The sharp wit and sense of life's essential absurdity - which you
would naturally expect from the creator of Yossarian and Major
Major - is clearly present here. The spirit of Yossarian lives on,
especially in a wonderful episode which has schoolboy Heller
queueing up among a gang of contemporaries to squeeze a girl's
breasts. The book is filled with similar weird and amusing events.
It is as a sketch of a life and of characters and incidents from
it, that this really succeeds. Heller is particularly good in his
descriptions of his Brooklyn childhood; conveying brilliantly the
smells, sounds and sheer excitement of summer days, when crowds
washed over Coney Island like the waves they came to see. As
Phillip Lopate put it in The New York Times, the 'literary lion
roars, scratches himself, schmoozes, boasts, grouses, provides
pointers and, most of all, remembers.' (Kirkus UK)
Joseph Heller takes us on a fascinating journey back to his
upbringing in a poor Jewish neighbourhood in Coney Island, through
his World War II experiences as a bombardier in the American Air
Force, to his life as an internationally acclaimed author. He tells
of his tough upbringing during the Depression, and of the affection
he retained for the kitsch, ragged, down market Coney Island of his
youth. He describes, in intimate detail, his first love Luciana,
and writes about the people and events, both tragic and hilarious,
he was to translate into such memorable characters as Milo
Minderbinder, The Chaplain, Major Major Major Major and the
unforgettable Yossarian. In NOW AND THEN we are afforded a
privileged insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century's
greatest literary talents.
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