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Now And Then (Joseph Heller Book)
''Now and Then'' is Joseph Heller's 1998 memoir. The first half of the memoir focuses on Heller's childhood in Coney Island and is, in fact, as much about the place as it is about the man. Heller describes growing up, his mother and half-siblings in a fundamentally safe and fun neighborhood of punch ball, football, amusement park, and Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Stand. Synopsis Heller describes his early passion for writing and some of the primary school papers that preview his adult fiction. Picking up late in high school, Heller reviews the various jobs he held before enlisting in the Air Force: telegram messenger boy, clerk at an insurance company, and blacksmith's helper in a shipyard. With World War II looming, Heller enlisted in the US Army Air Corps, where he served as a bombardier. Heller describes several of his fellow soldiers and the events that would later become part of ''Catch-22''. Heller completed his required number of missions, was discharged, and was married ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel ''Catch-22'', a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice. Early years Heller was born on May 1, 1923 in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York,. the son of poor Jewish parents, Lena and Isaac Donald Heller, from Russia. Even as a child, he loved to write; as a teenager, he wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland and sent it to the New York '' Daily News'', which rejected it. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Heller spent the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, a messenger boy, and a filing clerk. In 1942, at age 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Two years later he was sent to the Italian Front, where he flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. His unit was the 488th Bombardment Squadron, 340th Bomb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
US Army Air Corps
The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical rift developed between more traditional ground-based army personnel and those who felt that aircraft were being underutilized and that air operations were being stifled for political reasons unrelated to their effectiveness. The USAAC was renamed from the earlier United States Army Air Service on 2 July 1926, and was part of the larger United States Army. The Air Corps became the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) on 20 June 1941, giving it greater autonomy from the Army's middle-level command structure. During World War II, although not an administrative echelon, the Air Corps (AC) remained as one of the combat arms of the Army until 1947, when it was legally abolished by legislation establishing the United States Department of the Air Fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Autobiographies
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role. Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoir, letters, and the essay. Within its broad definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles or other printed information on a particular subject.''OED'' Etymologically, the term derives from Latin ''literatura/litteratura'' "learning, a writing, grammar," originally "writing formed with letters," from ''litera/littera'' "letter". In spite of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Books By Joseph Heller
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1998 Non-fiction Books
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles. * January 11 – Over 100 people are killed in the Sidi-Hamed massacre in Algeria. * January 12 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning. * January 17 – The '' Drudge Report'' breaks the story about U.S. President Bill Clinton's alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, which will lead to the House of Representatives' impeachment of him. February * February 3 – Cavalese cable car disaster: A United States military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying EA-6B Prowler severs the cable of a cable-car. * February 4 – The 5.9 Afghanistan earthquake shakes the Takhar Province with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (''Very strong''). With up to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might be considered an unfortunately abbreviated description, Freud said that anyone who recognizes transference and resistance is a psychoanalyst, even if he comes to conclusions other than his own.… I prefer to think of the analytic situation more broadly, as one in which someone seeking help tries to speak as freely as he can to someone who listens as carefully as he can with the aim of articulating what is going on between them and why. David Rapaport (1967a) once defined the analytic situation as carrying the method of interpersonal relationship to its last consequences." Gill, Merton M. 1999.Psychoanalysis, Part 1: Proposals for the Future" ''The Challenge for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: Solutions for the Future''. New York: Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Good As Gold (novel)
