The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Now and Then From Coney Island to Here by Joseph Heller
Robert L. McLaughlin

Joseph Heller. Now and Then From Coney Island to Here. Knopf, 1998. 259 pp. $24.00.

This memoir is titled Now and Then, but if you’re interested in Joseph Heller as he is now or as he’s been the last forty years, this isn’t the place to go. The emphasis here is on Heller as a young man—growing up in Coney Island, going to war, finding his first jobs—and really less on young Heller than on the world around him. This might have been subtitled What Life Was Like When I Was Young. The result is that Heller has very little to say about the art of his novels but quite a lot to say about the comparative advantages of the Coney Island amusement parks, the history of the hot dog, and strategies for getting a seat on the IND. Unfortunately, much of the material here is treated better and more interestingly in the novels: the war—famously, brilliantly—in Catch-22; office work in Something Happened; and Coney Island in the best parts of Closing Time. There’s a nostalgic charm here, some good jokes, and a wealth of information for historians of Brooklyn, but less Joseph Heller than I think most readers will expect. [Robert L. McLaughlin]