Yossarian Slept Here

I took a few days off from my reading of early 20th century Brits to read Erica Heller's memoir of life growing up as Joseph Heller's daughter: Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad, the Apthorp Was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22. I'd read a couple of reviews that made the book sound interesting, and when I saw it at the library, I figured "why not?" -- and it does fit in with my interest in memoirs and biographies of writers. I've always had a fondness for Joseph Heller, since reading Catch-22 when I was still in high school, not long after it was first published in 1961. Eventually, I replaced my old and nearly worn-out paperback with a nice new hardback, but I must confess my memory of the book is less vivid now than my memories of the movie, re-imagined by Buck Henry and Mike Nichols in 1970.

Turns out it's a pretty good memoir. Erica Heller seems to give a very honest account of her parents' life together without resorting to recriminations or whitewashing. It was apparent that she loved her dad, despite his obvious flaws as a husband and father, and also came to appreciate her mother as she eventually understood the complications of her parents' relationship from her mother's perspective. And the story is interesting, even though achingly familiar and predictable even if you don't already know the plot. Despite Erica Heller's allusion to the old Tolstoy observation that unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way, there is nevertheless a certain generic similarity to the causes of most familial angst, especially conflicts between husbands and wives and parents and children. And it turns out the Hellers are not that different from everyone else.

What makes the book work, at least for me, is the way Erica uses the old Apthorp apartment building in New York City as a sort of organizing focus for much of the family story, fulfilling the reference in her subtitle. That focal point combined with the somewhat casual chronology of the narrative of the Hellers and their friends and extended family helped to give the book its originality. In the end I thought I had learned just enough about Erica herself and her own journey toward maturity to trust her judgment and insights about her parents, but not so much that her own story would overpower the larger family saga she was relating, with its emphasis on Joe and Shirley and Shirley's mother Dottie. In the end I suppose we must assume she was her father's daughter, since she is inclined to forgive him repeatedly for his fabrications and putdowns. Her insights apparently are hard earned, but ring true. And her refusal to judge her parents is refreshing. In fact, that's what makes her book work. She seems to have done all right for a daughter whose father saw her life as an open grave. But then I imagine that's her point, and with this memoir she's made it.

Next time I'll return to Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and perhaps a further word or two on Waugh.