''Good as Gold'' is the third novel written by Joseph Heller. Portions of it were printed in the New York Times in 1976, and in Playboy in April 1979. The book was published in late 1979. The dust jacket was illustrated by Paul Bacon. Plot Dr. Bruce Gold, a Jewish, middle-aged university English professor, unhappily married, hated by his father and brother and ignored by his children. He is the author of one book, four essay collections, "deritative" short stories and "atrocious" poems. Because he has favorably reviewed a book by the US president, he is offered the chance for success in the form of the job as the first-ever Jewish Secretary of State. To get the job, he is willing to divorce his wife and marry the daughter of an anti-Semitic elder statesman. Literary significance and criticism The novel was well regarded by both fans of Heller and literary critics, being viewed as a return to the gag and verbal play that Heller established in ''Catch-22'' and abandoned in favor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
God Knows (novel)
''God Knows'' is a tragicomedic novel written by Joseph Heller and published in 1984. Plot It is narrated by the Biblical King David of Israel, and purports to be his deathbed memoirs; however, this David does not recount his life in a straightforward fashion, and the storyline is often hilariously fractured. Indeed, it is possible to read the book as Heller's meditation upon his own mortality, and an exploration of the Jewish view of family, life, death, etc. All of the major touchstones of King David's life are in place: his childhood herding sheep, the prophet Samuel, Goliath, King Saul, Jonathan (and homosexual innuendoes), Bathsheba and Uriah, the Psalms, the treachery of Absalom, Solomon, etc. At some points, David betrays knowledge of the future (he mentions Michelangelo's ''David'', saying it is ironic that a King of the Jews should stand there uncircumcised), and even of heaven (Moses sits on a rock in the afterworld, working on his stutter) – we are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Picture This (novel)
''Picture This'' is a 1988 novel from Joseph Heller, the satiric author of the acclaimed ''Catch-22''. Plot The novel is an eclectic historical journey across multiple periods of history, all connected by a single painting: Rembrandt van Rijn's ''Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer''. The work jumps from the golden age of Athens, to 17th Century Holland, to the rise of the American Empire; hopscotching from Aristotle, to Rembrandt, to Socrates, and back to Heller and even Jimmy Carter. It examines fundamental dichotomies in human existence under the guise of satire. Major themes Heller concludes that we do not learn from history (and in fact so much of history may be nonfactual that learning may be impossible). Being a pessimist chronicler of the American Century, his main unspoken theme is of course parallels between the onetime Hellenic overlord respective the onetime ruler of the seas, and his home country. This is most apparent in his treatment of the peak and downfall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Something Happened
''Something Happened'' is Joseph Heller's second novel (published in 1974, thirteen years after ''Catch-22''). Its main character and narrator is Bob Slocum, a businessman who engages in a stream of consciousness narrative about his job, his family, his childhood, his sexual escapades, and his own psyche. Plot While there is an ongoing plot about Slocum preparing for a promotion at work, most of the book focuses on detailing various events from his life, ranging from early childhood to his predictions for the future, often in non-chronological order and with little if anything to connect one anecdote to the next. Near the end of the book, Slocum starts worrying about the state of his own sanity as he finds himself hallucinating or remembering events incorrectly, suggesting that some or all of the novel might be the product of his imagination, making him an unreliable narrator. ''Something Happened'' has failed to achieve the renown of ''Catch-22'' but has a cult following, wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GI Bill
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, but the term "G.I. Bill" is still used to refer to programs created to assist some of the U.S. military veterans. It was largely designed and passed through Congress in 1944 in a bipartisan effort led by the American Legion who wanted to reward practically all wartime veterans. Since the First World War the Legion had been in the forefront of lobbying Congress for generous benefits for war veterans. Roosevelt, by contrast, wanted a much smaller program focused on poor people regardless of military service. As historians Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart Blumin point out, FDR did not play a significant role in the contours of the bill. At first, Roosevelt shared with nearly everyone the idea that “satisfactory employment,” not educational op ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catch-22
''Catch-22'' is a satirical war novel by American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. Often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, it uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration, describing events from the points of view of different characters. The separate storylines are out of sequence so the timeline develops along with the plot. The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of antihero Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th US Army Air Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Italy, although it also covers episodes from basic training at Lowry Field in Colorado and Air Corps training at Santa Ana Army Air Base in California. The novel examines the absurdity of war and military life through the experienc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
