunned. in five years of drinks, dinners, i don't think joe brought up world war ii once. but he was, that was that generation. that's one of other reasons they're called 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? we will go 123. towards the end of the book when you saw him walking around rome, he had this realization what a

lousy earth, it's not anymore just as you said, the war where there's treachery and horror, but the whole world and horrible things can happen to someone anywhere. 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 and that he is in this tiny little lifeboat, the camera is panning out to the big ocean, there's music playing, easy 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 into the movie. -- and the end of the movie last night. >> 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. the image speaks for it's self. it even suggest something or it doesn't. i can't attack it or defend it. i do want to tell the too often to told true story of joe, somebody was sitting near him at a party and they were both sort out talk and everyone else was out of talk, and the guy next to him said, still, you have never written anything as good as "catch-22". and joe said, who has? [laughter] >> perfection. spent my question is kind of on that point. what do you think about joseph heller's last novel? one of the things i thought was most poignant in is just this notion of a novelist struggle with the fact that his first novel may have been his best.

>> oh, i have to be heard? that's not fair. 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. i didn't think he should publish it really. he needed to, which i totally understood. i thought it was very inferior. >> trollop once said, and i'm going to manga what 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. he was unbelievably shrewd. he had all bases covered. and he knew that he was at the end of his talents, and yet he need to publish this book for various reasons. and it was. it didn't have to be explicit because we knew each other very

well. so i thought it was unfortunate but also hey, his life, his career, his book is not for us or me or anyone to come around and say don't do this. but he knew. >> can you name the three artists, writers, anybody who just got better and better? >> yes. >> who? >> yes, yes, yes. but first of all they have to live a long time. second of all they have to be true geniuses. >> named them. >> william shakespeare. >> oh, please. [laughter] >> wait a minute. >> that was too easy. >> that's the point. the greatest geniuses continued to evolve. those people have so much. there's so much that they have to get taken to 40 more masterpieces if they only had the time. >> there were to come one in a

generation. >> if that. one in a century. that's the point. the greatest geniuses i think continue to evolve. other people have their thing to do, and it's wonderful. and then they have done it. either fate steps in order be slightly eroded. as wonderful a writer as joseph from his last book is terrible. that's the way it is. >> 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 on form. 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. the thing is, given life our breath, we keep going. breathing, too, it's the same. >> final question.

>> so the academic take on "catch-22" is that whatever it says about war and whatever it says about capitalism, that its impact a parable about the loss of faith in god. does this academic conceit have any basis in reality to your knowledge? [laughter] >> no. >> no. parable about what? >> i happen to have wrote down my favorite passage in the book, which goes to that point. we will sum up this way. i think it's an answer to your question. good god, how much reverence can we have for a supreme being to find it necessary to include such phenomena as slim and tooth

decay and it's defined system of creation? i'll go on. i think the answer your question. what in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of his when he robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? why in the world did he ever create pain? do you remember when he wrote that? okay. well, i think there's been a spectacular night. how lucky i we all been to have a panel like this? [applause] >> well, here's a book with an unusual title, but it's also part of a series. "obama on the couch" has been written by justin frank, m.d., who also wrote "bush on the couch." dr. frank, first of all, what kind of doctor are you? >> i'm a psychoanalyst and a

psychiatrist, professor of psychiatry at gw medical school. >> how do you get inside the mind of president? >> it's a technique called applied psychoanalysis. i'm trained. so for instance, freud did that it was the first one to do that with people like leonardo da vinci, and even moses. then fdr hired someone to do that with hitler during world war ii. it's a very well-established technique of studying famous people by using analytic principles. obama row two autobiography so that made it very interesting to see what he put in, what he leapt out at and how it relates to his behavior as president? >> wanting we will learn about president obama in your book? >> he is deeply obsessed with uniting the country because he came from a broken home. he is half black and half white, and he wants to heal his inside.

that's why he is a committee organizer after harvard law school we could have written his own ticket and a high-powered law firm. he really believes in bringing people together. that's the biggest he has because the irony is we are more divided than others in a lot of ways in this country. when he gave a speech in 2004 about red states and blue states in the united states, he believes that. so eventually he started negotiating with himself to the point where i called him the a commentator in chief. that's what the book is about, why he does that, and how there's an incredible difference between him as president and hit as candidate. >> your first book, "bush on the couch," what's one thing we learned about president george w. bush? >> we learned about bush, a couple things was that he really was very much a person had once been an alcoholic, was what's called a dry drunk. those are people who are

impulsive and are suddenly given to blaming other people, and one of the things about him that was so powerful is when he made up his mind, he never changed it. he was what's called in either or president. either you're with us or against us. he lived in a very different world where you said i don't do but i don't deal with this. and obama almost only those nuances we have the opposite of the two presidents back-to-back. >> when you write these books a year from people in the white house? >> this time i did. the first interview i gave with "huffington post," that david director of communications for the white house called up the interview and ask them about it. so i didn't hear directly, but they did. i ended up giving them a book because they wanted to see. with the bush people i did not hear directly but i met a few people who knew him. met karl rove and different people. they were not too excited about the book.