Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here

From the author of two of our most legendary novels, Catch-22 and Something Happened, comes a slyly funny, vastly revelatory memoir that is at once a loving evocation of a lost America and an exploration of the frontier where life turns into literature.

Now and Then follows Joseph Heller from his fatherless childhood on the boardwalks of Depression-era Coney Island, where he grew up amid the rumble of the Cyclone and the tantalizing aroma of Mrs. Shatzkin’s knishes. It offers a dizzying bombardier’s-eye view of the sky over wartime Italy, where Heller encountered the characters and incidents he would later translate into Catch-22. It depicts a writer coming to terms with both rejection and celebrity. Here, in short, is a life filled with incident and insight, recollected with subversive humor, exquisite timing, and a fine appreciation for the absurd.