One would not afford to miss the autobiography of the writer who gave us characters such as Major Major, Colonel Catchcart, the unforgettable Yossarian, and the novel Catch-22. Written when he had become frail and aged, Heller writes about his life, past and present, in a very relaxed tone as if he’s introducing himself to a new friend. He starts from Coney Island, where he had spent a large portion of his childhood in the sun soaked beaches, playing and singing and dancing; where he had learned to tolerate things in life in the uncertain neighbourhood of minority people, and where in the conundrum of everyday chores he had envisaged a career in writing. His attempt to recollect childhood memories is very moving, and among the pages one would find real people who had once been friends with Heller indeed the roots of those amazing characters in Catch-22.
So it was not only his war experience that inspired him to write that, but his summed up view on inter-human relationship. Both ways, the novel should have been marvellous – and it was. Now and Then is different from other autobiographies; it is good. Not because Heller’s life is contained in those pages, but because from the viewpoint of a novel it offers many down to earth lessons, which other autobiographies does not give so generously since they are made to sound too formal and closed in order to impress readers.
But they must realise that what they do often help to accomplish the exact opposite, and perhaps Heller knew that when he jot down the first few words in his rough draft. I do not want to write in my way, the insides of Now and Then because Heller had selected those things as memorable pit stops on the racetrack of his interesting life, and that belongs to him. There is consolation, however, in telling that his life was something out of the ordinary. Writers are strange fish, I know, since they tend to glorify their exploits in sweet words. Naipaul, Rushdie, Maugham, for example.
But Heller never mentioned that he was God. He was just a little boy like you or me who goes to school, comes back, eats dinner and then sleeps. The only difference is that he had become mature at a very early age due to certain circumstances, and given the state of things in the small island where he grew up, he has achieved the impossible. More than half the people with whom he grew up had gone to pieces or died a premature death. If he were like the others, we would not have heard of him and most probably, he would have ended as a Hippy or collapsed on a highway from cocaine overdose. If one put aside the hype surrounding Catch-22 and study the pages objectively, one would know how terrible internal conflicts had bombarded on his conscience.
There are many autobiographies out there, and I do not want to put a full stop on the way of the world because that would be inadequate, but the choice one makes on buying an autobiography tells an awful lot about what kind of matter one is made of. Therefore, in good faith I assure you that you would love reading Now and Then. Please enlighten yourself.