- Person
- Joseph Heller
- Lived
- 1923–1999
- Field
- Novelist
- From
- American
The story
After the success of Catch-22, Joseph Heller turned his attention to the war that was dividing America in the 1960s. His novel, set in the Second World War, had become an underground classic among young people opposed to the Vietnam War, and Heller himself said that Vietnam was the kind of war he had had in mind when he wrote it. In 1967, while teaching at Yale, he wrote a play, We Bombed in New Haven, completing the script in just six weeks.
The play follows a group of actors who believe they are portraying an air force squadron in an unnamed modern war. The action switches between scenes in which they play their parts and scenes in which they step out of character and complain about their roles. This technique, which critics compared to Bertolt Brecht and Luigi Pirandello, keeps reminding the audience that it is watching a performance, and it exposes what Heller saw as the illogic of military life and of blindly following orders.
The play was first produced by the Yale School of Drama Repertory Theatre on 4 December 1967, directed by Larry Arrick with Stacy Keach in the starring role. Heller spent a great deal of time working with the producers as it was brought to the stage. After a slight revision it was published by Alfred A. Knopf and opened on Broadway in 1968, starring Jason Robards, where it ran for 86 performances.
The BBC described it as a moderate success that dealt directly with American military involvement in Vietnam, and many critics read it as a protest against that war. Heller later adapted Catch-22 itself for the stage, with a first production at the John Drew Theater in East Hampton, New York, in 1971.
We Bombed in New Haven carried the questions of Catch-22 into the theatre at the height of the national debate over Vietnam. By asking audiences why people keep playing the roles that war assigns them, Heller added his voice to a generation of writers and artists who questioned the human cost of the conflict.
Why it matters
Heller used the stage to question the human cost of war at a time when Americans were debating the Vietnam conflict.
About Joseph Heller
Coney Island-born bombardier turned novelist whose Catch-22 skewered the absurdity of war and bureaucracy – and gave the English language a phrase for every no-win situation.
More about Joseph Heller
- Joseph Heller gave English the phrase 'Catch-22'Joseph Heller's 1961 novel Catch-22 gave English, and other languages, a lasting term for a no-win dilemma created by absurd rules.
- Joseph Heller wrote about beating a paralysing illnessAfter Guillain-Barré syndrome left him paralysed in 1981, Joseph Heller recovered and co-wrote No Laughing Matter about the friends who helped him.
- Joseph Heller taught creative writing at Yale and CCNYAfter Catch-22, Joseph Heller taught creative writing at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, and later at the City College of New York.
- Joseph Heller retold King David's life in 'God Knows'In God Knows (1984), Joseph Heller gave voice to the biblical King David, after first drawing on his Jewish roots in Good as Gold (1979).
Sources
- Joseph Heller Wikipedia
- Joseph Heller: Literary giant BBC News
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.