eastern a loaded joseph heller's novel catch-22 with christopher buckley. the book's editor robert gottlieb and the director of the film version. booktv in prime time this week on c-span2. >> several live events to tell you about on c-span2. the national network convention will hear about the criminal justice system from attorney-general eric holder and reverend al sharpton. the major league baseball association speaking and collective bargaining and owners labor agreements. this evening the supreme court historical society will mark the 30th anniversary of san read a o'connor's appointment to the supreme court joined by three justices currently on the court. ruth debater ginsberg and elena kagan live at 6:30 eastern. >> april 13th, 1912, >> caller: hundred perished on a ship called unsinkable. >> the look of bills were sounded. the look out cited an iceberg and struck the bells and the crows nest three times which is a warning saying there's an object ahead. it doesn't say what kind of options. what the lookout did after they struck the bill is went to the

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 curly clubs together or anything. valerie heller, his widow is in the audience, but i didn't just say that for her benefit. we are coming together was odd. for this reason i reviewed for "the new yorker" the sql to "catch-22", a book called "closing time," which was sort of a mad jumble of a novel and its yossarian and milo binder binder 40 years later. and i could not resist in the opening sentence quoting the old line that sql is not necessarily equals. and i will be respectful because i'm a great admirer of "catch-22", but it was by no means all that admiring. i was very surprised and a week later i handwritten letter arrived and i looked at the upper left hand corner and there's a named joe heller and i thought my god. i actually delayed opening up for a few hours. and it was one of the sweetest letters i've ever had. he said i think you understand my book better than i did and my wife was in tears when she read t

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 curly clubs together or anything. valerie heller, his widow is in the audience, but i didn't just say that for her benefit. we are coming together was odd. for this reason i reviewed for "the new yorker" the sql to "catch-22", a book called "closing time," which was sort of a mad jumble of a novel and its yossarian and milo binder binder 40 years later. and i could not resist in the opening sentence quoting the old line that sql is not necessarily equals. and i will be respectful because i'm a great admirer of "catch-22", but it was by no means all that admiring. i was very surprised and a week later i handwritten letter arrived and i looked at the upper left hand corner and there's a named joe heller and i thought my god. i actually delayed opening up for a few hours. and it was one of the sweetest letters i've ever had. he said i think you understand my book better than i did and my wife was in tears when she read t

neurologist who also agreed, and was a long story but i just thought i would tell you how i met joseph heller. [applause] >> were you friends with him when he was suffering? can you tell us about that? >> no, i wasn't. valerie could tell us. she was there. i was with him when he was suffering through life. [laughter] but, you know, what was extraordinary to me was here is a guy that was no stranger to tragedy. he just told us about how he lost his father. there was another death, perhaps a beloved selling. 60 combat missions in world war ii and salles lots of his friends get killed. >> he knew that things are going to happen and they did. >> he has a devastating illness and it wasn't clear that he would survive but he was basically in some kind of an iron lung for nearly a year and then he had a very anguished and some time of public divorce, so this was a guy that knew winston churchill's if you are going through hell, keep coming. joe kept going, it was surprising to me he wrote with a joyous personality he was. he loved life. he loved food and especially when you were paying for it. [laugh